Do skills vanish?

[Cody_Atzori]

I have a more practical and foundational question. After you learn a skill how often do you need to exercise that skill in order to maintain it? Or is the exercising unnecessary? Can I learn a skill then come back to it in like a year and still have it?

[ExodiaGearCEO]

If you learned a skill and stopped using it that skill for a year. You might not fully forget everything but will most likely be rusty if you stop. To keep becoming a master in whatever skill you want to learned you have to do it consistently and 10,000 hour rule

[Shadowraix]

48 minutes ago, ExodiaGearCEO said:

If you learned a skill and stopped using it that skill for a year. You might not fully forget everything but will most likely be rusty if you stop. To keep becoming a master in whatever skill you want to learned you have to do it consistently and 10,000 hour rule

Pretty much. You retain memory for things you practiced a lot for surprisingly a long time. It's amazing. The more you practice the more your body will know it is important. 

[SFRL]

You don't loose the skill. You get rusty. But you can knock that rust off rather quickly once you start using that skill again. 

[SFRL]

Actually when I think about it, maybe sometimes you need to lay skills to rest to improve them further. 

Have you ever had that you played a video game and you got stuck at that one level and then you tried and tried but just could not beat that level? 

Then you didn't play for a while. Like a few days, or weeks, or months, and then all of a sudden you could beat that level in two or three tries. 

[Eric Tarpall]

I think it takes about ten or twelve years for a skill to go away. But you can always reattain it.

[iTommy]

6 hours ago, Cody_Atzori said:

I have a more practical and foundational question. After you learn a skill how often do you need to exercise that skill in order to maintain it? Or is the exercising unnecessary? Can I learn a skill then come back to it in like a year and still have it?

How often you need to exercise that skill, depends on the skill you're trying to learn and yourself. Exercising is important, even going back to the basics of something. The basics create the foundation that you build upon, if you have half-assed the basics and just moving and jumping forward, then you may lack some foundational puzzle-pieces that would eventually benefit you greatly, saving you time and giving you a deeper understanding of that skill. Practice smart, give your body and mind some rest and good sleep, that's where the magic happens. Usually, the better you get at something the less practice you need. You could come back to a skill one year later, but you might be a bit rusty (again, depending on the skill and yourself).