| How to become good at any skill |
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Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it's who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment. ~ Antony Robbins
The Plateau: Mommy, I am stuck!
What is there in common between a martial artist, a dancer and anyone learning social skills ?  No matter what their background is there will always be a point where their skill progress will come to a halt.
This is called a plateau and it can have the same stopping effect to your skill progress as a brick wall would have to a car. Recent peak performance research has shown that a plateau is something everyone experiences. No matter whether you are a salesman, an athlete or an artist, your neural system learns and adapts using the same kind of pauses. The problem with humanity though, is that it has been disillusioning itself lately. Watch what happens in the mass media. Almost all films we watch and almost all advertisement we are exposed to, show us the same imaginary, Oz world: The heroes experience one climax after the other, where one success follows another triumph without ever experiencing a plateau. The cost of living in a fast food society is that people think that you can become as good athlete as Michael Jordan in two months, you can become a millionaire in one year and you can get fit in less than three weeks.
Exposed to all that mania, it is normal that we can feel deflated when after several efforts of chasing the woman/man we want, she/he does not respond as in the movies, when after two months of boxing we still get our face bruised in training and when after several dancing courses, we *still* cannot get right that god damn 'paso basico'...
 In a great book about human learning theory Peter Jarvis talked about the ways we learn a new skill: After an initial disjuncture our habitual behavior system changes and our effort system kicks into action. This is followed by a short period of rapid progress (the Leap) that leads us to a first level of improvement. Then the effort system retracts and leaves us on that plateau. There we experience a deeply lonely moment. For the following weeks or months no matter how hard we try, we don't seem to improve much. Then, out of the blue, a new leap takes place and the above pattern repeats itself. The improvement curve thus looks something like this:  No matter what your nationality, your age and your sex may be, you will always have some skill that you want to improve in. According to the world master of Aikido George Leonard in order to achieve mastery in that skill, you will have to learn to love the plateau. He says that you must be able to appreciate your training effort while at the same time you forget the outcome. You must be able to love your art without caring about the final result. The way to do that is by building a habit and by repeating the training process at fixed times during the week no matter what your results are. The goal of the voyage is NOT the destination. The goal of the voyage IS the voyage ITSELF. Do the math: What does this mean, Daddy? According to cognitive psychologist Daniel J. Levitin (book "This is your brain in Music"), you will need 2000 hours of skill set practice in order to achieve unconscious knowledge but it will take you more than 10000 hours in order to achieve true Mastery. If for example, you start taking lessons of guitar for the first time today, it will take you more than 2000 hours of practice in order to start playing at a fairly good level. After 8000 hours you will be so god damn good that you will be able to teach it and it will take you more than 10000 hours to become an expert. This also applies to any form of art or skill: Dancing, Sex, Fighting, Nagging, Driving, Cooking, Mental Masturbation, Making Excuses, Engineering, Any Social Skill, Playing Theatre, Giving Us a Kiss, Doing Math, Making Friends or whatever else your wicked mind of yours desires.  However when you are dealing with social skills, it is hardly the case that you start from scratch: Family, the dumb-box (TV) or Friends are a good source of information on social skills and chances are that you have been well exposed to them. This is to explain that the figure of 10000 hours may be a bit far-fetched: 8-9000 hours may as well be enough when it has to do with social skills. Or less, how should we know ?
Now, we have some news for you: One bad and one good. If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. ~ Michelangelo, 1475-1584 Do the math: Should I start this ?  This means that before you start training in a specific art, you must understand that you will need to practice at it for at least 3-8000 hours before you get at really good level. Let's take seduction for example. In order to become really good at meeting new people here are some formulas: Let's say that you are a complete newbie and that you have NO experience with meeting people at bars what so ever. (Where have you been all these years man ??). Let's imagine that you have been studying all your life and you had no contact with people outside your sciences laboratory. Nerdius Lab-Ratius.
So, you start going out for your first time in your life. You test the cocktails, you see the women, you feel the pressure. And you do this three times per week for three hours every time. This means that in one year, you will accumulate 9 hours per week X 4 weeks per month X 12 months per year= 432 hours of meeting new people at bars per year. Around 5 years from now you will arrive at approximately 2160 hours which means that you will be able to pull some impressive social stunts but you will be quite far from being defined as a 'social expert'. You will, however, be far better than the rest of the society.
If you go out for 15 hours per week X 4 X 12 = 720 and you keep doing it for more than 10 years will yield around 7200 hours. You may not be an 'expert' yet but you will be sooooooo god damn good at it. Even more, you will be in a position of consciously explaining how you do it and thus you will be able to teach it. More Lab Rats will join your cause and soon, going out to bars will be impossible without the company of a mice-killing, vicious, b.a.d. cat. Good thing is that cocktails will be served with cheese, instead of the traditional olive. Mice-Nice.
Here are some examples:
Sciences: During a Ph.D you usually work around 6 hours per day X 24 days per month X 12 months per year X 4 years = 6 912 hours which if added to your Bachelor's course hours brings you well above the 10000 hours margin: THIS is what makes you a true master in your scientific field. 
Arts: Studies have shown that any professional artist has accumulated 10000 hours of training in approximately 10 years time. This accumulated effort is what usually makes capable professional musicians of playing and composing beautiful music. La-La-La.
War: In any NATO Naval Special Warfare Training Center, a Special Forces recruit will accumulate almost 2500 hours of war training in about 6 months, giving him the right to wear his country's Special Forces dagger. Huh ?!
But... let's stick to social skills, shall we ?
Let's say that you want to learn seduction, sales or even acting. In order for you to become good at it, you must STICK to THAT skill training for no less than 2-4.000 hours spread in a week program as above. If you want a basic knowledge of the skill set, a 1000 hours will also do the trick but you will only gain a very superficial knowledge of that skill. Any less than that is a waist of your energy. So the question should always be: Is it worth it ? Only you know the answer to that...  Most people follow patterns during their lives. Failure could not be an exception. Patterns of failure - Oh, look .. I Broke a Nail. The Enthusiast It was a warm day of May when Jim announced us that he would start body building. Yes, he told us that he would bench press more than 120 kg by the end of that year. During the few weeks that followed his glorious announcement he bought proteins, a years subscription to some magazine with hairless, muscled men on the cover and a funny belt in order to be able to lift weights. However his efforts lasted one and a half month: As an ending remark he told us that this hobby was ... too superficial for him. It was a cold day of January when Jim decided to start boxing. He then proceeded to bying gloves, shoes and the necessary mouthpiece. He trained for two months but soon after that a girl appeared in his life making those trainings ... a bit less interesting. Jim is what we would call an Enthusiast: He starts every new endeavour with great enthusiasm but the moment he suspects that his improvement has started to slow down, he quits. The Manic  One day, I decided to learn chess. I bought some good books and I started training myself. Man, was I passioned: I played against the neighbour, I played against the computer, I even played against my cat. I remember spending a whole week trying to memorize chess configurations. I no longer wanted to go out, I did not watch TV and I surely did not feel like studying even when my exams were dangerously close. Then ... I suddenly lost interest and I did not touch the chess board for more than two weeks. After talking to a good friend, I was introduced to the wonderful world of speed chess which made me to ... take off again. I remember playing non stop for six hours every day during three long weeks. Unfortunately, this super effort of mine soon came ... to a new more definitive halt. The number of times I have played chess, since that day, can be counted on the fingers of someone that had a horrible accident with fire crackers. A manic oscillates between periods of zuper activity and zero activity. These boom-and-bust cycles lead him/her to a period where he or she feels that he had enough from that learning effort, never to return back again. Hey, who knows ? Maybe one day I will be stranded in some island, where I will have to win the local chief in chess in order for him to spare my life. Right ?  The Lazy I think that for this, no further example is needed: Someone that after getting a first improvement to his skill, he/she no longer makes any effort to improve him/herself beyond that point. He then remains trapped to that local maximum for the remaining of his days. Sounds grim, No? The keyword is 'saticficing'. Go on and Google it. You can probably recognize your self in any of these three stereotypes. Each one of us has been Lazy, Manic or Enthusiast in his life. Do you remember when you started dancing courses? What happened to that, man? Some factors that affect Improvement Good Instructions. There are things that work well and things that don't. Do not spent your 2000 hours re-inventing the wheel: Get a Manual and Read It. Ask a demonstration. This can accelerate your learning curve so much that you can cut your learning time at half.  Trust the process and surrender to it. Most learning will require for you to change previous beliefs and this always involves looking a bit silly, unsure of your self or a healthy combination of both. It is only when you let go of your old self that progress will finally visit you. If, on the other hand, you keep clinging on older ideas or even worse, if you try to protect your Ego, the results will be similar with hitting the brake and gas pedal at the same time.
Let your Ego out of this story. As Tyler Durden put it in Fight Club: This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. The faster you understand this, the faster you will realise that people who are afraid of learning new skills because they 'may look silly', they are doomed to live the rest of their life in mediocrity.
Learning = ( willingness to look silly ) ^ 2 Intent. Know what do you want out of a skill. Know, where are you going and know when to stop, pack it and go home. Most people follow trends and they end up changing directions like leafs on the wind. If, on the other hand, you know what you are looking for, you will not be tempered by external factors and you will hit your target every single time.
The Edge. Some times you may have to be willing to go that extra mile, even when your body tells you it cannot. Some other times you must know when that can be dangerous and dumb for you. Taking decisions for your self, can be difficult.
 Your friends. People surrounding you can form a support group and push you towards your goal or... they can pull you back. Choose them wisely. Before the Outro
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Yes, Finally: Outro baby
There is a sweet moment in the life of everyone, when after searching for so long you finally find 'it'. It is when after some time of walking around in circles, lost in some dense city, you come to a huge, open square. This is what you were looking for. During moments like these, you understand with every nerve of your body, 'what was it all about'. Then and there, you mind blocks and rests still, completely captivated by the magic of the moment. There exists only 'now'. I do not know any better way to wrap up an article like this, than the words of astronaut John Glenn while listening also to the voice of a true master: The late Pavarotti.
John Glenn was asked about his feelings of being the first American in orbit. How did he feel now being back to Earth ?
“I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.”
Luciano Pavarotti ~ 1935 – 2007
Selected Bibliography
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