Secrets To Skill Development
Three Point Essay #18 | There actually aren't any secrets
Here’s a three-pointer to open your mind.
The mission of “Three Pointers” & about the author here
Repetition Makes the Master
You must do so much volume that it would be unreasonable to suck.
—Alex Hormozi
Can do you do basic math? Of course you can.
Here’s an equation you can use to become good at anything:
Volume X Time = Skill
If you do an activity every day for 1 week, you’ll see little to no improvement.
If you do an activity every day for 6 months, you’ll see solid improvement.
If you do an activity every day for 1 year, you’ll see great improvement.
I’ve applied this basic knowledge to become:
Able to bench 245 pounds and squat 315 pounds
For a while, I wasn’t great at any of these things.
But there are two magic mindsets you can adopt to persevere past stages of incompetence:
Consistency
Patience
Over time, once you’ve done something so much, it’s impossible to be bad at it.
Your skills go exponential.
But most people underestimate how much volume needed for this type of growth to occur.
Becoming More Skilled Than Most People
The rarest human quality is consistency.
—Jeremy Bentham
For skill in any area, practicing it must be a habit.
To make something a habit, you need discipline.
Discipline is doing the action no matter what. Which means not relying on motivation. Which means doing it even when you don’t ‘feel like it’.
The good news for you is, most people aren’t disciplined. Most people aren’t consistent.
Don’t be like most people.
Long Term Thinking
If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn’t otherwise accomplish.
—Jeff Bezos
Developing skills takes time. No one wants to hear this. But it’s true.
Let’s say you want to speak another language.
You buy some courses, start listening to music in the language, and find native speakers online to have conversations with.
But after 1 week you give up, discouraged you can’t speak Chinese as well as English after 3 total hours of practice.
If you extend your time horizon though?
Imagine how fluent you could be in another language after 1 year of daily practice? 2 years? 5 years?
10 years?
Apply this line of thinking to any activity. Watch how much less you will suck at stuff. Eventually.
Inspirational!
Great read. Would be interested in a follow up article about how to form new habits.