Today I unlocked an achievement for myself. In the past 7 days, I published 7 articles on this blog 🙂 Which means I wrote one article every day. Currently, I am not at that point yet where I have already a lot of blog posts pre-scheduled and pre-written. I usually write them just before publishing them.
And that made me think that I got a lot better at writing in the past month, so I thought: well, how do you get better at anything?
What do you want to get better at?
First of all to get better at something you must set a goal or at least know what skill you want to improve. This might sound clear, but it really isn’t. I usually always have some kind of short term goal that I want to reach. Like with this blog I wanted to publish articles more consistently and set the goal to myself to publish at least every 2 days. And in this case, I even went over my goal.
Of course, just by doing something doesn’t mean you get better… or does it?
Imagine how it could be
Okay, so let’s now dive into some steps you can actually take to get better at anything. For me, it’s generally always important to know WHY I should do something? Like why do I want to improve my writing? So, the first step: think about what you want to get better at and why! Imagine what it would be like to be better at that thing. Let’s say you want to improve your joke telling -> that could have an impact on your daily life because you are able to make people laugh very easily. Being good at something can be very rewarding in many ways.
Learn the theory
After you know what it is you want to improve and why the next thing would definitely be to do some research. Watch YouTube videos, read my articles :P, or buy a book or audio-book. Whatever is the best way for you to absorb information. And to make it clear, this doesn’t have to be a period of one month. This step can be as short as a day, but you should keep doing it also long-term.
Practice, practice… oh, and PRACTICE!
Now that you have new information, and this is the most important step, take action!!! Implement and practice the new things you researched, try it out, fail, and try again. Only with this step, you will truly get better at something. This is crucial. Imagine I would watch videos about writing and reading books and whatever, but I wouldn’t have created this website and I wouldn’t have written an article a day. PRACTICE!
Have a vision to guide you
Just look out there and watch experts in their field. How do you think they got there? Exactly, through experience and constantly trying to improve. You have to create that loop between theory and practice. You can have a vision of how good you want to become, but also you must set realistic small goals and you will get closer to your vision step by step.
Stay consistent, stay inspired, stay motivated
With this information, you should already be able to go out there and get better! BUT there is another important factor in this. Consistency is very important. No one becomes a, for example, pro boxer by training once a week… But how can you stay consistent? For me, the answer is through inspiration and motivation. If you watch a very skillful person, isn’t that something beautiful? I admire people a lot who made a choice one day: I want to become the best in this… and they did it! To me going out there and trying to be better every day is very inspiring and motivating… yeah maybe even fulfilling. So, maybe with this article, I could inspire you a little bit to go out there and try 🙂
I agree… Consistency and therefor motivation play a big role when trying to get better at anything. What also helps me is to know why I should get better at something? What’s the point? If I know why I do it and my why is clear to me, I can find motivation easier.
Exactly! To me that is also very important… But to know your why is to know yourself 😉
Very interesting. As a marketing / sales professional from day one, motivation always play the key role.
But, just wanted to add “BELIEVING IN YOURSELF” is the key to success. Once you start believing that YES you can do it, you are half way there. “BELIEVING IN WHAT YOU ARE OR ABOUT TO DO” and last but not the least “POSITIVITY” or can say “POSITIVE ATTITUDE” will do wonders.
Keep it up. Wish you all the best.
Motivation is important, very much and it should come from the inside and not the outside 🙂 Thanks for leaving a comment! All the best to you too.