Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.
You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn.
Every job you do, you gain more experience. You never stop learning.
A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
What's really the driver of talent is not raw ability. It's not even just experience. It's what's called 'deliberate practice,' which is to say, if you do something a lot, you get really good at it.
Read every book, blog, website, whatever, about what you want to be an expert in.
So I did in fact spend two and a half years in the Middlesbrough car park practising skills. But if you spend four or five or six hours a day practising, you get better.
A skill is something that you aren't inherently talented at and that isn't an effortless action, the way your thinking talents might be, but is something you can become excellent at nonetheless.
