
How to get better (faster)



You don't get ahead by going faster, but by going slower.
Read slower.
Think deeper.
Wander aimlessly.
Ignore the noise of society and reflect deeply on what you want.
Then take relentless, obsessive, all-consuming action toward your vision until it comes to fruition.

If I could give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be this:
There's a saying that goes, "Smart people learn from their mistakes. Wise people learn from the mistakes of others."
Every problem that you have in life has been solved by someone who has come before you. And you can steal that hard-earned knowledge and make it yours.
Instead of beating your head against the wall, you can learn from the mistakes of those who have come before you.

Whenever I feel stuck, I like to pull up my questions database and ask myself questions. A few of my favorite recently:
If a competent CEO took over your business, what would they fix first?
What’s your next goal and who do you need to know / what do you need to make it happen?
What’s something you continue doing a certain way even though you know there are more efficient alternatives?
Who are you afraid of disappointing and how would your choices change if you released that fear?
What is the hidden price you’re paying for inaction?


I think about this quote way too much…
“Let it offend you that someone else could be handed your days and turn them into something greater.” — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

This quote from Sun Tzu goes so hard:
"Be calm enough to avoid war, and prepared enough to finish it."


How to get better (faster):
(1) Go to the source. I try as much as possible to learn from the actual expert instead of the people talking about what the expert is talking about. It's the most complete version of the idea, and you pick up things that get lost in translation.
(2) Learn by building real-world projects. If you just consume tutorials, you'll forget most of it. But if you're actively building something and watching tutorials to solve the specific problems you run into along the way, you'll learn much faster because you're applying it in real time.
(3) Teach what you learn. Every week I write a newsletter to over 50,000 readers about what I'm learning. That forces me to understand the material well enough to explain it to someone else. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it yet.
(4) Self-review every week. Noah Kagan taught me a habit he called T3B3: at the end of each week, you look at your top three and bottom three pieces of work. Then the next week, you double down on what worked and cut what didn’t. You can do the same for any other aspect of your life. What’s working and how can we do more? What’s not working and how can we do less? Most people never look back at their own week, which is why most people repeat the same week for years.
(5) Start peer groups. Start a group chat with three to five people working toward a similar goal. I've done this for social media, copywriting, and marathon training. If you don't know anyone yet, find them in the replies under your favorite creators or in Discord and Reddit communities in your space.
If you want to get fancy, have a weekly or monthly call where you hold each other accountable and give each other feedback. Keep these calls short and structured. I like to give each person 5 minutes to share what they learned that week, what they're working on, and where they're stuck. Everyone else listens and gives feedback. We keep a shared spreadsheet where we track the inputs we said we would do against the inputs we actually did, so there's accountability from week to week.
Until next week,
Jay “Skill Acquisition Is The Greatest Skill You Can Learn” Yang
Author of You Can Just Do Things & Work With The Best

Ps. Savage
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This newsletter is sponsored by Stanley
I think writing online is one of the best things you can do for your career.
So much of what's happened for me over the last few years traces back to posting. Clients, job offers, business partners, friends I'd never have met otherwise.
For a while, it was simple. Write a post, hit share, and the right people found you.
But lately, it feels like the game changed. To keep up, you need a team around you. The creators at the top are spending millions of dollars a year on teams to run it all for them.
That always bothered me. The best ideas don't come from the biggest budgets, but those are the voices getting through.
That's why I got behind Stanley. I've been on content teams, I've led them, and now I'm a creator myself. A lot of what used to take a team, Stanley handles on its own. I use it every day, and I liked it enough to come on as an advisor.
You shouldn't have to choose between running your business and being known for it.
If you've been meaning to show up online and it keeps losing to everything else on your plate, give Stanley a try for free.

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