I’ve spent the last week on a high-intensity training program with my martial arts school. We stayed in a hotel in the mountains and we trained like crazy for more than 10 hours per day. I remember that at one point during a tough day our instructor told us the following:
“It’s when you think that you’ve reached your natural limit that we begin our work”
That quote represents the essence of grow and knowledge. It’s when you’ve reached you current limits that you can take the extra step and learn something new, that’s the only chance you’re given to push your limits.
After that day I’ve spent some time thinking about the effects of living a life where you keep pushing your limits. I had just spent six days training at a level that I never did before, and like me there were many other people, all of us astonished about what we had accomplished. In one week. The reality is that our limits are not fixed and our current abilities does not represent our full potential, far from it.
Now I had one question in mind: how can I achieve my full potential and become very good at something?
It was clear from the beginning that the previous question is somehow misleading. Our full potential is not fixed and thus can’t be really reached. There will always be something that you can do to grow a little bit more in certain areas. Anyway my intention is to figure out how to get that process started in the best possible way.
From my martial arts experience I know that in order to upgrade your skills, you need to do two things. The first one is practicing what you already know, and the second one is trying new techniques. You usually spend the most time practicing what you already know, and only add one or two techniques at the end of the day. In this scenario practicing what you already know represents your current limits, and trying new techniques represents pushing your limits. The reason that you practice a lot is that you need to be able to reach your limits very fast if you want to grow.
You have to be very good at what you already know before trying to learn something new, but once you feel confidence it’s time to try something new, and start the process again.
This, in my opinion, represents the essence of learning. If you want to become very good at something you need to master the basics and constantly try new things. The only way to master the basics is through practice, but make sure that you really understand what’s going on, rote memorization wont do the trick.
This learning approach is certainly not the faster around, but in my opinion is the most effective whenever you want to be considered an expert at something. Don’t worry if it takes you one year to go through a complex book or subject, just make sure that after one year you really understand the stuff you learned.