How To Become An Expert In Anything

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Hey Everyone!,

How To Become An Expert In Anything

The human race is out-doing itself.

We’re faster, smarter, stronger, more emotionally-intelligent and artistically-gifted than ever before.

Take a look at any profession in the world today.

From music to maths to track running, the previously-impossible is being achieved every day.

Where does this continuous, steep upswing in the standards of excellence come from?

No, there hasn’t been a surge of extraordinarily talented people being born.

The myths of mastery

How long does it take to become a master of your craft?

Is talent something you’re born with, or something you acquire through learning?

And what do highly-skilled people do differently from the rest of us mortals?

Researchers have been searching for answers to these questions for decades. And recently, they made a surprising discovery.

The crème de la crème — or ‘expert performers’, as they’re officially known — all have something in common.

(And it’s not 10,000 hours.)

Debunking 10,000 hours

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 Book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he pinpoints 10,000 as the ‘magic number’ of hours a person needs to devote to their craft to become an expert.

He cites people like Bill Gates and the Beatles, who famously invested vast amounts of time to sharpening their skill-set.

His theory is based on the research of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology who has pioneered the study and science of peak performance.

But Ericsson does not entirely agree with Gladwell’s conclusions. In fact, he calls them:

“… a popularised but simplistic view of our work … which suggests that anyone who has accumulated a sufficient number of hours of practice in a given domain will automatically become an expert and a champion.”

According to Ericsson, becoming an expert in something isn’t just a matter of clocking up thousands of hours. What distinguishes a virtuoso violinist or an Olympic athlete from the rest of us is how they spend these hours.

Enter deliberate practice.Deliberate practice is focused, consistent, goal-oriented training. It favours quality over quantity. It knows not all practice is created equal.

Natural talent is overrated

There’s a common assumption that talent is something we are, or aren’t, born with.

But Ericsson believes that genetics play less of a role than we think.

Take Mozart. Almost anyone would consider him to be a musical genius. But according to Ericsson,
“If you compare the kind of music pieces that Mozart play at various ages to today’s Suzuki-trained children, he is not exceptional. If anything, he’s relatively average.”

He claims that Mozart achieved mastery not due to inherited talent, but because he practiced long and hard from a very young age.

“The belief that one’s abilities are limited by one’s genetically prescribed characteristics….manifests itself in all sorts of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I’m not’ statements.”
So is a conviction that we lack the necessary talent the only factor holding us back from being the next Steve Jobs?
Not quite.
There is significant evidence to show that working memory is heritable, and that cognitive ability as a child plays a role in adult achievement.
But no matter a person’s genetics, expertise can’t be built without working hard — and smart — over many years.

Why regular practice isn’t enough

Typically, repeated practice takes us up to a medium level of success. After an initial spike, progress stalls, plateaus — then grinds to a halt.

Because when you reach an average level of competence, your ability stops being a work-in-progress and starts being a reflex.

That’s why repeating a skill regularly over many years alone — cooking, driving, exercising — doesn’t lead to expertise.

You’re maintaining a skill, not building on it.

And for most areas in our lives, a baseline level of skill is enough. But if we want to truly excel, we have to push past this complacency and out of our comfort zone.

People who continually improve never slump into auto-pilot.

Instead, they keep taking apart the pieces of their skill and putting them back together to create something better.

Rather than treading water, they take their practice to the edge of their ability, and then step (or leap) beyond it.

The five-hour rule

Author and entrepreneur Michael Simmons discovered a common denominator that ties in with Ericsson’s research.

Simmons refers to this as the ‘five-hour rule’: one hour, each weekday, devoted to highly-concentrated learning.

And it’s these consistent, intense bursts of effort that sets them — and other highly-accomplished people throughout history — apart.

Benjamin Franklin kept a strict daily schedule and set aside time for focused learning, reflection and reading. He tracked his progress and set small goals.

Theodore Roosevelt devoted a couple of hours each day to intense study, a habit he started at university and continued into his US presidency.

Elon Musk is known for his deep commitment to learning and self-improvement, and often reads two books a day.

Sounds a bit more manageable than the 10,000 hour rule, doesn’t it?But it’s not always easy.

Deliberate practice makes perfect

Performing skills you already know is satisfying — but this won’t enhance your skill level.
So, deliberate practice isn’t just about continued repetition.
It’s structured. It’s thoughtful. It’s strategic.
You aren’t just mindlessly practicing. You’re intensely engaged. You’re teetering on the edge of what you are and aren’t capable of doing.
It shouldn’t feel comfortable.
Like a rubber band, you’re constantly stretching yourself to your outer limits. There needs to be constant pressure and impetus for change.
And if you aren’t clearly moving forward with one technique, you go back to the drawing board.
In other words, if you achieved something yesterday, you must do more than achieve it again today.
There’s no standstill.
That’s how growth happens.

Deliberate practice in 4 steps

Developing proficiency in any skill is not always fun, or even enjoyable.
I’ve learnt this firsthand over the 12 years (and counting) it took me to build my company, JotForm.
I’ve been with my product, fed up with myself and fed up with grappling with yet another issue.

What’s made me hang in is visualizing where the time I spend developing a new or greater understanding will take me.

And by listening to my resistance instead of fighting it, I was able to grow JotForm to almost 4 million users without any outside funding.

Still, to push through these feelings, day in, day out, you’re going to need to build smart systems to support you.

Here’s how to get the ball rolling.

1. Set small goals

You need to keep your eyes firmly on the prize to keep up momentum.

That’s why wishy washy goals like ‘getting better’ won’t be compelling enough to propel you past your current abilities — on their own, at least.

And as I’ve written before, lofty goals will intimidate — and throw you off track.

The alternative? Bite-sized, clearly-defined, achievable steps in the right direction.

Small goals are foundation of deliberate practice. They should take into account your current knowledge and push your limits, little by little, towards meaningful change.

This means distilling your general, long-term goal — improvement — into a series of concrete building blocks.

Long-term goal: become an expert runner

Medium goal: run the 2019 marathon

Small steps to get there: reduce your running time by 5 minutes every week.

Identify main areas for change. Write them down. Make a checklist. Rooting goals in specificity will encourage action. Once you have a clear system in place, everything else will slot into place.

2. Be consistent

Prolonged, sustained effort is often uncomfortable or frustrating. And that’s the whole point.

Deliberate practice isn’t necessarily enjoyable: you’ll need to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term success.

This dilemma applies to most things in everyday life. Take me as an example.

When people ask me how I was able to grow JotForm to a company of 110 employees without any investment, many of them want me to talk about passion or tell inspiring stories.

The truth is, I’ve never been super passionate about building forms. I didn’t follow my dreams.

I just showed up and put in the boring work every single day over the last 12 years while I watched countless competitors enter & leave our market.

It wasn’t always fun, especially when you try to build your startup in one of the most competitive industries around: online forms. Even Google Forms stepped into the ring and remains one of our toughest competitors.

But it’s pushing through this frustration that leads to significant improvement.It’s getting on with it especially when you’re too tired and can’t be bothered.

Deliberate practice is only effective because of its regularity.

So commit to your hour per day, and protect it at all costs. Soon, action will become habit and there will be no decision left to make. That’s where the magic happens.

3. Track and measure

To progress in any area, you need to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses to identify problems and solutions.

How many stories are you Publishing per week?

How many miles are you running?

Be methodical, and keep track of your progress everyday.

It’s also crucial to seek out regular feedback: from existing experts and peers as well as through self-assessment. An honest perspective is essential for gaining a realistic view of your progress.

Write it down. Record it. Measure it. Repeat.

4. Recharge

Deliberate practice requires your full, undivided, 1000% attention. 

That’s why it can only be sustained for short periods.

Experts have capped optimal practice time at one hour per day, three-to-five days a week, with reduced benefits after two hours.

So keep it short and sweet, however tempting it might be to push on when you feel like you’re nailing it. Set an alarm, and be strict on yourself to duck out when the hour is up.

Why? You need to recharge.

Extreme focus is a tough mental workout, and you’ll only feel its benefits if you give yourself time to recover. Counteract the intensity of deliberate practice by doing nothing at all.

Your body, and your brain, will thank you.

Hope You Enjoyed Reading This.

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“What Do You Think?Do you agree or Disagree or Have any other ideas?Please Share your thoughts in the comments below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me!”

Bye for Know

Sameer

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Know And Understand Why Your ideas will never fly if you can’t move people to action

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Hey Everyone!,

How These Phrases 

Will Get 

People to Commit Move to action

And Your Ideas Will  Fly 

Your ideas will never fly if you can’t move people to action

Imagine you are the CEO of a multinational company, and you are propositioned by a young founder to leave your position to join forces with their four-year-old company that started out of a garage.

If you are anything like me, the decision would be a no-brainer: Why roll the dice on a “maybe” when your reality was a sure thing?

This too was the initial thinking of John Sculley, former CEO of Pepsi, when faced with the exact circumstances stated above.

However, Sculley’s thinking immediately changed when the young founder gunned a knockout pitch that simultaneously hit both his heart and head:

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

When we think about how to build success, most people think about grit, determination, and patience. And don’t get me wrong, these characteristics are indeed important.

But if you want to be successful in 2019, we must also learn how to be more persuasive. This is for the simple fact that no matter how great your ideas, if you cannot move other people to action, they will never fly.

To get you started on your journey to be more persuasive, below are a collection of persuasive phrases that have helped me time and time again during my twenty-year career in sales, communication, and career coaching.

However, before we jump into the list, I want to make one thing clear: If you want to be more persuasive, you cannot see “No” as the enemy. The most persuasive people do not lose a wink of sleep when it comes to being rejected. But what does keep them up at night are the “I don’t knows,” aka — the dreaded undecided.

That being said, the purpose of the list below, is not to help you move everyone to action. The purpose of the list below is to help you move the right people to action. The people who already have a spear in the closet and are eager to finally have a chance to throw it.

Let’s dig in.

1. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you about this proposal?”

This may sound basic, but just hear me out. Most likely, when asking someone how they feel about a proposal, you will get a safe answer. Most people’s instinct is to then follow up that answer with the standard: “What can we do to make it a 10?”

But instead of moving north, flip the script and ask them why they didn’t say a lower number.

According to Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestselling author on motivation and human behaviour, this fun little switch accomplishes two things.

First, by forcing the conversation to start positive, the person you are speaking with will begin to justify for themselves why they should indeed work with you: “Well, I do like the time-saving aspect of your product.” 

“Well, it will save us money.” “Well, the company you represent does have a great reputation.” 

All of which are much more effective than you listing out the positive characteristics of your proposal.

Secondly, by starting with the positive aspects, it will make it much easier for the person you are speaking with to lower their guard when it comes time to talk about what is holding them back from making a decision.

Like I alluded to in the intro, the biggest impediment to progress is indecision. This nice little turn of phrase works like magic to cut through this confusion.

2. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how close are you to making a decision, but you can’t say 7?”

Over the years, Tim Ferriss has graced us with a million and one nuggets of wisdom. But when it comes to persuading others, the question above may be the most valuable.

In the world of persuasion, seven signifies “Let me think about it,” which if you ask anyone in sales, the number seven, 99% of the time, is just a polite way of saying, “No.”

However, the question above forces people to give you an answer. By reading their body language, and listening to their tone of voice, you can easily tell if a six really means — “Not a chance.” Or if an eight really means — “You got me, but I need just one more push.”

So force people to give you an eight. Then ask them what needs to happen for it to be a ten.

Or force people to give you a six. Then steal a line from Daniel Pink and ask them why it wasn’t a lower number.

Both of these questions will help you to better understand what the joy and pain points are of the people you are speaking with, while giving you a gauge of how close or far away they really are from moving forward.

3. “Here is what most people do next.”

If you want to move people to action, no matter how much you may want to shake someone and say, “This is what you need to do,” you can’t.

However, the words, “Here is what most people do next” serve the same purpose. But are cushioned in much softer language.

By using these words you gently guide people into having to make a decision as to whether they will take the next step or not. Again, their body language and tone will tell you everything you need to know. Are they pausing? Are they keeping eye contact? The signs are everywhere as long as you pay attention and ask people where they truly stand.

On top of that, the words, “Here is what most people do next,” also serves two more benefits.

First, they provide safety in numbers. This is because it shows that other people have made the same decision in the past — and it worked out just fine for them.

Lastly, these words get people thinking about what they would miss if they passed on the opportunity, which according to Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion, motivates people much more than simply listing what they will gain.

4. “If I can do A, B, and C for you, will you move forward?”

This is a simple way to measure interest and better identify exactly what the person you are speaking with both wants and needs. I used this phrase every day for five years in my first sales job, and it worked like a charm.

After getting clear on exactly what the person in front of you is looking to accomplish, simply end your conversation with the words — “From the time we have spent together, I can tell that A, B, and C matter a great deal to you. If tomorrow when we talk we can accomplish these three things, will you move forward?”

This question is very hard to walk away from. As a result, out of courtesy, most people are going to say yes. Since most people don’t want to break their word, you can use this courtesy to your advantage and use it as a way to hold them accountable if they begin to get cold feet.

5. “How open are you to…?”

If you were to ask the people around you if they considered themselves open-minded or close-minded, what do you think they would say?

Open-minded, right?

So when gauging the interest of someone, use this to your advantage. Ask the people that you want to persuade how open they are to trying new things or how open they are to getting started today.

If they say they are, shut up and break out the paperwork.

If they say they aren’t, ask them the following question that everyone wants to know the answer to, but few actually ask…

6. “What is stopping you from moving forward?”

Hands down the biggest impediment to getting things done is not knowing exactly why someone is not moving forward.

So save yourself the headache and just ask.

The sooner you know where people honestly stand, the sooner you can identify if there is a real possibility of them moving forward with you or not.

7. “I bet you are a bit like me and…”

The easiest way to get people to say “Yes” at the end of your proposal is by getting them to say “Yes” throughout the conversation.

The beauty of the words, “I bet you are a bit like me” is they accomplish just that, while framing the benefits of your proposal in a way that makes them envision using it — which can be extremely persuasive.

“I bet you are a bit like me and you like to try new things?”

“I bet you are a bit like me and have little time to waste, so you jump at the opportunity to try out a new process to speed things up?”

“I bet you are a bit like me and love to save money while reducing the headaches in your life?

All of these phrases are very difficult to say no to, and as your conversation progresses, can also be used to warm the water of your clients if you feel that their feet are starting to get cold.

8. “Take a second and imagine…”

There is a reason I began this article with the word imagine. This is because it tells you that a story is coming, and much like the words “Once upon a time…” they immediately grab people’s attention. This is for the simple fact that all of us love a good story.

Not only that, but like I alluded to in the point above, people never do things without first imagining themselves doing it. So use this to your advantage and use the power of storytelling to help them envision their life with or without your product or service.

Imagine the smile of your wife’s face when she opens this gift.

Imagine how happy your boss will be when he/she saw that you took the initiative.

Just imagine…

9. “I’m not sure if this is for you.”

Most people do not like to be pressured into making decisions. The beauty of the words above is they immediately take the pressure off and put people at ease.

However, if the people you are speaking with are anything like me, the odds are high that as soon as they hear the words, “I’m not sure if this is for you,” they will be immediately intrigued.

“I am not sure if this product is for you, but is there anyone in your office who would be interested in learning more about our team building platform?”

“I am not sure if this course is for you, but do you know anyone who is interested in learning how to write more effective copy?”

“I am not sure if my services are for you, but do you know someone in your network who is looking to create more opportunities?”

These questions immediately get people’s attention. And if they are indeed looking to accomplish what your proposal provides, they are sure to respond with the words every person in sales (which is all of us) long to hear — “Tell me more.”

Pulling It All Together

Over the last twenty years, I have worked across three continents. The one thing common to all the successful people I have met is they’re like Steve Jobs—they know how to move people to action.

But they didn’t leave it to chance. They took courses on how to be more persuasive. They had coaches that taught them how to give persuasive presentations. They took sales jobs despite being scared to sell.

They collected persuasive phrases like the ones above that benefitted them, and more importantly, the people they were working with.

In short, they did the work. And they did the work because they understood that their future depends on their ability to persuade today.

Most people have good ideas. The problem is most people don’t know how to sell them. Imagine if you were one of the people who could? How would your life be different?

Hope You Enjoyed Reading This.

Persuasion is a skill.The question then becomes: are you someone who is going to learn it?Please Share your thoughts in the comments below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me!” 

Bye for Know

Sameer 

There’s more to that

If you’re looking for more,Please subscribe to my blog by clicking on Subscribe in a reader the icon or Subscribe via Email by submitting your email id on the side bar ;)

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