- What's up, everyone, Mark Manson here. And you know, everyone wants to be good at something. In fact, people come up to me all the time. They ask, you know, Mark, how do I become good at this thing? I understand perfectly why they ask me. Because I am pretty amazing at everything I do. Is that lettuce in my teeth? These nose hairs, really jump out at you. God, my sweat smells like onions. And the fact is, I have broken down how to be good at anything. Yes, anything in three simple repeatable steps. Just one, two, three, boom. You are a world-class artist and whatever you want to be for a limited time, only costs $9,999. Wait, $9,000. I can't even get the price right. Just watch the video. (upbeat music playing) Before we dive into how to be good at something. This video is presented by Mark Manson, a promising personal development author whose books have sold over 10 million copies. Mark Manson was a popular blogger and now has a weekly newsletter called Mind-fuck Monday. You can sign up at markmanson.net/newsletter. Mark Manson was kind enough to pay for the camera, the lens, the lighting, the chair he is sitting on, almost everything in this room. Mark Manson even tried to set up the lighting for the set, but even after three months of trying, it was still

The channel. You know, he's doing the best he can. He's really putting in a lot of effort here, even if it smells a little like onion. Alright, so a three-step process to be good at anything. Step number one, learn the basics, find out what the 20% is that drives 80% of the results. There was this economist who lived a long time ago named Ricardo Pareto. And he had this principle that he discovered, which was essentially that 80% of economic production was generated by approximately 20% of the companies. Similarly within companies, but 80% of productivity came from 20% of the workers. This became known as the 80/20 rule or the 80/20 principle. And it applies to almost everything. 20% of customers will make 80% of your purchases. 20% of the population pays 80% of the taxes. 20% of politicians are responsible for 80% of the corruption. So you can go on and on. The interesting thing is that sometimes it goes beyond the 80/20 principle, sometimes it's the 90/10 principle or the 99/1 principle, for example, in music, 1% of songs represent 99% of what people listen to. In sports, 1% of athletes earn 99% of the money and in publishing, 1% of books are read 99% of the time. So

What is the 20% that will generate 80% of the results? Think of these as leverage points. Where are the actions and efforts that can yield a disproportionate amount of returns? For example, in writing, if you read some books on how to improve your writing, one of the first things you will notice is that they all say that editing has a disproportionate effect on the quality of writing. Editing is the 20% that drives 80% of the results. Ernest Hemingway once said, The first draft of anything is garbage. And I can tell you from experience that it's completely true. No one writes a good first draft. Everything is full of inconsistencies, nonsense, and run-on sentences. It's only through revisions, edits, and rewrites that you truly get brilliant, clean, and beautiful writing. Similarly, in music, you find that there are only a handful of core progressions and harmony concepts that make up like 80 or 90% of the popular music you hear. So, if you can just learn a few of those chord progressions or understand the harmony behind those chord progressions, you can immediately play the vast majority of the music people want to hear. Or as in chess, if you study chess, you will quickly find that there are many repeatable patterns that consistently arise game after game. There are opening patterns, there are middlegame patterns, endgame patterns, forks.

And pins on different concepts around the structure of pawns. If you are able to focus on those patterns, that will help you be a better chess player than 80-90% of people. In general, this first step requires taking an introductory course, reading a couple of books, maybe hiring a coach, but the focus should always be on what is the 20 that leads to the 80. Many introductory courses, especially at university, do not tell you what that 20 that drives the 80 is, you have to figure it out yourself. A good coach will tell you, but a bad coach won't. So, this is something you should always keep in mind when undertaking a new activity. Step (speaks in a foreign language), organize a system to receive feedback consistently and reliably. You can't improve anything unless you receive feedback on it. Now, that feedback can take many different forms. It could be a teacher telling you that this piece of work you wrote was terrible, it could be a coach telling you that your basketball shot is wrong and you need to move your elbow or something like that, whatever basketball players do, it could be putting your music online and listening to what your friends and family think about it. But whatever it is, you need a consistent feedback system, you need an evaluation of your performance, so you can adjust your performance and start iterating. Iteration is the fundamental basis of all improvement.

Now, here's the problem, people make two mistakes with the (foreign language) step. Either they don't receive feedback, so they just write in their bedroom for years and years and never show it to anyone, or they shoot baskets in a gym and never play against anyone. And it's because they are afraid of criticism, afraid of losing, afraid of feeling embarrassed, afraid of being mocked. Or the second problem is they receive feedback and then refuse to listen to it. In any case, if you don't accept feedback, then you won't improve. And this is where the ego comes into the process. You know, it's people who are afraid of feedback. It's because their ego is a little too fragile. They need to protect themselves. Whatever they are pursuing is too fundamental to their identity. So they can't afford to threaten it. That's not a healthy way to pursue anything. If what you pursue is the only meaningful thing in your life, you won't get very far. Similarly, many people think they are hot stuff before they are hot stuff. They sit there posting stories online and no one reads them. And they say, man, you know, it's just because I'm too brilliant, people don't, you know, people don't understand it. If you ever tell yourself that, you're probably full of it. Step number two also explains why coaching is a thing. Because, you know, it's easy to ignore your friends.

But if you pay an expert to give you their opinion, it's a bit hard to ignore that opinion. I mean, otherwise, why are you paying this guy? The other great thing about a coach, they can point out when you're protecting your ego, they can point out when you're diluting and ignoring the proper feedback. So, even though this step sounds very simple, like, oh, yes, I receive feedback all the time. It's actually very difficult. It's very difficult for most of us to hear criticism and be realistic about it. Be honest about it, really taking it into consideration and changing what we do. Step number three. Now that you know how to iterate, wait, where's my microphone? Now that you know how to iterate, iterate for 5000 to 10,000 hours. (Mark laughs) I know what you're thinking, right? Three steps. Wow, that's easy. A 10-minute YouTube video. Here we go. Alright, you get to step number three, and it's like 10,000 damn hours. Are you kidding me? Who has that kind of time? Alright. Alright. This is the harsh truth. (bright instrumental music) Harsh truth of the day, there are no shortcuts. Right? There are no shortcuts, nobody took a shortcut. Everything you hear about overnight success that you heard in the newspaper, you read on Facebook. It's crap. Don't listen to it

You have to iterate, man. One way I think about this is that if I'm going to try to be excellent at something, I need to fail 1000 times and the sooner I can get those 1000 failures out of the way, the better. The sooner I start experiencing success in that thing, like a culture we love, we love as if we were so hard on these overnight success stories. There's no overnight success. It's absurd. Take the Beatles, right? It's like one of the most important musical careers of the last century. In people's minds, they are just these random 20-year-old kids from Liverpool. Just show up and enjoy all this incredible music. The Beatles grind it out. They play five to six hours a night in Germany, like in the old, damp German bars and in the red-light district with no money. Nobody was listening six nights a week for a year. That's so damn much time. One of my favorite interview moments. I remember seeing an interview with Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz. And the interviewer actually asked him, what does it feel like to be a millionaire overnight? And he just laughed. And he was like, if by overnight you mean working all night, every night for seven years, it was really exhausting and stressful. That's what overnight success is. I came across these things with my own book. You know, when I started doing TV interviews and press interviews, people would

Oh, this came out of nowhere, right? It's like, no, son of a b**ch. I've been blogging for eight years. I've been writing crap online, dealing with freaking hate emails and trolls since 2007. This doesn't happen overnight. This was nine years in the making. Alright, that's all for today. Go out and, you know, be excellent at something. Let me know how it's going in 10 years. And you know, by then, I'll probably have forgotten about this video and won't care anymore. So peace. Step number three. (Mark laughs) Please, don't use that.

Oh, this came out of nowhere, right? It's like, no, son of a b**ch. I've been blogging for eight years. I've been writing crap online, dealing with freaking hate emails and trolls since 2007. This doesn't happen overnight. This was nine years in the making. Alright, that's all for today. Go out and, you know, be excellent at something. Let me know how it's going in 10 years. And you know, by then, I'll probably have forgotten about this video and won't care anymore. So peace. Step number three. (Mark laughs) Please, don't use that.

Self-Improvement: 3 Steps to Becoming Great at Anything

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