The secret to getting better at anything.
At the moment of writing, my son is about 160 days old. Here I leave a learning I want to document and will share with him once the time is right. If you’re not my son — I hope this will add value to your life. If you feel like it, leave a comment and make it better!
I bet you’re curious now aren’t you?
Hopefully you already understand the principles of this lesson. Since I plan to teach this in how you approach anything really. It’s weird to remember you’re reading this in 2030-something. But I’m glad you took the bait..
Below you find a story which introduces the recipe for succes. But if you don’t find time[1] son, skip right to the practical chapter.
How it started
It was 2000. I was 11 and I had a dream. I just seen a video of Michael Jackson [2] and was amazed by his obsession for music, singing and performing. When he started he was was only a child..
I never was really inspired to do anything..
‘Yeah’, I played outside, made some video’s with my camera and watched Star Wars and Schwarzenegger over and over again. But..to be frank, I missed a passion in life. Compared to Michael, I was about 10 years behind already… I wanted to become good in something. To be truly excited every time I was doing it and to excel at it. And so it began…
One day I walked back from school with my friend Rick, while we were discussing our career ambitions — we came to this conclusion that the rockstar lifestyle was the way forward. Remember, we were 11…
I loved listening to bands such as Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Guns ‘n Roses, Toto and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So the decision was made. I only had to decide which role I wanted to play in the band. Since the drums are the coolest instrument in the band, I had a mission.
I opened the yellow pages [3] and searched for a drum-teacher in Huizen. I called a guy named Tonny and he offered a free try-out lesson. I figured it wasn’t a problem to give my dream a shot, so I made an appointment right away. To be frank, I did something naughty there. Obviously I had to tell your grandma where I was going, but I’d ‘forgot’… In any case, back to it.
I went to my first ever drumming lesson, which was about to change the way I approached learning forever…
Then mum got involved..
Tonny wasn’t a learning expert, a professor or a certified teacher. He was a professional, all-round drummer who loved to play his instrument. I guess he played about 2–3 hours a day when hè is not giving class.
When I started out, your grandmother didn’t really like my plans, but she gave me a shot. She said:’ Before you can buy a drumkit, You have to prove you really want it.
So you have to follow these rules:
1. You can’t miss any lesson.
2. Enjoy it.
3. Never skip your homework
4. Tonny is (most likely) always right — so listen..
“ If you can’t do that, we will look for something which makes less noise.”
The next 14 months I practiced on a wooden plank and mum finally saw that I was serious about this. I’d saved up some money from the paper ad[4] business I ran on the side, so I could pay for half of my first kit. This was big money. It was a Bordeaux coloured Yamaha kit [5] and cost about 1200 NLG. Saying this makes me feel very old already. Hahaha.
So what did he do different?
The way Tonny approached learning was completely new to me. One of the biggest mistakes I always made was to play stuff which was far out of my league. You hear Rosanna from Toto, and (obviously) you want to play it right away! Any musician wants to be able to play what I heard and play it from the start. Certainly because it sounds so easy.
The first principle of learning is to know your outcome, deconstruct it, and practice what you don’t master.
When you’re practicing something which is totally out of your league, it soon gets very demotivating. So you want to start simple.
Think big, start small and improve 1% at the time.
It’s the outer rim of your current ability which makes it challenging, which will help you improve and will help you get closer to your goal.
With a skill like drumming, it’s quite simple to measure. Since you know the groove, song or fill which you want to play, you can deconstruct the movements, the tempo, the sound and accents. It’s simple to scale that down and create exercises from that. You can lower the BPM, start the pattern on only the snare drum, focus on only a short part of the attempt and even copy your coach slowly and controlled when seeing him demo it.
But you can play this trick with almost anything. Want to get better in marketing? Find a brand or campaign you like. Deconstruct it. Find out what they did different. And build from there.. Want to get better in creating video? Find something you like. Deconstruct it. Find out how to frame those shots and built from there..
Want to get better at writing? Find a story you like. Deconstruct….
Well you get the point now right?
So how do you add structure to this strategy?
Every begin of the year, Tonny would start with a goal setting session. We would look at the following questions:
- What do we want to be able to play and why?
- Which exercises or rudiments do we need to get closer to your goal?
- How do we know If we’re making progress?
- How much time do you have to practice?
- How much time should you make time to practice.
We’d keep the goals to a maximum of three goals and Tonny would really challenge the feasability if he felt I was dreaming too much. He looked at the balance of actually reaching those goals and the time I had available for practicing. After all it’s always just been a hobby..
A structure like this helps you keep your discipline in reaching your goals. We’d glance over these goals once a month and would adjust them every quarter. This helps you change the difficulty if necessary…
Conclusion
What I know 15 years later is that you never stop learning. The fallacy of any creative work is that its ever finished. In fact, there is always room for improvement. Think about.. A story is never finished, a play can always use some polishing and a video was only rendered because it had a deadline.
This strategy of purposeful practice helps you focus your learning and grow in the space which will help you reach your goal.
There are some really interesting books written in my time about these subjects. I’m sure, when you read this in 2030, some scientist have new research which helps you achieve your goals even faster.
Heck, as far as I know — you could upload any skills and knowledge to your brain with an app [6].
But if you need to trust your good ol’ brain in becoming better at anything — this is a strategy which you might want to give a shot.
It has definitely worked for me.
Love,
Dad.
ANNEX:
[1] “ You always have time for things you put first.”
[2]Check this guy out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson#1958%E2%80%931975:_Early_life_and_the_Jackson_5
[3] We used this before we knew google. Here is more info on it.
[4] We used to spread advertising at peoples homes. Literally putting brochures in peoples mailbox.
[6] I really wonder if that at all becomes possible in the end. Check out how cool that would be.
