How to get good at something?

I am not going to beat around the bush. It's very obvious. Practise. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Jokes aside, the real question is why do we choose not to get good at something even when we know exactly how to get good at something? I have a few reasons why I think that might be the case

• Fear that you would never be good enough even if you put in the hours.
• Imposter syndrome.
• It's not something you enjoy but you “have” to do it otherwise “something” would happen.
• It's fun on day one but you gradually lose the fun in it until it's just mundane and boring.

Fear that you would never be good enough even if you put in the hours.

I realized that this fear evolves from two assumptions. The first is that the people good enough are talented and talent is a god-given gift. Not everyone is talented and if you were to compete at something with a “talented” person, you would be blown out of the water. Secondly, you have to be “good enough” or else the effort is useless.

The first one is harder to overcome. The more effort you put into something, the better you get at it. “Talented” people simply had exposure to the discipline you wish to learn much earlier than you or were subjected to certain events in their life that gives them an advantage. The effort they put in cannot be quantifiable. To get better than them, you have to train more than them.

Imposter syndrome

The only way to beat imposter syndrome is to play the game long enough. When you’ve just started out, you barely know anything about the industry that you’ve put yourself into. The more you play the game, the more you understand it and realize that the other players are just the same as you. The 10,000 hour rule is as real as it gets. Try putting 10,000 hours and ask yourself if you still feel like an imposter. If the answer is still yes, then you need to ask yourself if you can see yourself competing/collaborating with other players who have trained as much as you have. Note that comparing yourself with someone who trained more than you and getting sad over that fact is a recipe for disaster and utterly irrational.

It's not something you enjoy but you “have” to do it otherwise “something” would happen.

This is fueled by extrinsic motivators and you will only get as good as you need to be. A good example is the school system. Most people hate school system academia and go along with it purely because they feel their survival is linked to it. More often than not, these kids ( like myself ) do just enough to be passed as average. You can be good at something because of extrinsic motivations but you will never be great at it. This article isn't necessary for you. To be great at something, you will need inner desire at some level.

It's fun on day one but you gradually lose the fun in it until it's just mundane and boring.

I have come to the conclusion that passion is not what it was advertised to be*. You will not be intrinsically motivated every day. You wake up and choose to do that one thing you want to get good at whether you feel like it or not because you know that it is what you really want. You make the decisions intellectually not with the heart. Teaching yourself music? Do it even if you don't feel like it.

Teaching yourself software? Do it even if you don't feel like it.

As long as you intellectually agree that whatever you are doing, will result in a happier journey. JUST DO IT.

Here’s an amazing video on motivation: Maintaining Motivation as a Software Engineer

Note that if doing the activity is not giving you any joy whatsoever, you might want to consider dropping it.

Conclusion

I have tried to address each issue on its own and hopefully give more clarity to them. Just to be clear, I do not claim to be an expert on this matter. I merely faced the above issues myself and these are the conclusions I have reached.

• Momentum

  Initially, tasks must be very easy. Let's assume you want to start working out. Try to get one push-up done every day. If that is hard try to get one inclined push-up. The goal is not to test your limits but to ensure consistency. Chances are that you can do more than one push-up and you can go ahead and do more but just one is enough to tell yourself that you have started working out. All the pros are consistent. Start very slow and gain momentum.

• Join a community

  The easiest way to make sure that you are held accountable is by joining a community. You can see how people grow with time. Just make sure you always show up. Join the people that jog every morning, join the local gym, join a software community on discord. When I joined my local gym, I didn't really socialize with everyone. I just kept my head low and completed the workouts assigned to me. I now realize that that might've been a stupid decision.

• You are competing against yourself

  You don't need to compare yourself with others. Your growth is your own journey. It is natural to compare yourself with others who you know have been on a similar path as you but you need to snap out of this habit as it only leads you to start playing the rat race without you realizing it.

• It has to be your passion*

*It is unrealistic to believe that you will be intrinsically motivated to do something everyday consistently for a long time. Sometimes you need to pull your shit together and work on it even when you're not feeling it.