Summary

The article suggests that excellence in one area of life can be transferred to improve other areas by applying the same level of care and commitment.

Abstract

The author of the article shares a piece of advice on how to achieve mastery in different areas of life by leveraging one's existing excellence. The core idea is that excellence is not confined to a single skill or domain but is a transferable skill set. For instance, someone who is exceptionally good at hair care can apply the same dedication and methods to excel in copywriting. The article uses a personal example of the author's struggle with diet versus their excellence in cat care to illustrate how one can approach a desired area of improvement by mimicking the attitudes and behaviors from an area where they already excel. The conclusion emphasizes that the key to mastery lies in the degree of care and commitment one applies, and by recognizing and replicating the feeling of excellence, it is possible to achieve it in new domains.

Opinions

The author believes that frustration and self-doubt ("I suck") are counterproductive to achieving excellence.
They suggest that instead of focusing on the negatives, one should identify areas of personal strength and use the same approach to improve weaker areas.
The article posits that the emotional investment and care put into a passion, such as caring for pets, can be redirected towards personal goals, like maintaining a healthy diet.
It is implied that the process of skill transfer is intuitive and within reach for anyone who has already achieved excellence in some aspect of their life.
The author uses humor and personal anecdotes to convey the message that self-improvement does not have to be a grueling process if one taps into their pre-existing skills and mindsets.

The One Skill You Can Use To Master Any Area of Your Life

Or: How Excellence Is Transferable

So I heard the niftiest piece of advice the other day.

Check this out:

Chances are, you have an area of your life that you are just flipping awesome in. Straight-up world-class. It can be an area of work, it can be that you’re super good at making friends, it can be the fact that you take the best damn care of your hair that the world has ever seen and you walk around all day looking like a L’Oreal commercial.

There is also a decent chance (don’t be mad at me here, this is practically the human condition) that there’s an area of your life that you’d like to be super awesome in, but are currently…kinda…not.

*raises own hand, because I just described me*

And we put like, all this time and money and angst and energy into trying to improve the wants-to-be-awesome skills, but somehow it just doesn’t click. Which results in massive frustration and rage headaches and “god why do I suck”-fests, which are exceptionally counterproductive.

Seriously. No one ever did anything awesome because they went “I suck.”

So here we are, frustrated and knowing that we want to be better at something but not knowing how, or knowing how and not knowing how to make yourself actually do it, or etc. etc. and so forth.

Tres lame.

Here’s where the nifty advice comes in.

Transference Is A Glorious Wonderful Thing, So Do It Do It Do It

The Most Excellent and Hella Nifty advice is this:

Excellence is a transferable skill.

So, you have something you’re super good at (hair care). You have something you want to be super good at (copywriting). To become excellent at copywriting, you will approach copywriting the same way you approach hair care.

Example from my life:

As I have mentioned in a number of articles, I struggle with my diet. It’s very annoying and very confusing and also when I figure out what I am supposed to do I have difficulty making myself do it, because cookies exist.

Rude.

However! I have something that I am excellent at — I am a very, very good Cat Mommy.

I take excellent care of my kitty cats. They are happy and loved and brushed and fed and sometimes they tap-tap me on the cheek with their little paws at 4am because they want wet food, so I get up and get it for them because the precious angel babies wanted wet foods and dammit they will get the wet foods.

So, I have identified my Zone of Excellence (cat parenthood). I have identified my Zone of Wanting To Be Betterness (eating a super healthy diet). In the pursuit of transferring excellence from one area to another, I now approach feeding myself the same way I approach feeding my cats.

Do I want to eat cookie dough? Yes. It is good for me? No. Would I feed my kitty cats something that is not good for them? Hell no how dare you make that suggestion sir I am OFFENDED and I say good day to you I said GOOD DAY!

Conclusion: It’s All In Your Approach

You will notice that being a good cat mommy and eating a healthy diet, on the surface, have almost nothing in common. That is because the subjects you have mastered and want to master don’t need to have anything to do with each other. It’s all in your approach.

Mastery, from what I can tell, depends on the degree of care and commitment you put into things. I love my cats more than just about anything, so I put a hell of a lot of effort and care into learning how to take care of them and then executing on it. I’ve achieved excellence in this area almost by accident, just because I care so much. But now that I know what excellence feels like, I can copy-paste that feeling into another area (my food).

You know how to be excellent already. There is an area in your life that you’ve definitely mastered, doesn’t matter what it is. And all you have to do to master another one is hit Ctrl + C in your brain, move the mouse to the new area, and paste.

Onward!