Rapid Skill Building Comes Down To This One Thing

You can’t build new skills quickly without it.

Our world is evolving quicker than ever. Many of today’s hottest jobs didn’t exist at all just a decade or two ago. And many of the old ones are fast losing relevance in the age of machines and supercomputers.

To stay competitive in business and life and stay ahead of the game, it’s increasingly important to continue to learn new skills and update old ones.

Top performers such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the likes swear by constant learning as a vital part of their success.

However, many of us find learning new skills pretty daunting.

When was the last time you opted into a new skill? Work-related skill, or a second language, or programming, or cooking a meal you love, or learning to play a musical instrument and so on?

Because here’s the problem: Learning a new skill requires, first and foremost, moving out of our comfort zones and become a beginner again at something.

And it is this fear of becoming a newbie that has frustrated many a skill-building effort.

We fear the failure or rejection we might experience when learning a new skill. We don’t want to deal with the initial feeling of suck-ness. We don’t want to deal with the embarrassment and humiliation of other people witnessing just how badly we are doing at a new venture. This is even worse for skills that must be practiced in public such as writing, public speaking, social skills etc.

We want to do everything to avoid the public humiliation and embarrassment.

And this is why most efforts towards rapid skill-building comes down to this one question:

Can you dare to be dreadful?

Are you willing to get through the initial stuttering newbie stage of learning anything new, to get to the fun part where you are satisfyingly competent?

Badge of Newbie Honour

I’ve met a number of incredibly multi-skilled people and interrogated a few. For every single one of them, the key factor that’s helped them develop many skills quickly seems to be the same: they don’t mind doing poorly at something — initially.

They somehow don’t get ruffled in any way by the newbie resistance that often plague a lot of people and cripple many skill-building efforts.

Because the truth is, it’s hard to summon the courage to keep doing something when it’s obvious to everybody how much you currently suck at it.

But the real problem is not that you suck — everyone does at the beginning of a new venture. Every expert was once a beginner. The real problem is resisting this initial beginner, suck-y phase.

You’ll make quicker progress if you can accept this phase of your learning curve, if you accept that this scruffy phase is unavoidable to get to the scrummy part.

Embrace Your Newbieness

Trying to hide your newbieness is a waste of time. It’s too much pressure to add on top of the pressure of learning something new. Embrace your newbieness, instead and don the Newbie Badge with pride.

Those who are advanced at the skill you’re trying to build are often understanding and helpful — and often appreciative of beginners struggles. They know more than anyone else how it feels to be dreadful at the beginning of a new venture.

If, for instance, you love to be a writer, and you are just starting out to try your hand at it, the honest truth is that your writing will probably suck. But who cares? Embrace your newbieness.

Seek all the help you can get with improving. Experiment a lot. Try different writing styles and genres. Read a lot. All writers read, and all good writers read a lot. Read fiction, read nonfiction, read in the genre you love, read outside of it. Keep writing and have fun doing it.

Don’t be too embarrassed to show your work even if you think it’s dreadful. If you never give up, it’s only a matter of time before something you’ll get to the amazing part where you are satisfyingly competent in a way that everyone will love and some will even call you overnight success.

Don’t try to short-circuit the beginner phase. Revel in it, and do the work to get to the really competent fun part as quickly as you can. Constantly remind yourself that the only way to the great stuff is to go through the lousy one.

Erroneous Beliefs Stunting Your Skill-Building Efforts

Most attempts to build new skills falter not because of the difficulty of the particular skill but because of the erroneous mindset that is totally incompatible with any serious skill-building effort.

And the big one is the thinking that you need to be good at something when you start. While we recognize at face value that this thinking doesn’t make sense, many of us subscribe to this error subconsciously.

And it’s the source of the feeling of inadequacy and frustration that many experience when starting out.

Rather than turning your psychology on yourself, beating yourself for being dumb, not good enough, not smart enough right out of the gate why not credit yourself for being the kind of person that’s proactive enough, having the courage and foresight to try new things, to step out of your comfort zone?

The bottom line is: You don’t have to be good at anything you start at when you are just starting out.

Remind yourself of this fact a zillion times, until the erroneous belief in your subconscious impeding your skill-development efforts is replaced.

The other common error is the thinking that you are not “made for something” if you don’t “get it” at first.

For example, how many times have you heard students who have not taken time to study and get good at maths assume “I’m not a maths person”.

I tutored one such student a few years ago. It was a hard getting him to relinquish that I’m-not-a-maths-person mindset. But boy, when he finally did and we got down to business? He aced his GCSE mathematics with an A-star and has enjoyed doing mathematics ever since. He basically surprised himself.

The problem is we give up too soon and its because our expectation of short-term progress is warped. We expect to be good at it and find it fun right out out of the gate if it’s truly for us. How many people have given up learning something because they think if they were truly “made for it”, they shouldn’t suck so much as the beginners’ stage?

Spoiler alert: You’re meant to suck at the beginners’ stage.

And how do you know you can’t be excellent at something when you haven’t given it your 100% effort and long enough time?

To Sum up

When it comes down to it, you realize skill building is as much the mindset as it is the actual skill you are trying to build.

The problem might be that you’ve looked at a skill that will take you forward in your life and career, and you’ve convinced yourself that it’s impossible for you, or you are not “made for it”, just because you started at it for a few days and you sucked doing it.

What you failed to realize? You were meant to!

That amazing performer that you see today… if only you knew how poorly and awkward they were when they first started out.

The only thing? They dared to be dreadful.

They never stopped. They kept going. And that’s how they became wonderful.

Are you willing to?

Don’t let the newbie phase of any skill get you down. Everyone goes through it. Refuse that newbie frustration. Turn toward that newbie fear, and run straight at it.

It’s not a big deal to fail or to get rejected. That’s part of being a newbie.