harder vs new
There are two ways of moving upwards in life:
- Tackling harder challenges of the same type that you encountered at the level below
- Tacking a new set of challenges that were previously non-existent at the level below
First way is prevalent in education and techniques of mastery learning take it as fundamental.
Second way is prevalent in business and the famous Peter principle exists entirely due to it. For instance, being promoted from a non-managerial role to a managerial role is a very zero-to-one situation. A lot of people go for it because of higher status and salary, and end up being very unhappy because it is not really their thing. In other words, the problem is often not a competence issue but a fit issue. There are also non-linearities involved. For instance, I think that I am good at very detailed, lowest level work and very conceptual, highest level work, but not good at mid-level work. In other words, promoted one level up, I would perform worse, but promoted two levels up I would perform better.
