Posts Tagged ‘mutlitasking’

“You can’t do everything. But you can do one thing, and then another, and then another.” This was a quote from the book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long Term Fullfillment and it’s a great point. Though in an age where with so many distractions and so many options it is something that is extremely difficult to do. Yet, the largest benefits usually come once you get really good at something. Musicians can play a tune once they master their instrument, a basketball player is able to consistently put the ball in the hoop, and an artist can control his hands precisely to make beautiful works of art. So how do does someone become great at something they do?

I hear a lot of people use the words gifted or talented when they discuss someone who is really good at something. It is true that some people have a certain disposition that allows them to excel quicker at something than others, but anyone can obtain these talents with enough dedication and practice.

Dedication

Focusing single heatedly on whatever it is you want to learn. To do so you will have to give up doing other things. However, I have found the benefit of doing something really well far out weighs the benefits of doing many things averagely. Dedicate a time to your activity and don’t let anything bother you. And definitely don’t multi-task. Multi-tasking has become popular in the last decade, but it is not efficient or effective. Once you dedicate your time, focus clearly only on that one thing.

I also recommend you choose the things you do very carefully. Since you will be spending a lot of time on something, it’s important to make sure that it is important to you. If it’s not, then you will be more likely to give it up and try something else. I have started a lot of activities on the spur only to give them up part way through. Its not that I didn’t enjoy some of them, but that time would probably have been better spent getting better at something I really cared about.

Practice

We have all heard the phrase “practice makes perfect”. My father must have told me this a thousand times as a kid. There is no doubt that the more time you spend doing an activity the better you will get at it. But putting in time practicing is only part of it. If you want to get good, and get good fast, then you need to practice in the most effective manner.

The easiest way to find this information will be in from the people who are the best in the field. Whether that be from a book or audio program or personal lessons. The time you spend finding good training materials, a good instructor, or the best methods will save you a lot of wasted time.

Stop Juggling Activities

I did this for a long time. There were so many thing I wanted to try that I ended up being able to do  bunch of things poorly. Having limited my focus to only a few, I now realize how much better it is to be good at a few.

When I was in college I choose to study Japanese. I was fascinated with the culture and really wanted to be able to speak the language. In the same language department I met a student who was taking Japanese, Chinese, and Russian all at the same time. I was very impressed. She was a very good student and defitely put in more time studying her three languages than I did with just my one. But at the end of that semester I was able to have simple conversations in Japanese where as she could only say a few words in each language. Even though she had put in more time than I had it was dispersed over three different languages and she received almost none of the benefits that studying just the one had yielded for me.