Learning Curves

The process of becoming adept is hard (duh).

You really only feel it at the beginning (when you’re slapped in the face with how painfully bad you are at whatever it is you’re learning)

And then again a long while later (when you blink one moment and think “hmph, I’m actually pretty good at this”)

The in between is kind of just the ‘gradual grind’ - it feels all the same like you are walking across a long plateau without realizing much has changed

The most difficult thing about becoming adept is starting. Most people don’t start - they won’t let themselves for fear of failure.

It’s a pity really, because the falling is the beautiful part.

A favorite quote of mine is by Henry Ford: "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

The second most difficult thing is getting back up after hitting the ‘valley of despair’ from your first inevitable failure.

This is where most give up. I have a few friends (we all do) that get excited about doing something (starting podcasts, taking pictures, whatever) for a week before they give up.

Shiny object syndrome.

To be successful you have to convince yourself to keep breaking through the glass. Again, and again. Consistency is key.

Another quote that that’s really helped me whenever trying something new is telling myself “The first 20 times you try anything will be bad, so you might as well get em out of the way”

That’s how it felt to learn to write blogs, to code, to snowboard, to cold call.

You realize that learning new things all feel the same. And that learning to learn is the most valuable skill of all.

A great hack is to use one pagers (I wrote about that here), put all the core information on a single page.

The secret to learning is that there is no secret. You must simply try it - accept failure as inevitable, learn to do it gracefully.

All of the people you admire, your role models, got there by doing the same.

Embrace it :-)