Become An Expert As Fast As Possible
Rare levels of expertise are not honed over the weekend. Becoming a master of your craft takes years.
How many years? … I’m glad you asked 😎
Much has been written about the famed 10,000 Hour Rule which claims that in order to achieve an expert level of mastery in your craft you need to dedicate approximately 10,000 hours to your work. While the validity of this so-called “rule” can be debated, we can no doubt learn two important lessons from it.
It takes a while to become your best. Notice I said your best. Some people are naturally gifted with an ability to pick up skills fast. Still, that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. True mastery is less about being THE best and more about becoming YOUR best. There’s a difference.
Not all action is productive. As it turns out, you can’t just show up to work or practice and expect to get better. What you do during that time determines if you actually get better or if you stay the same. That would explain how a teacher can be present in class daily for years and still struggle to connect with his students. Why? He never worked on the specific communication skills needed to connect on a deeper level.
Side Note: If you want to read up on the 10,000 Hour Rule, Malcolm Gladwell explains the research as only he could in his bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success.
Maximizing your potential is a life-long pursuit, but no one wants to wait to be great. So here’s how you shorten your path to becoming a pro.
Set Your Routine. Make practice a habit and stick to it.
Master One Move. Focus intently on sharpening one specific skill at a time.
Visit the Mind Gym. Learn how to leverage the power of mental rehearsal.
Study Others. Get something out of the reps that other people are taking.
Make Practice Part of Your Regular Routine
If you are on a team or if you have a full-time job then your practice/work schedule is already set for you.
In high school, we had football practice three times per week for two hours at a time. At that rate, it would have taken me 34.7 years to hit my 10,000 hour milestone. However, I really enjoyed the training aspect of the game, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to put in extra time on my own.
Adding just one hour of individual training to my routine on practice days (bringing my total commitment to 3 hours, 3 times per week) cut my time to mastery down by 16.2 years! This goes to show that you can gain a massive advantage by showing up a little early, staying a little late, or making some extra time on your own to put in work.
Master One Move
The best coaches always have a practice plan. That’s because they understand that without intention you can’t possibly tell if you are spending your time wastefully or investing your time carefully.
As a pro football player, one of the most vital skills that I relied on was my ability to catch the ball. So, instead of playing catch after practice with my teammates, I used a carefully crafted routine. It went something like this:
Catch 5 footballs straight on at chest level.
Catch 5 footballs coming from the right at chest level. Front arm over top.
Catch 5 footballs coming from the right at chest level. Front arm underneath.
Catch 5 footballs coming from the left at chest level. Front arm over top.
Catch 5 footballs coming from the left at chest level. Front arm underneath.
Catch 5 footballs straight on at waist level or lower.
Catch 5 footballs straight on over my head.
Catch 5 footballs running forward straight on.
Catch 5 footballs running left-to-right.
Catch 5 footballs running right-to-left.
Catch 5 deep passes (30 yards+).
Every morning on SportsCentre you can see hundreds of catches. Diving catches, falling catches, contested catches, one-hand catches. I couldn’t possibly work on everything all at once, so I picked the specific types of catches that I wanted to improve and worked on those. Having a set routine directed my focus and made sure I got the most out of my time.
Also, notice that I did 5 of each catch back-to-back before moving on to the next variation. By working on one type of catch at a time, I could learn from my mistakes and make a correction right away. Immediate application is the glue that reinforces new techniques and strategies.
Visualize Yourself Executing
Visualization works. All of the world’s top performers will agree - the more times you can put yourself in a situation, the better prepared you will be to face that situation when it actually presents itself.
Often, access to certain resources or environments will be out of our control, so you have to be able to work on our craft without relying on a specific person, location, or piece of equipment that may or may not be available.
For me, the most effective way to visualize is in short bursts of 5 to 10 minutes at a time. Let me explain.
As mentioned before, catching is a skill I’ve always had to focus on. First thing in the morning before I get out of bed I can close my eyes and imagine what a football looks like flying through the air. Like watching a highlight reel of my best plays, I can see myself jumping over opponents and plucking the ball out of the air with two hands. All of this happening in slow motion so that every detail of the moment is clear. I might replay that exact moment over again 10 times just to make sure that my subconscious mind knows how to react next time I get a chance to catch a contested pass.
Visualization works for the same reason that real-life practice works. When you see yourself performing an action repeatedly, you train your reflexes how to react when the same scenario plays out in real life. The more familiar you are with a certain situation the more ready you will be to act unconsciously. Playmakers don’t think, they trust their training. So, find time to visualize often.
The best sports psychology book that I’ve ever read is all about visualization. It’s called Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence by Gary Mack.
Learn From The Experience of Others
Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from the mistakes that other people make? Save yourself the embarrassment.
As an athlete, I’ve learned that there are only so many practice reps to go around. Time is limited so we’ve all got to share.
Young athletes often believe that they can only get better when they are on the field. If that were true, they wouldn’t actually be getting better for the full 2 hours that they’re at practice! So what do you do when you’re confined to the sideline? Watch and learn.
If you pay close attention to the work that others are doing when you cannot be involved you will notice mistakes that otherwise might go unnoticed. As a football player, that might be a breakdown in technique that leads to a missed tackle or false step that gives the other team a big play. A careful observer can see the events leading up to a mistake and the results of taking incorrect action at the moment of truth. The key, however, isn’t simply seeing other people make mistakes. The key is learning from those mistakes and avoiding them yourself. Knowledge without application is not true learning.
Obviously, you can learn from what other people are doing correctly, too. But when you think about it… that’s just the other side of the same coin.