The 3 Essential Skills for Becoming Better at Anything

This is not a post about what you should or shouldn't do to get better at something, but rather, what you must and essentially do. I've identified 3 must-dos that anyone learning to build a skill that will last a lifetime must employ and those are:

Dedicated and Focused Activity related to your Skill

Simply, you need to practice your craft. For at least 1-4 hours each day. High-quality human cognition is a limited and scarce resource.

Consistency

The second point is Consistency. To illustrate this point, I like to think of it like the wavelength of a wave.

Consistency

Voluntary Relaxation

The third and probably the most underrated and crucial, is Voluntary Relaxation. It's my experience that after you do an activity for 1-2 hours, you must schedule an appointment with yourself, where, depending on your energy level, you must either relax, meditate, take a nap, listen to soothing music, go out for a walk, or do anything that is less of a cognitive load than what you just experienced while doing your skill-related activity.