I needed a new word, so I just made one.
intek: hybrid of "internalize" and ancient Greek "teknik"
intek: To go from a state of knowing a craft or skill theoretically to knowing how to perform that craft or skill in the real world.
I was sitting in Pacific Coffee thinking about business. There's a lot of things I know in a theoretical sense right now, but I haven't built into myself to the point where they're running smoothly. The same concept could apply to anything that needs real world practice - you know something in theory, but in practice you're still doing it wrong.
As far as I know, there's no great word for this. Before "intek", you have theoretical knowledge. After intekking, you can now do in the real world and really know it at a deeper and more meaningful level.
I predict this word will enter specialized usage in the next 3-5 years, and common usage within 20-30 years. Mind you, I don't create words lightly, but I think we need this one. My friend Brendon's updating me on one of his projects and I'm giving him some thoughts. He just wrote in an email: "I made many mistakes this week... [list of a few mistakes]... I need to [do things correctly]... I know this stuff."
That's actively going through the intek process. He knows theoretically, and yet, he's not doing. Yet. But he's intekking, so he'll be doing it correctly soon. I've got some skills I know at an abstract, theoretical level, but I need to intek them to keep making progress.
Enjoy the word! For you historical people, it was coined 2 August 2010 in the Pacific Coffee in the Shun Tak Center, Hong Kong Island. There's different romanizations of the Greek, but the general thing that "technical" or "technique" is derived from means roughly craft, skill, art, discipline, learned ability in Greek. These could be understood theoretically but still not able to be put into practice until the person who learned inteks their new skills.