Many folks are chasing the latest or best skill to learn. But there’s a “meta” skill that’s even more important.
Because whether you want to get good on camera, race a car, or hit the perfect serve…
You’ve got to get really, really good… at being really, really bad.
The reality is that the first time you try something, you’re going to suck.
But that’s OK – it’s the same for everybody.
Everyone who’s great at something now… was really, really bad at it when they first started. There’s a reason literally every autobiography talks about this…
Grammy award-winning rockstars talk about playing to empty dive bars…
Bestselling authors talk about getting rejected over and over…
Entrepreneurs talk about all the launches that flopped…
The first 10, 20, or 30 hours of doing anything new are always going to be tough…
You WILL forget your lines…
You WILL veer off the track…
You WILL totally whiff the ball…
But here’s another truth – if you keep going…
You WILL get better…
You WILL build new skills…
You WILL start to make real progress…
You don’t have to love being bad – or even like it. You just need to get through it… to the other side. And it’s worth it…
Because those first hours are where the gold is…
If you want to achieve at the absolute highest level there is one thing you have to get really good at, really comfortable with, actually there's a whole bunch of things but this is one thing that's absolutely critical—you have to get really comfortable with being really bad at things.
This is the deal. If you want to succeed you have to learn. There is so much learning to be done. That's the price of admission. If you look at this business that I'm in, the idea that I'm shooting a video for you, that I am on video, that I'm on camera, when I started out in this business that was like the furthest thing from my mind. In fact I was in this business for more than a decade before I was on camera, probably 15 years before I was on camera. It's been one thing after another and that's the way the world is.
If you want to succeed you need to continually get better. You need to continually learn and you need to continually master new skills. And the reality is that, with any new skill you are going to completely suck for a good long time. You are not going to be good when you first do something. When you first make an offer, when you first do a launch, when you first put up a video, you're not going to be good.
I was reminded this past weekend I went and did some racing. I raced cars actually. I more practiced racing cars and it was all very, very, safe. It was what they call an autocross track and there was just a bunch of rubber cones to be hit. There there was nothing there essentially. No danger. And I was in a pretty lowered car but it felt really, really fast and part of this process was you're dodging all these cones in a very intricate course.
The idea is, if you didn't hit the cones, if you didn't go off the track, then you weren't pushing hard enough. How do you know what the limit is unless you exceed the limit? At times for me I didn't hit too many cones but I did slide completely off the track once and did a full 180 going through the finish line. Another time and I got better and better and better. I’m not saying I was good but the first time through the track compared to the 12th time through the track – night and day difference.
But I truly sucked at the beginning. You have to get comfortable with not being great. Just yesterday I had a bit of a tennis lesson. I've been playing tennis pretty seriously since high school. I played competitively through high school. I'm nearly a lifelong tennis player. If you're—I'm pretty good at least—if you were not a tennis player you would look at me and you'd say “Wow he's pretty good.” If you're a super competitive player you'd be like “He's whatever.”
Just yesterday after all these years I was learning a new stroke that I've never hit. I absolutely sucked at it but I knew in my mind that I was supposed to suck and initially as I was trying to hit that ball. It wasn't about how I hit the ball. It wasn't whether the ball went in. It wasn't even whether I hit the ball or not. It was my footwork. It was my setup for the stroke. It was where I began the stroke, where I ended the stroke, and I knew it would take literally thousands of balls, thousands of hits, before I started to achieve any degree of skill or competence much less mastery.
So this is the deal – when you learn something, the first 10-20 hours of it – you're not going to be good. It's about learning the process. It's about learning how to execute. It's not about the end result at the beginning.
So if you want to succeed, you’ve got to get good at learning. And to be good at learning you have to embrace being a beginner. And you have to embrace that you're not going to be perfect or even very good at you know for a good long time but if you consistently work at it no matter what the skill is, you will get better.
And you'll get better quickly that all the gains come in those first 10, 20, 30 hours. Not all of the gains but the majority of the gains in nearly every endeavor.
So get comfortable with not being good, get comfortable with learning.
I'm Jeff Walker. Wherever you're watching this scroll down, leave a comment for me and let's go get him this week.
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