Learn new skills fast, get more from life
On August 25th, 2017, I stood in front of 3000 people on the final stage of the World Championship of Public Speaking.
7 months before, I had no public speaking experience.
Out of 30,000 competitors, it was now down to the last 10.
This was the very last step of my ultralearning project: 7 months of intense, focused study.
The next few minutes on this giant stage were the most exciting and surreal of my life.
But this project is not about those few minutes…. Continue Reading
On a sunny afternoon in June, my friend Andrew and I met up with Emmet Louis, an ex Circus Performer turned coach, to learn about object manipulation and other interesting skills.
Emmet watched us fumble as we tried to perform a simple exercise:
You can make this exercise as complicated as you’d like by choosing where to place the receiving hand (e.g. in front of your waist vs. behind your head)
Here is what happens to most people (both Andrew and I fell into this trap):… Continue Reading
Learning a new chord sucks.
If you’ve ever tried to play guitar, you’ve had to go through the rocky road of chord acquisition. when done wrong it can be slow, painful, and worst of all, it can hold you back from learning a song you love.
What if there was a way to accelerate the process, a method you could follow to add chords to your quiver faster than anyone else?
Luckily, there is a way. (If you don’t want to read and just want to watch the video, scroll to bottom of the post.)
Before I share my favorite technique with you, let’s backtrack for those of you who have no idea what we’re talking about…. Continue Reading
This post comes from a 2-part series from my newsletter.
Last week I asked you to listen to a 15-second recording of one of my students playing guitar. Your mission was to guess what he was doing wrong.
If you didn’t do it last week, give it a quick try before reading on.
This is an issue that almost every beginner experiences at one point or another. It’s very important to learn how to identify the problem early on in order to implement the solution.(Towards the end of this post I’ve included a 40-second video medley of this student’s current level)… Continue Reading
When I was 12 or 13 years old, I remember switching channels to a bodybuilding competition. I’d never seen bodies like that before. I was fascinated.
They looked so strong!
I called my parents over, showed them the men on the TV, and asked them how I could get strong too.
I did not get the response I was expecting.… Continue Reading
I was 10 years old, and I couldn’t understand why the kids in my new school were laughing at me. I’d never been the one that was laughed at. I spent the first 10 years of my life on the East Coast of the United States of America. In the US, I wasn’t considered one […]
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I’m constantly surprised at how fast 3 months can go by. The older I get, the truer this feels. I blink, and here we are, 90 days later. It’s so easy to let those weeks go by without changing the routine, without challenging yourself, without giving life a nudge. Nobody wants their life to stay […]
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Once I discovered this framework, everything changed. Since then, I never approach a new skill without making absolutely sure that I’ve identified what the Threshold looks like and where I am relative to it. My one goal from then on is to make it to the Threshold. Only then can I rest. If you don’t […]
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The speed at which you learn anything new is linked to your amount of connected skills and your level in each one of them. The Web of Connected Skills and the 7 phases leading to the Threshold and closely connected. When used correctly, connected skills will allow you to skip the early phases and learn […]
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It took me two years to publish my first good article. I’m not joking. 24 months. I went through dozens of drafts and a ton of feedback before I finally hit “publish”. I can’t say that I’ve since become a great writer – far from it – but I’ve definitely Crossed The Threshold. These days when I sit […]
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A friend teaches you a great shortcut on your computer. You can clearly see how it’ll make your life better. You try it a few times before moving on with your work, happy you’ve learned something new. A few days later it’s as if that moment never existed. The shortcut is only a distant memory. […]
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It was years ago, but to this day I still recall every detail of how utterly terrified I felt when they called my name. For the first time in my life, I was about to sing to a live audience, alone on stage with my guitar. The loudness of the microphone made me flinch when […]
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We asked everyone in our coffee shop what they were working on. We had no idea how much of an impact it would have on us, and how much it would change the experience of working in the presence of other people. After receiving overwhelming requests to push this further, we just launched #CoffeehouseConnect Week […]
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A friend gives you a guitar so you can learn how to play. Where do you go first? YouTube, right? There are thousands and thousands of videos covering virtually everything there is to know about guitar on that platform. You’ll get to see a teacher who’ll show you exactly what you should do as a […]
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A few days ago I was feeling very anxious. Instead of dealing with it intelligently, I cheated my way through the day with incessant dopamine fixes. I couldn’t help myself. In his book “Guitar Zero” Gary Marcus cites neuroimaging research by Knutson and Cooper that found: “new knowledge can bring the same sort of surge […]
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