Mastering a skill and being an expert can make all the difference in the world. Just think about how different amazing top performers are compared to everybody else – whether that’s in business, sports, politics, entertainment or any other area of your life.
Everybody wants to win, but very few people have the willpower to do everything that needs to be done to be a winner. With information being more readily available online, we want to learn and be the best in more things than we have time for, so shortening our learning curve and learning smarter is essential to master anything we set our mind to.
If you want to live an extraordinary life, you have to improve your ability to master a skill and you need to push yourself further than you have ever before and while putting in the hours is vital to master a skill, you have to also practice the right way.
So how can we master anything? Here are our TOP 10 strategies to master any skill you wish to master until it becomes completely automatic and gives you the extraordinary life you are looking for.
#1 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
When learning something new, a lot of us have the tendency to do it all alone, underestimating the energy, time and effort we could save by getting help from someone who has already mastered this particular skill. There is no need to reinvent the wheel because it has already been invented. Build on the knowledge and experience that has already been accumulated and avoid making the same mistakes again. Look at the highest achiever in the field and model the journey that has already been paved for us.
#2 Stop Multitasking
In our modern society, multitasking is glorified and it is almost a guilty pleasure to check our emails every few minutes, constantly scroll through our social media feed and check up on news notifications. However, multitasking can be one of the biggest obstacles that prevents us from mastering something new faster and more efficiently. Just think about your computer. If you have 20 different windows open, your computer starts to slow down and everything takes longer. The same goes for us human beings. Research shows that once we get distracted, it can take us on average 25 minutes to be focused on the task at hand again. This applies to long-term focus as well. If you want to achieve something in half a year to a year, stay focused on that rather than trying to learn a million different things all at once and shifting your focus away from your ultimate goal. Focus is everything, so stop multitasking and avoid distractions as best as you can.
#3 Analyze
When you start on your quest to master a new skill it is essential that you take a moment and evaluate and analyze how you are doing. Why did the sale not go through? Why did that guy never text you back? Why did that song suck? Why did the customer walk away? Don’t blame circumstances or other people, because playing the blame game won’t help you to improve your skills. Figure out what went wrong and how you could do things better and differently. This is the only way to get better and improve yourself.
#4 Improve Your Energy
Energy is hugely important when we work on mastering a new skill. If we don’t have any energy, we won’t be able to learn. If we don’t get enough sleep, we will be too tired to learn. If we are fighting with our best friend, we will be too distracted to learn. If we are too anxious, we will spent too much mental energy on worrying about what could go wrong instead of learning in this present moment. To improve your physical energy make sure that you get enough sleep, eat a healthy, well-balanced diet and exercise. To improve your emotional energy, eliminate all toxic people from your life. To improve your creative energy, write down at least 10 ideas every single day. It doesn’t matter what area of your life those ideas are about, it’s just about exercising your creative muscle. And to improve your spiritual health learn how to release control over things you can’t control and learn how to deal with regret, anxiety and stress.
#5 Go Out and Do It
You can’t get better at playing the piano by just reading about it. You have to practice it every single day and then you have to play the piano under high stress, like playing at a recital. You also won’t succeed in business just by reading about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. You have to start your own business or work for a start up and go through all the ups and downs, successes and failures. You get the idea. You can’t just read about the skill you want to master, you have to go out and do it.
#6 Apply the 1% Rule
Don’t try to master the new skill in just one day but aim to improve yourself by 1% every single day and while it seems like a small amount, it will add up over time and we promise you that by the end of the year you will be a lot closer to your ultimate goal than you have ever imagined. Challenge yourself every single day, get out of your comfort zone and make it your mission to expand your horizon a little bit one day at a time. And when you fail – and you will fail as this is a natural part of the learning experience – don’t beat yourself up, but congratulate yourself for trying and analyze what went wrong so you won’t do the same mistake twice.
#7 Naps Are Steroids for Your Brain
We’ve mentioned earlier that you need to get enough sleep so you can learn as fast and effectively as possible. But if you don’t get the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep at night, take a nap, as research shows that naps promote your ability to learn. Studies show that if you nap for an hour or an hour and a half in the afternoon, you get into the REM stages of sleep and your retention and comprehension of the material you are trying to learn will be significantly improved.
#8 Work on Micro-Skills
Every new skill you want to master has dozens of micro-skills. List every micro-skill of the overall skill you would like to be an expert in and figure out what you are already good at and where you are lacking and then try to get better in both. For example if you want to be better in business, the micro-skills you have to look at are negotiating, managing employees, product development, sales, finding investors, motivation, commitment, emotional stability, finance, marketing and so on. Make sure to look at every area and while you do need to know a little bit about every micro-skill, distinguish between the ones that you want to master yourself and the ones you can delegate to an expert in that field.
#9 Teach It
Whenever you have learned a new skill, teach it to someone else to really consolidate that knowledge. And to be a great teacher, you have to be able to deconstruct and analyze the skill, be able to perform the skill correctly and convey it with relatable anecdotes so the other person understands and wants to learn from you. You really have to have mastered the skill because the person you are teaching it to is going to ask all kinds of questions that you need to be able to answer and you have to have been fully immersed in every aspect. Teaching the skill you want to master quickly demonstrates where you have succeeded and where you need to invest more time and energy.
#10 Seek Out Mentors
Finding a good mentor is vital to progress in anything you want to master. Look at the people who have succeeded in the field you want to master and approach the person you are most drawn to who is a capable expert and has the most promising students. And then you have to give your mentor the chance to help you grow and listen to his or her feedback. Mentors provide the most incredible supportive environment that will inspire you and motivate you to do your best and your mentor will feed you with knowledge, feedback and support.
Sadly, we weren’t born experts and have to put in the work, but with time and practice we can master anything we want. And the great thing about becoming a master is that we get the added side effect of being happier. Research shows that people who deliberately work on improving their skills and talents are significantly happier on a daily basis. Start now and you’ll be amazed what you can achieve.
LIFT YOURSELF UP AND BECOME THE BEST YOU CAN BE
Joschi & Monika
#BoldNaked