The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills

It follows, then, that from the standpoint of persuasion, the best way to approach any project, large or small, is to see it in terms of the skills required to perform it well—and to commit to developing and improving those skills. This is skill-hunting in a nutshell. And it strikes an important balance between life-hacking and the masochistic “mor

The simplest way to be direct is to learn by doing. Whenever possible, if you can spend a good portion of your learning time just doing the thing you want to get better at, the problem of directness will likely go away. If this isn’t possible, you may need to create an artificial project or environment to test your skills. What matters most here is

Mastery in any field, from cooking to chess to brain surgery, is a gradual accretion of knowledge, conceptual understanding, judgment, and skill. These are the fruits of variety in the practice of new skills, and of striving, reflection, and mental rehearsal.

Inputs aren’t sexy. The word input might be better reserved for a boring database software. But an input-focused mind is the mark of anyone who has achieved anything extraordinary. The amateur focuses on getting hits and expects short-term results. The professional plays the long game and prioritizes inputs, perfecting them for years with no immedi