On the Often-Overlooked Effort of Communication

I get the feeling that quite a lot of people put effort in the wrong direction for what they want to achieve.

Broadly speaking, I think effort can go in two directions: building your skill, or working on communication.

By working on communication, I mean things like explaining what makes a field fun in a way people can easily understand, or building relationships in which people trust you.

Which one works better seems to depend on the field, your goal, and what stage you’re at.

And I feel there’s a general tendency to overlook the effort that goes into communication. Part of the reason may be that skill is easy to measure, while effort in communication is hard to measure.

Worlds where skill makes you popular, and worlds where communication does

In professional baseball, for example, the players who are good at the game are by far the most popular. Even if they say little more than a few words in short interviews, they draw enormous popularity.

In games, on the other hand, my impression is that streamers who play games on camera attract far more fans than professional players. What a streamer needs is less pro-level skill and more entertaining talk and fun reactions.

I think the same is true at work. Even in jobs that involve dealing with people, you may be chosen for your professional skill, or because of your friendliness, trust, and relationships.

While you are a beginner, building skill works better

That said, while you are a beginner, building your skill works better.

Getting past the complete-novice stage has a lot of value, and it’s much easier than moving up from intermediate to advanced. In RPG terms, it’s like how, while your level is low, even a little experience raises it easily.

Once you reach an intermediate level, though, it seems better to think about which way to go: skill or communication.

In my case, I’m going the communication route in shogi

I think the shogi world is very much a world of skill, where professional players who appear again and again in title matches become famous.

My activities now, however, are focused on showing beginners how to enjoy shogi. I’m not competing on skill at all.

Even if I tried to compete on skill in shogi, it would be completely impossible for an ordinary person. But I love shogi, and I had been hoping to do something that spreads the fun of the game. In that case, the only way for me was to be someone who shows others how to enjoy it.

Above all, shogi is a game that takes a fair amount of experience before you can see what makes it interesting. If someone who knows nothing about it watches a professional game, they won’t understand what’s going on. That’s exactly why I think information that helps beginners enjoy shogi has value.

In fact, the original Japanese edition of my book on how to think in shogi received many five-star reviews and ranked near the top of the Kindle Store rankings.

Even if I became an amateur 6-dan, my results in promoting shogi wouldn’t change much

Suppose I started studying shogi intensely now and became an amateur 6-dan. As a hobby, that would be a wonderful achievement, and of course I’d like to get stronger too.

But even at amateur 6-dan, I still wouldn’t be strong enough to win tournaments. Nor could I draw people in through skill the way professional players do.

In that case, I feel that spending that enormous amount of time writing books for beginners or coming up with fun projects would lead to better results in promoting shogi. If I treated getting stronger as my effort toward promoting the game, I think I’d be going in the wrong direction.

From the intermediate level on, figure out which direction to put your effort

Effort in communication tends to be overlooked, and it’s hard to measure. Even so, from the intermediate level on, it can be the more effective choice.

Once you reach an intermediate level, you have to figure out whether to grow your skill or your communication for your goal, and then decide which direction to put your effort.

You don’t necessarily have to aim for the top in a field you love. If you can find a place where the effort you can keep up matches the value people around you want from you, I think that gives you a real advantage.