4172: [Part 1] Seven Steps to Learn and Master Anything As Quickly As Possible by James Altucher on Personal Development

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[00:00:45] [SPEAKER_00] This is Optimal Living Daily. Seven Steps to Learn and Master Anything As Quickly As Possible. Part 1 by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com. I'm Justin Malik. I'm Justin Malik. I have a bit of a longer post, so I'll read the first half today and then finish the rest for you tomorrow. So with that, let's get right to part one and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_00] Seven Steps to Learn and Master Anything As Quickly As Possible. Part 1 by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com. I hate learning. I wanted to learn how to trade stocks, and I ended up losing my home. I wanted to learn how to play chess better, and in one of my first tournaments, I threw all the pieces on the floor and cried. I wanted to learn to play poker, and I lost about $20,000 the first 10 times I played.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00] I wanted to learn how to start a business. I wanted to learn more about investing. I wanted to learn computer programming, how to make a TV show, how to write a book, how to speak to a large audience, how to do stand-up comedy. Heck, when I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to breakdance. I wanted to learn how to kiss a girl. I wanted and wanted. Every time, I ended up crying. And then, I learned to learn. Number one, hack the 10,000-hour rule.

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_00] This rule, developed by Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell that damaged me for years, thinking I needed 10,000 hours to succeed at anything, states that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach master-level potential. For instance, as Gladwell writes in Outliers, but Ericsson disputes in his book, Peak, the Beatles got their 10,000 hours playing 20 hours a day in clubs in Germany before they wrote their first album.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_00] Mozart played piano for 10,000 hours by the time he was 12 years old. Story after story. So I felt frustrated. I feel frustrated. I'm 50. Sometimes I feel like it's too late for me. I only like to learn something if I can be among the best, if I can reach my potential. Potential enough to see the nuances in something I love so much, I want to get good at it. I'll be dead after another 10,000 hours of learning. But now I'm convinced the 10,000 hours can be skipped.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00] Here's how. Number two, plus, minus, equal. Plus. Find mentors. A mentor can be real, someone who is willing to help you analyze your mistakes, or virtual, like reading books. Both real and virtual are good. For anything you're interested in, you should read 100 books a year. You should watch hundreds of videos. We have mirror neurons that learn by watching or reading our virtual mentors.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00] It's as if we download their lives into our brain, and the mirror neurons think that their experience are ours. For instance, when I wanted to learn how to be a better public speaker, I'd watch videos of great public speakers right before I had to speak. When I played in chess tournaments, I'd play through the games of world champions, so I could learn more how they thought about the game. And every time I lost a game, I went over the game, move by move, with a grandmaster who I paid to coach me.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_00] He'd set up similar positions to my losing position, and we'd play game after game until I mastered the nuances. When I wanted to learn about investing, I read every investment book I could find, and spoke with hundreds of other great investors. When you read to maximize what you learn, immediately after reading a book, write down 10 things I learned. Else you won't remember more than one or two things at best from the book. I'm trying to learn stand-up comedy now.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00] It's the hardest skill I've ever had to learn. I'm in year two. I probably watch 20 videos a day. I videotape myself on stage four to six times a week, and I read books about and by comedians. And fortunately, I have a podcast, so I ask great comedians to come on, and I can ask them any question I want. Equals. This one category alone, equals, is worth about 4,000 of the 10,000 hours.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_00] Find people who love what you love, and spend as much time talking about this shared area as you can. If you're all equally striving and finding your own path through learning this new skill you all want to share, then you will build community and learn together. When I was learning poker, my friends and I would compare notes on every difficult hand we played during an evening. When I was learning investing, I'd talk to friends in every area of investing, day trading, arbitrage, value investing,

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_00] special situations, quantitative, et cetera, et cetera. And we'd share notes and quickly learn through the experiences of each other. Why not do this with mentors? Well, because the mentors have so far past this level, they are not always able to get into the weeds in the same way as the equals. Minus. Explain what you're learning while you are learning it. Two reasons. If you can't explain in a simple way, then you need to learn more. Beginner's mind.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00] And people who are behind where you are at in learning the skill will ask basic questions that you often need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Again, beginner's mind. Number three. Micro skills. Every skill worth learning has dozens of micro skills. For instance, when I started my first successful business, I had some natural skills at sales and technology. It was a technology business. But I had to learn so many micro skills in order to succeed

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_00] that it felt like I was going to die and fail almost every single day. Here's some business micro skills. Sales, management of employees, negotiating, selling to investors, selling to acquirers, product development, product consistency and execution, motivation, emotional stability and on and on. All of the skills are exclusive of each other. Negotiating is not the same as sales. Product development is not the same as management.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00] But each skill needs to be developed to be successful. Chess micro skills. Openings, middle game, end game, tactics, positional play, which can be divided into about 50 micro skills, as well as all the different types of end games. Attack, defense, psychology, etc. Stand-up micro skills? I think, I hope. Likeability, commitment, crowd work, 20 to 50 different types of crowds.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00] Mic work, pacing, stage control. And finally, humor, which includes punchlines, premises, tags, callbacks, storytelling, persona, act-outs, etc., etc. For whatever you're interested in, list the micro skills. Figure out what you're good at, what you're bad at, and how you can learn to be better at each. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled,

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_00] Seven Steps to Learn and Master Anything as Quickly as Possible by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Now I want to tell you about a book that stuck with me. Life at the Speed of Play. Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus. Mark's a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and one of the most prolific idea generators around. But as he'll tell you, ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is picking the right ones.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_00] His instant national bestseller is a fast-paced, 170-page read for these uncertain times, full of real-life skills, and a battle-tested, easy-to-follow framework for separating the great ideas from the terrible ones. Y Combinator's Gary Tan says it'll change your odds of success. And it reads less like a stuffy business book, more like you're in Mark's kitchen, already in his inner circle. Go to getmarksbook.com slash old

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00] and buy one copy, and Mark personally, not his publisher, sends you a second one free. Two books, about $16 each, so you can hand one to a friend who's stuck. Once again, that's getmarksbook.com slash OLD.

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[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00] Thank you to James. I've definitely heard of the 10,000 hour rule before. It's been briefly mentioned here on the show, but I also read that Malcolm Gladwell book that he talked about, Outliers, that emphasizes how important those hours are, but I do agree that they're not necessary for success because you don't have to be a master of something to get to some meaningful place with it, even if it's something you're doing professionally. For example, I would say this podcast

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00] was at a level I was proud about quite quickly, and I had nowhere near 10,000 hours racked up. Yes, I was lucky, but just proving a point that it's not necessary, and that's especially true for things you wanna do for fun or as a hobby. We can easily get obsessed about mastering something, but it's not always necessary. Good enough can be a great place to be, and that's something I'm realizing more and more in my own life. So something to keep in mind,

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00] and we will talk about this more tomorrow since that was the first half of the post. So with that, thank you for being here and listening every day, and we'll finish up this one tomorrow. Where your optimal life awaits.