How to Learn any New Skill in Two Weeks – 2

So we started a series on HHow to Learn any Skill in Two Weeks. If you missed it, you can click on the link to get on the moving train.

Before we continue, I’d like you to know that learning is a skill. And it’s a skill that can be improved. You can do anything as long as you set your mind to it.
Now, remember the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule)? Let’s bounce!

Stare. And Steal.

Daniel Coyle, author of the New York Times best-selling “The Talent Code”, offers his first tip: stare at who you want to become. That is, if you want to become good at playing the piano, do things such as watch videos of good piano players, and going to concerts.

In addition, find someone you’d wanna be like in two, three, four years. See what they’re doing and steal that. Yup, steal from them.

Shift from Learning to Doing—Fast!

So now, you’ve concluded the preliminary research on your skill. You know where to start and you know where you wanna go. The only problem is—you haven’t acted. Trust me, you def do not want to get stuck at the preparation stage. Start “Doing” as fast as you can.

For example, in learning the piano, it won’t do any good to keep watching piano videos and hope that when you play, the ideas will immediately come at you. it doesn’t work like that, and unless you’re a genius, you’d have problems actually pulling that off.

What do I suggest? Start Doing.
Practice.
Take it from me: Practicing is the only way to learn anything. I won’t lie to you, practicing can get pretty boring and monotonous. But that’s why in order to learn a new skill, you need to have discipline and patience.

Spread Out.

You won’t go far dedicating 25 hours straight up to binge-learn and work obsessively on your skill. Your brain—and body—needs time to figure out the changes that are going on with you.

Think about it like going to the gym (not that I’ve ever been in one). Your muscles won’t grow in one day, or even two or three weeks, even if you practically move into the gym. Instead, you take out some time to work out a little each day to allow your muscles get progressively stronger. That’s how your brain works.

Deliberate Practice.

I know we’ve talked about practice, but I need to reiterate the fact that you won’t become good if you decide to learn just about anything that you come across.

Deliberate practice means focusing on specific elements of the skill that you want to learn or improve, and working on those elements—by doing drills and exercises—until you get better at them.

Author Joshua Foer has this to say, “Amateur musicians…tend to spend their time playing music, whereas pros tend to work through tedious exercises or focus on difficult part of pieces.”

Look for the Discomfort Zone.

Your discomfort zone is that level at which you’re pushing yourself to get better at a skill, but without drifting into the zone in which the challenge is more difficult than your skill can handle. Here’s a quote from Jonathan Harnum, Author of The Practice of Practice: How to Boost Your Music Skills,

“The arousal state happens when the challenge you face pushes your abilities to the edge of failure. You’re concentrating fiercely, but you’re still getting it done… When you stray into the “anxiety zone”, you’re probably pushing it a little too hard.

As a pro-tip, when training, you want to be successful about 60 to 80 percent of the time. if you’re failing less than that, your practice sessions are probably too easy, and if you’re failing more than that, it only means they’re too hard.

And that’s a wrap on the series. I sincerely hope you’ve been able to pick up one or two things. The joy is that you apply the knowledge you’ve learnt to become a better, more confident version of yourself. Remember to take it slow, take it steady and don’t be afraid of making mistakes.