In the previous modules, we focused on learning the basic things about any skill and how to put it into practice with those previous lessons, you can pick any skill and learn it with a quick and effective method. Starting by deconstructing a skill then sequence pink, and finally prioritizing those sub skills. With those three steps in mind, you can learn any skill you want. And if you practice every day, you will start seeing results in the first week or even in the first three days. Now let's say you just started practicing this skill and now you became kind of obsessed with it and you want to go a step further. You feel like really mastering your skill and become a top performer on it.

You might be even thinking of showing your skill in live event. So what can you do to master a skill Quality Report in his book, deep work sets, dual core abilities thriving in the new economy, the ability to quickly master hard things and the ability to produce at an elite level in terms of both quality and speed. So the tips I'm going to share here can be used in more advanced levels of any skill. But also you can pick some of those dips and use it even if you're just starting. The first one is the beginner's mind. No matter how much you already know about anything about any skill, you should always have a beginner's mind.

This means do not think you are the best. And you already know everything that that needs to know. The world is constantly changing. And even if it was always this thing, you can look to the same thing with a different pair of eyes. People who progress quicker are the ones who are eager to learn anything, even if they already know a lot of things in they are willing to look at old things and basic things with different things. a different perspective.

So don't let your expertise cover your eyes to the novelty into the new possibilities. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. But in the experts, there are a few. The second idea about mastering a skill is about DNA in hard work, there are still a lot of misconceptions about what it takes to be good at anything. Some people believe that DNA is the most important factor. I don't believe that, in my opinion, hard work plays a much more important role on that.

It is true that our genetics also have a huge impact on us, but that's something we can't control. The only variable that depends on us is our ability to work harder towards our goals. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes around 10,000 hours to master anything. It doesn't matter if it takes more than 10,000 or less than 10,000. The idea is that it takes a lot of work to do it and DNA is not enough as far as Bro all police said persistence is often more important than intelligence. Approaching material with a goal of learning it on your own gives you a unique path to mastery.

The third step is the intense focus. I've said before that it's really important to focus on one skill at a time if you really want to learn it quicker. But this principle is even more important. If you want to dedicate your time energy and focus at mastering a skill. It's much more valuable to try to master one thing at a time, then two or three or five things it might be even impossible to try to master five skills at a time and remember that you can't multitask. When you are trying to master a skill.

You have to dedicate two blocks of your time to practice that skill. And during that time, you only do that thing in times of difficulty and challenge. The most important resource you can have is persistent in resilience, but those can also be broken. Every day by sitting in your couch, sitting in the sofa, whatever, practicing in mastering what you really want to master. As Barbara Oakley said, multitasking means that you are not able to make full rich connections in your thinking, because the part of your brain that helps make connections is constantly being pulled away before neural connections can be firmed up. The fourth idea has to do with soft in hard zone, the ideal state of mind to practice and learn a new skill is relaxed and focused, or as we call it, the soft mode or the soft so, but sometimes there are things that you can't control and your mind falls out of place.

The hard zone. The way to deal with things that you can't control is to accept them and deal with them. Easier said than done. This requires a lot of practice. I recommend you to journal everything that it's not going well in your process of mastering a skill the act of writing things down will make it easier to deal with them. If you're going to show your skills in a concert for an audience, it's even more difficult to keep your mind in the soft sell.

Josh waitzkin a chess master once lost a game because he couldn't stop thinking about a song. To avoid situations like this. He started practicing chess on undesirable conditions in order to prepare himself for future events. So he would practice chess with music till he could actually aligned thoughts with the music rhythm. I think this is a really interesting way to deal with obstacles that might emerge when you are trying to show off your skills. So you basically use some of the distractions that might emerge in your practicing sessions.

So we will be much more used to deal with them. So after you become very familiar with a skill, you can try this approach and try to play some obstacles in your practicing sessions. By doing this, you will be able to switch from the heartstone To the soft zone, even when the conditions are not the one that you wanted or expected. The fifth idea on trying to master a skill is turning disadvantages into advantages. Josh waitzkin was also a Tai Chi Master, not only a chess master, but also with it Master, but then he broke his right arm. As you could imagine this event could be a tragedy for most athletes.

Well, Josh fought this adversity with courage, resilience, and it actually made him better. So his doctor said he needed to recover for six weeks did he stayed in sofa for six weeks. Now in the next day, if that event, he showed up for training for six weeks, he tried to fight these happenings with only his left hand. This became a huge advantage for him because he mastered some of the techniques with only one hand in also every time he did some practices with this left arm he would imagine himself doing The same exercises with his broken arm these rights are he didn't exactly know if this would change anything, but he did it anyway. After the six weeks his doctor was impressed by his ability to recover so quickly and Josh was able to compete again easily. So when you find yourself in a challenging situation regarding your skill, your development of your skill, thinking the sofa is not the right idea.

So if you are a football player and you want to master it, what you can do is try to practice kicking with only one foot like the one that isn't so used to do it. Or if you are a basketball player, try to score only with your weaker hand. If you're learning photography, try to take photos with only your smartphone or with type with one type of lens. This is an excellent way to practice to improve your abilities and to take you to the next level of mastery. I know some people who do this type of practice By doing something with their opposite hands, so that might be brushing your teeth with your left hand or with the hand that you don't use very often, or maybe even cook, or eat with the opposite and that you are used to using. And remember that simple practices like this can became a huge advantage for you when you're trying to master anything.

The fixed idea is about recovery. What separates the best from the good is their ability to deal with stressful environment. It is very important to deal with stress and to try to focus when you are on a new situation in a very challenging one. If you are learning speed reading techniques and you find yourself losing focus, it's important to know how to recover and you can sit for one or five minutes, do breathe some breathing techniques, and then come back to your practice. Come back to your development. you're developing of a skill if you're practicing your physical skill, you should keep You're best through like five minutes, 15 minutes, one hour depends.

And then you sit down, you recover, you do other type of exercise in order to recover and then you can come back to it. If you're mastering the skill of writing, and you've been doing it for 45 minutes, and you are already a little bit tired, it's very important to stop into rest. And then if you feel like it, come back to it, the recovery method can be applied to any skill you're trying to learn or to master. As I'm recording this course i'm also making some breaks so I can rest and I can recover. So currently in Portugal, they're like 40 degrees Celsius, it's one of the hottest days this year, so I have to make a lot of breaks during this recording sessions, because it's very hot in here and I can't turn on the air conditioner because it makes a lot of noise.

So, like you can see recovery and rates are very important, no matter what you are doing. And by doing this Practice of recovering every day you will be able to learn this skill much quicker. And also if you are competing, this becomes a huge advantage to and while including recovery practices in your practicing sessions, you will be able to learn a skill much quicker. And also it might be a very smart way to recover when you are competing or on a more stressful environment. The seventh step is about triggering the zone. And I've learned this technique on the book The Art of learning by Josh waitzkin and it consists on creating a routine that will put you on the desired mode.

So a man created a routine that he would do every single day before playing football with his kid, and it consisted on a few activities such as eating breakfast, 10 minutes, meditating 15 minutes, stretching 10 minutes and listening to a Bob Dylan song. He practices this routine every day for one month before starting to play football with his son He then repeated this routine before going to meetings. And those meetings were always very stressful in suffocating for him, but because he did this routine before going to those meetings, he went there and he was much more relaxed, much more happy, much more creative with humor, so everything went much better. And this happened because his brain associated that routine with a much more fun and enjoyable mood. This technique is great especially to do before some stressful activities such as meetings, presentations, competitions, and many others.

Each person should have their own routine. In order to trigger before any stressful activity. Each one of us should have a personal routine that you can associate with an enjoyable activity. And then you use that same routine before a stressful event. But it's also very important to adapt your routine to times when you don't have that Time to complete it or something just happens. This is why you should progressively reduce the amount of time that it takes you to do your routine.

The father of the example started reducing his meditation practice from 15 minutes to 12. The stretching from 10 to eight minutes, and he listened to the Bob Dylan song while he was eating his breakfast. This type of changes should not affect negatively your mood, because it should be done progressively. So after a long time mastering his routine, the father was able to be in the desired mood whenever he wanted to by only listening to the Bob Dylan song. Wouldn't it be great to think of a song to listen to a song and then immediately feel in a focused and relaxed mode, and that is the exact same note that you should be in order to learn practice any skill. You can do this by creating your own morning routine.

I've got my own and I'm obsessed with it because having a morning routine My life because it really set the tone for the rest of my day.