Hard Skills vs Soft Skill: Tactical Marksmanship and Training

Full transcript: https://funshoot.substack.com/

Hard skills are specific, measurable abilities. Hard skills can be assessed objectively and learned. There’s not much leeway between good and bad in any context.

Soft skills are subjective and vary greatly. Soft skills are not readily measured because “good” is entirely dependent upon specific situational factors.

Tactics are very subjective and epitomize soft skills. It’s about minimizing risk and maximizing the chance of success, and they vary greatly depending on the environment and situation.

Marksmanship is very objective and epitomizes hard skills. Good shooting can be readily measured, and improving it is consistently beneficial in every environment and situation.

This does NOT mean tactics are unimportant, only that they’re subjective, difficult to quantify, and situation-dependent. Working through a specific situation and making good, fast decisions will be helped by getting measurable, predictable hard skills to a level such that you no longer have to give them much thought. This frees up “processing capacity” to pay attention to the immediate environment rather than fumble with low skills you should have already developed before.