Do you resist learning outside of your element?
Are you presuming answers without really understanding the problem?
Do you love to learn many things fast, but often skip over the fundamentals?
When you’re acquiring and developing a new skill, you need to learn how to learn. Learning is a meta-skill for life and for sustaining peak performance. This continuation of a two-parts episode builds on the foundation principles covered in Episode 36.
In episode 37 of The Incrementalist, you will learn:
7 more takeaways to learn and master any skill
- Keep a beginner’s mind – be like the child learning to crawl who is not concerned about how she looks or about whether she’s succeeding or failing.
- Invest in loss – give yourself to the learning process and be willing to lose and fail so you can win and succeed.
- Make smaller circles – emphasize depth over breadth; focus on the micro to understand the macro.
- Use adversity – take advantage of setbacks to hone new skills and move out of creative ruts.
- Slow down time – connect the unconscious and the conscious mind through chunking (create neural pathways, chunks, and navigation systems between the chunks).
- Be fully present – pay attention to the learning process to increase clarity in high-stakes moments.
- Get in the zone – use the stress-recovery effect to achieve focus and flow states.
Resources cited:
- Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance
- Dyan Williams, The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps
- Dyan Williams, The Incrementalist podcast, Ep. 5, Finding and Sustaining Flow
- Dyan Williams, The Incrementalist podcast, Ep. 17, Smart Note-Taking for Productive Work
Music by:
- Sebastian Brian Mehr: Album – Olemus; Song – La Nieve (hearnow.com)
To listen to episode 37, How to Learn and Master Any Skill (part 2), click here. If you prefer to read the transcript, go here. Subscribe to The Incrementalist at Apple Podcasts or other apps.
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Dyan Williams is a solo lawyer who practices U.S. immigration law and legal ethics at Dyan Williams Law PLLC. She is also a productivity coach who helps working parents, lawyers, small business owners and other busy people turn their ideas into action, reduce overwhelm, and focus on what truly matters. She is the author of The Incrementalist: A Simple Productivity System to Create Big Results in Small Steps.
