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May 2007 Edition | contents
What happens when you step off the edge of a twenty story building's rooftop with nothing to keep you in the air? The answer's easy. Gravity drops you like a rock. It's an immutable law. This law will never be broken. Here's another one. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Last one. Energy can’t be created or destroyed; it may be transformed from one form to another, but the total amount of energy can never change. You may be wondering what this has to do with becoming an expert at something. Those laws are straight from the hard science of physics. They can't be broken. Learning, motivation, initiative, and emotional intelligence are from the soft science of psychology. But just like physics, psychology has immutable laws too. So the very first thing you need to do if you want to become an expert at anything is to learn what the laws are regarding mastery, and never futilely try to break them but rather learn how to work within their very specific frameworks. You may not like to hear this next statement, but the following is a law that applies to any skill: The amount of time you spend working on a skill is directly related to how good you become at that skill. There are no shortcuts. This is soft science law. It's immutable. As sure as you'll fall to your death if you step off a skyscraper rooftop, you will not become an expert at anything if you don't put the time in. Period. In the groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence the author Daniel Goleman cites a study done where Olympic stars and accomplished musicians were analyzed to determine why we keep seeing younger and younger people become so highly accomplished in these fields. The answer, they start practicing at younger and younger ages. It was that simple. The determining factor for their success was the number of hours they spent practicing. A book that anyone who finds this article even mildly interesting should consider reading is called Mastery – The Keys To Success by George Leonard. He explains how the brain learns, why we reach plateaus in developing new skills, and how to become a true master at anything. His explanation of how our minds develop mastery over a skill is genius. Simply put, when we start off doing a new thing, we have to consciously think about it and its related parts, all in a deliberate and slow way. Through repetition and practice, this conscious and inefficient thought process gets handed off to our subconscious which operates much more efficiently, quickly and flawlessly. When this happens, we start to master the skill that's been handed off. Practice it enough, and the skill becomes second nature and eventually an expert. This holds true for physical things such as playing an instrument or martial arts, as well as for intellectual things such as writing or public speaking. Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book Blink explains this same phenomenon when he says that we increase our chances of rapidly making correct decisions when we've become habituated to the situation in which we're in that requires a snap decision. In Mastery, George Leonard explains that our Western society erroneously values the quick fix, the million dollar secret, the painless and easy way through, or the get rich quick scheme. Furthermore, we're all focused on the goal, not the process. From TV to the corporate world, school or sports, we're all so caught up in the results, that we miss point. We miss the juicy part of life, which is the progression and the development. Life is truly about the means, not the end, especially since the very end involves being six feet under. And to value the process over the result is where mastery can be found. The secret to becoming an expert is to learn to enjoy the learning and practice. To find intrinsic worth and joy in the process, to be okay with being a fool while you learn, to get knocked down ten times but get back up eleven times as a famous karate saying goes, is to be on the path to mastery. There are no shortcuts. And to my knowledge there are no other paradigms that work so effectively in becoming an expert. If you're doing something because you're driven by your insecurities, fear, or ego, then you're definitely on the wrong track. If you're driven by fear or ego you'll never be happy. You'll never find it easy to stick with something, and you'll never become an expert. Instead, if you're driven by the love of the process, the shear enjoyment of the doing, you won't be able to help but become an expert, because you'll end up putting in the time necessary to become great. That's where the magic happens. That's how you will find yourself waking up one day and saying, "Wow, I really am an expert at this now, how did that happen?" Remember, time spent doing something is directly related to your mastery over it, and to consistently put in the time, over the long haul, you'll need to learn how to love the process.
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