Notes

Thanks to a good friend of mine who lent me this book that changed my attitude toward practicing and developing my talents. 52 Tips for Improving Skills. By Daniel Coyle.

· Getting Started: Stare, Steal, and Be Willing to Be Stupid

1) Stare at who you want to become.
Studies indicate that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation. Use pictures and hang them in your room or bookmark YouTube videos and watch them every night before bed.

2) Spend 15 minutes a day engraving the skill on your brain.
Repetitively watch the skill being performed with great intensity until you build an HD mental blueprint. Imagine the feeling of the skill.

3) Steal without apology.
Steal info from top performers for improvement. When you steal, focus on specifics and capture concrete facts.

4) Buy a notebook.
Write down your daily performance and reflect on it to create clarity.

5) Be willing to be stupid.
Reaching, failing, and reaching again is the way your brain grows and forms new connections. Mistakes are the guideposts you use to get better.

6) Choose spartan over luxurious.
Luxury is a motivational narcotic, signaling our unconscious minds to give less effort. Simple, humble spaces help focus attention on the deep-practice task at hand.

7) Before you start, figure out if it's a hard skill or a soft skill.
Hard skills are actions that are performed as correctly and consistently as possible, every time. Your goal is to build a skill that is reliable, exact, and performed the same way every time, automatically, without fail. Usually a teacher/coach is involved in the early stages. Soft skills are those that have many paths to a good result. These skills are about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices.