I tackle learning anything the same way. I take an incremental approach and use multiple methods to step by step attempt to slowly and measurably improve at a skill. Given enough time anybody can become proficient at most skills. Ideally, if you have an hour a day to dedicate to a skill, I believe, by the end of the year, you will become significantly better at that skill than most people. This is given you practice intelligently. This is true for learning a new skill, improving at your job, learning in a class room, a new technology or doing a new hobby.

As I started doing Jui-jitsu, I re-examined my process on how I learned things and how I wanted apply and improve for a skill of which I have zero knowledge. I focused on consistency, foundations, and analysis all of which overlap partially and positively compound on each other.

The most important thing to do is actually practice. All the theory in the world isn’t going to help if you can’t execute on the theory. There is no improvement if you don’t put in the time. Consistently practicing will let you form the habits, dedication, and consistency to tackle more complicated tasks. The amount of the time I went to train BJJ varied based off what was going in my life and my experience. The people at my gym recommended it’d be best to go 3 times a week to get a hang of it. I started out going twice a week at most (I had purchased 10 lessons to see if I liked it). Then after 10 lessons, I started pretty consistently going twice a week. For 2.5 hours on Saturdays and for 1 hour on either Tuesday or Thursday, depending on what my schedule allowed. After a couple months I would go 2-3 times a week when I had both days available, but I would always to to at least one weekday session. If I couldn’t make the class, I would wait for the late night class and go to that one. When my (regular) gym shutdown, I replaced my workout days with Jiu-jitsu days. For that month or so, I could go up to 5 times a week, but I think I usually went 3-4 times a week. Now burnout is a real thing and it’s important for you to schedule your practices such that you don’t feel like it’s a chore or that you start dreading practicing (at least if this is a hobby). This was never an issue for me, but your goal with your schedule is longevity and consistent growth over long periods of time. If you get burnt out and quit because you push yourself too hard too early, it’s a waste of time. If going once 3 or 4 times a week is too much for you, lower the practice sessions to 2 sessions a week. Is practicing for 2 hours too much? Maybe do smaller sessions. Maybe doing one massive session a week is works for you. You need to find a schedule that works for you. For me, personally, I needed at least 2 sessions a week so I could remember and commit what I learned to memory. The most important thing is to get a way that works for you that gets you to practice.

Now that you are practicing, you are most of the way to excellence. When learning a new skill, it is imperative to learn the foundations of the skill. If you fail to learn the basic mechanics of some skill, you may be able to get by for a while with a gap in your skillset, however, there will be a time where you’ll hit a ceiling in which you can’t improve anymore. You’ll need to learn that skill piece (best case sceanario) or relearn everything because you actually didn’t learn anything correctly the first time since everything you learned was built ontop of a skill your didn’t learn correctly with correct mechanics. You would have a few options at that point, stay the same skill level forever, get worse and learn properly to then get back to the skill level you were, or quit. The second option will be incredibly frustrating and most likely leading to quitting. When starting out it’s important to learn your foundations correctly and slowly. You don’t want to learn bad habits in which you have to unlearn, because you could get away with learning them incorrectly when starting out. Bad habits are a crutch when you can’t learn something properly. All you are doing is delaying having to learn your fundamentals. Learn correctly the first time so you don’t have to do so a second time. Focus on one thing at a time. Don’t try and learn a hundred different things at once. Start small; learn how to do one thing well, then move on to the next unit you can learn. In Jiu-jitsu, the first thing I resolved to learn was the warmups, it was something we did often with repeated moves. I didn’t know how to do the 15 or so moves we were supposed to do for warmups, nor did I try to learn them all. After class, I picked one move (snaking/shrimping), remembered its name, then looked at a youtube video tutorial and drilled it until I could do it, then I moved on to the next move. The next time I went and warmed up, I didn’t have to remember or worry how to snake move and I could focus on another move in the warmup I could learn and drill.

At this point, you will be making progress, it’s only a question of how much and how efficiently or fast are you making progress. You want to make sure you aren’t unintentionally falling into pitfalls or bad habits. You need to self reflect and look back on your practice during plateaus and examine why you are stagnating and how to get passed it. Being able to self reflect and see what you need to change keep improving will ensure that you aren’t ramming your head over and over, practicing the same thing wasting your precious time when you could try a different avenue and come to the same result. It helps to talk to someone who is more experienced than you who can mentor you, look at what you are doing, analyze for you and give you feedback. Having a mentor is immensely helpful as you can quickly clear up confusion and have a direct line to someone if you have a question. One thing I started doing with Jiu-jitsu was writing down all the moves I learned in effort to help them commit to memory. I would learn the move, practice it for the day, then during sparring, I would forget a small step and not be able to execute. I decided a good way to commit the moves to memory was to write them down after practice. It has helped me remember some moves I probably would have forgetten otherwise, and it has given me a neat resource I can look back to if I want to jog my memory. While originally just for my personal Jiu-jitsu journey, I figure why not convert them to posts here. I think it would be a better experience for me to convert my text files in fullblown, indexed markdown files I can reference. Later on I could get much more sophisticated on a platform like here instead of my primitive text files I hastily write down before I forget.

Anyways, I believe following these guidelines for improvement, you can become better than most of the world at most skills and probably better most people that have tried at said skills. Obviously this needs to be tailored for the particular thing you want to learn, but I believe these general principles are effective in whatever domain you choose to learn something. I think it says a lot about a person if they are very good at a skill, whether it be juggling, engineering, sports, eating, or video games. If someone took the time to dedicate themselves to something and become excellent, I think that is incredibly admirable.