Hours are vital but you can get to mastery faster — much faster — by practicing the right way.
So how can you and I do that? Here are seven steps experts use:1) Be uncomfortable
You learn best when you're reaching. "Flow" is great. But flow is not the best way to learn.You want to be stretched to the edge of your ability. It needs to be hard. That's how your brain grows.
Here's John:
We learn when we're in our discomfort zone. When you're struggling, that's when you're getting smarter. The more time you spend there, the faster you learn. It's better to spend a very, very high quality ten minutes, or even ten seconds, than it is to spend a mediocre hour. You want to practice where you are on the edge of your ability, reaching over and over again, making mistakes, failing, realizing those mistakes and reaching again.
2) Stop reading. Start doing.
Keep the "Rule of Two-Thirds" in mind. Spend only one third of your time studying.The other two-thirds of your time you want to be doing the activity. Practicing. Testing yourself.
Get your nose out of that book. Avoid the classroom. Whatever it is you want to be the best at, be doing it.
The closer your practice is to the real thing, the faster you learn.
Here's John:
Our brains evolved to learn by doing things, not by hearing about them. This is one of the reasons that, for a lot of skills, it's much better to spend about two thirds of your time testing yourself on it rather than absorbing it. There's a rule of two thirds. If you want to, say, memorize a passage, it's better to spend 30 percent of your time reading it, and the other 70 percent of your time testing yourself on that knowledge.
3) The sweet spot
You want to be successful 60 to 80 percent of the time when training. That's the sweet spot for improvement.When learning is too hard, we quit. When it's too easy… well, we quit then too.
Always be upping the challenge to stay in that 60 to 80 percent zone.
Here's John:
You don't want to be succeeding 40 percent of the time. That's flailing around. You don't want to be succeeding 95 percent of the time. That's too easy. You want to constantly be toggling, adjusting the environment so that you're succeeding 60 to 80 percent of the time.
4) Commit to the long term
Asking someone "How long are you going to be doing this?" was the best predictor of how skilled that person would end up being.Merely committing to the long haul had huge effects.
Here's John:
The question that ended up being the most predictive of skill was "How long are you going to be doing this?" Commitment was the difference maker. The people who combined commitment with a little bit of practice, their skills went off the charts.