Growth and progress come at the cost of giving up comfort and safety

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Editor’s note: The key to excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, rather than living in a static, safe and mediocre shell. Growth and progress come at the cost of giving up comfort and safety. Mastering a skill skillfully is never easy. In addition, you also need to consciously learn and practice. It is difficult to understand some concepts just by reading. You must try to apply them to real life. This article is translated from medium, the author of the article, Erik Hamre, and the original title The Art of Learning — How to Become World-Class in Any Skill

Picture source: Free-Photos from Pixabay

Josh Waitzkin is simply a legend in the skill learning world. When he was young, he was a chess wizard, and later won the World Tai Chi Championships, then became a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt player, and is now mastering the skills of stand-up paddle board surfing and various forms of surfing.

When he became the world champion of Tai Chi, he defeated opponents who practiced thousands of hours more than him. How did he do that?

Josh claims that his most mature skill is his understanding of the art of learning. Thanks to his deep understanding of learning, he can quickly learn new skills and reach an excellent level in one fell swoop.

Currently, he is teaching some of the world’s top students how to learn faster. The main goal of his life is to investigate and understand how to master world-class skills.

Here are some secrets he learned in high-level chess and Tai Chi competitions.

Make mistakes specifically, fail specifically

When you start to learn a new skill, it is impossible for you to perform well, so making mistakes is acceptable. You can make mistakes generously. Josh recommends challenging exercises and a lot of high-quality repetitive training in a short time.And your main goal should be to continuously improve this skill.

In martial arts, he deliberately fights opponents who are much stronger than himself. He spent several months just to be defeated by more experienced opponents, and then finally got used to their methods and began to defeat them.

If you have practiced a certain skill for a while, but have never increased the difficulty to challenge yourself, then you are unlikely to make much progress. Only when you challenge your limits can you grow and improve your ability level.

Want depth but not breadth

In the fierce competition, the winner will hone his skills more than others. This is not a mysterious skill, but a mastery of a certain basic skill.

——Josh Waitzkin

Josh believes that the key to mastering a skill is to understand the essence of the basic principles, rather than focusing on various fancy techniques.

When you learn and understand a technique and output and apply it fluently, it becomes an instinct. This frees up your mind, allows you to focus on making decisions, or get clues from your opponent’s actions. This happens only when you have mastered the basic knowledge or basic skills very proficiently.

Don’t ignore those details

If you want to achieve a high level of professionalism, it is important to find all the humble details that hinder your progress. Every little detail will prevent you from reaching your full potential-from the way you think to the way you plan to practice.

It’s easy to feel that someone is just more talented than you, and it doesn’t even make sense to compete with them. But these people may have been trying to improve their skills without you even noticing. As for other abilities, such as the ability to concentrate and remain calm under pressure, it is particularly difficult to assess. You don’t know how hard they have worked, or how much they have improved. But these factors can have a significant impact on your performance. If you keep honing your skills in other areas outside of work, you can reach a higher level.

In almost all disciplines, most top talents have a considerable understanding of their field. Therefore, the result is often determined by their mental state. Who can stay calm under pressure, recover from mistakes, and find energy to fight when the body is exhausted is the real winner. To become a world-class person, you must focus on your mental state and your practical knowledge. These may be trivial matters relative to professional knowledge, but they are really important. What’s more, over time, they will gradually accumulate and become a big problem.