Get good at something, anything

The way baseball players are good quarterbacks, good musicians play multiple Instruments, and video game pros are high level in many games, the idea of general intelligence has been well established for a long time. While it’s obvious that mechanical ability and skill in closely related disciplines will transfer over, I want to argue that learning just about anything can benefit you in all future endeavors.

A process, a method

Sure, if you told Lebron James to go be a pro cricket player, he could probably do that faster than your average guy. Expected. But I’m also willing to bet that if you asked Lebron James to become a world class artist, he could likewise do it faster than your average guy. If you put a professional in any discipline up against an average guy, I’d bet on the professional 100% of the time. This isn’t because of some outstanding genetic ability that gives you an overall +10 stat boost; they just know how to learn better. Someone who has gone through intense, deliberate training in an attempt to push their limits in any way will always have the upper hand in learning a new skill. The importance of understanding diligence, delayed gratification, and self reflection is second to none when pushing through plateaus and frustrations. The one who has never been great at anything has second thoughts about his path when there are roadblocks and delays, while the one who has achieved world class status understands it is something that comes with growth, and has methods that he can rely on to overcome barriers.

Why it matters

The idea I’m trying to get at is, don’t worry about the fact that what your learning, or what you’re doing is the specific, exact thing you want to do. It doesn’t really matter in the long term because the fact that you’re learning something at all will be beneficial to everything you do. It’s better if it is in the same domain, but I found the way I approach getting better at things follows a general rule: learn some, apply more. There is a term in programming called “tutorial hell”. This is where a new learner watches tutorial after tutorial, follows them well, and understands them fully, but when it comes time to write their own program, they freeze up and forget everything they’ve done even though they wrote all the code before. In the same way, you can learn perfect form for doing a handstand and be competent enough to teach someone, but if you never do handstands you will never be able to do one. I used to get paid to teach people how to use botting software, but was never able to get really good at it because I didn’t put in the time to learn what worked for me. It is important to learn from others to a certain point, but you should learn some, apply some, learn more, apply more and continue to refresh yourself when you’re stuck. Failure truly is the best teacher, and you can seek out failure on a daily basis because it doesn’t matter if it’s superficial or not; the error is still there and you still need to grow to overcome it.

Small caveat, but I remember watching TSM Hamlinz play Fortnite when he was considered the best in the world. I recall him saying that he would intentionally give himself a disadvantage in practice, so that he could force himself into more challenging situations.

Final thoughts

This article may not seem applicable to some people, but I felt like I had to write it because I’ve probably spent a good two months going back and forth on what programming language, framework, or tools to use and for the most part, I never even stuck with my original choices. Making a decision always led me to a new discovery that eventually took me to where I am now. It’s a stubborn and uncomfortable thing to force decisiveness, but the choices you initially make have little impact on where you will end up. I mean, Amazon started out as a book store… All in all, you should spend far less time contemplating the right thing to learn and more time learning, because when the right opportunity finally does present itself, you’ll need that knowledge to take full advantage of it.

Tweet