How to Get Better at Anything Faster

Rapid adaptation and feedback

Image copyright the author — I got better at taking pictures after I got a digital camera and could get feedback as soon as I took the shot.

There is a method for improving at any skill far faster than you could imagine. It’s simple, easy to understand, and takes a lot of work. A lot of the work is letting go of ego and expectation. The key is rapid feedback.

Lessons From Martial Arts

I used to do a lot of Taekwondo. I trained four days a week and averaged two hours a day. That was in class; I also trained on my own outside of class. When I was practicing forms, I was making slow progress. The low belt ones I got quickly, but the high belt ones, I remembered the movements, but I was doing them wrong. I mostly practiced them on my own, using videos. When we started doing them in class, I got them correct in a couple of sessions. The key was feedback. I was doing the movements supervised; there was someone to tell me that my feet were at the wrong angle, that my stance was too high, that I wasn’t snapping my kicks enough.

That rapid feedback was essential to improvement.

Sparring gives instant feedback. The best feedback. If you do something wrong, you get hit. Sometimes it’s harder to figure out what you did wrong, so it’s useful to have people watching to tell you. Videotaping is also valuable. You can watch yourself and see where the issues are. That…