There's No Such Thing as Overnight Success

when you were a kid did you ever spend hours and hours on your guitar learning how to play it or perhaps you spent every free moment playing chess or shooting Hoops why the obsession why did we do that I'm Yana henan and today we're talking about Mastery and mastering a skill any skill as long as it's moral ethical and legal mastering a skill or skills is something that humans crave it's also near the top of maso's hierarchy of needs it's something that drives us sure we all want to be loved and accepted we want to feel included we want shelter we want food and water but once all of these are met we reach for something more so how do you master something what does it take sure we've all heard the coveted it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill but is there more to it and why 10,000 hours personal story I remember being a young whipper SN ER in my early 20s just 2 or 3 years ago that's a lie and uh I found myself in the middle of a salsa class now I didn't want to necessarily learn salsa I had no desire to but a gentleman that I worked with who ended up being uh my daughter's father insisted that I come with him reluctantly I went it was either that or spend 2 hours in one of koala lumpur's Infamous traffic jams and so I decided yeah this might be a better way to spend my time sit in the traffic jam go dance I chose dance anywh who during the first salsa class I embarrassed myself apparently Terence was more middle of the range uh when it came to his salsa skill set and I had two left feet to call myself a beginner is being generous at least twice a week I found myself in this class making a fool of myself I was embarrassed i' watch the other dancers Excel while I stayed mediocre at best and I honestly don't think any of the other students wanted to dance with me finally the salsa instructor who's still a good friend to this day she took me aside and she said Yana do you want to get good at this fast of course after all I hate looking stupid she then gave me an assignment I was to go home and practice just the basics every night for 25 to 30 minutes that's it you know 1 2 3 5 6 7 1 2 3 5 67 no fancy moves no styling no spins just the basics I did as I was told and to my surprise I could actually keep up with most of the class I was elated at least I didn't look as stupid as I did before anywh who in the following weeks I kept up with my uh nightly routine my 25 to 30 minutes just doing the basics and after a while she told me to go home and just incorporate some simple spins into it which I did by the time I went back the following week I still wasn't the best dancer in the class not by a long shot but I was able to keep up and follow along with with everyone else in the room so what's the lesson here the takeaway is this in order to achieve Mastery in a skill you must master the basics yeah we all want to be that couple out on the Dance Floor whipping spinning and sliding delighting you know a visual spectacle for all to behold but in order to get there the basics must be unconsciously competent here's a graphic to kind of show you what I mean this graphic is credited to Martin Broadwell in the 60s when I started the salsa class I was consciously incompetent I knew what salsa dancing was and I knew that I didn't know how to do it then My Salsa teacher took me a sign and told me to practice knowing the basics or conscious competence so let's move over in the quadrant I had to consciously practice in order to get better do you remember ever learning how to drive a car whenever first starting you're conscious about everything you're conscious about putting in your seat belt you're you know you're adjusting the mirrors you're putting that key and the ignition you're you're you know hyp sensitive to it all right nowadays you probably don't even think about it you just kind of hop in and go this is an example of unconscious competence here's the graphic again in summary unconscious competence usually happens before we hit 10,000 hours however to truly Master a skill 10,000 hours of practice is the rule of a thumb according to Malcolm Gladwell and his famous book outliers great book by the way anywh who I'm Jana Henman uh thank you so much for tuning in today remember to like follow subscribe to our Channel and sign up for our free newsletter and I'll catch you sometime next week [Music]