Olympic lifts are some of the most technical and complex movements anyone does in any athletic endeavor. If you can force yourself to get good at them, you can learn just about anything else. Learning and working to perfect complex movement patterns like the O-lifts, the kipping pullup, overhead squat, etc, supports other movements in life. Our bodies were created to use the “use it or lose it” principle, but more than that, they work on the “use it and get more of it” principle too. If you tell your body “Hey, you’ve got to learn this new skill”, it will respond not only by becoming better at that skill, but by becoming ever so slightly better at other things in life like learning, movement patterns, memory, etc. Are each of these slight changes measurable? Probably not by my pea-brained head, but over time, they add up.
There’s a reason one of Coach Glassman’s keys to fitness is “learn and play new sports”. You should constantly be getting better at things in life. Find something you don’t do well yet, and make it your strength. Then, find something else you don’t do well, and make it your strength. There are plenty of things to work towards to keep you busy for decades.
Back onto the topic of this post, do you have a bodyweight clean? If you do, you’re a pretty good athlete as far as Olympic lifts are concerned. It takes some time to work towards this, but most people should be able to achieve it within a year of actively working towards it. Unless your ridiculously strong, it’s not just going to fall into your lap, and it’s going to require good technique and practice. Below is a good article on the technique of the first pull in Olympic Lifting, by Coach Burgener (remember, he coached his son in his garage, who this past summer made the US Olympic team in Beijing. The guy knows his stuff.)
http://journal.crossfit.com/2009/02/end-of-the-first-pull.tpl#featureArticleTitle