The Value of Emulating Success in Learning Various Skills

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Emulating successful practices in different skills like public speaking, negotiation, and computer programming is beneficial. People naturally copy best practices, but highlighting and consciously applying this approach is crucial. Emulating successful speakers, for example, aids in understanding effective strategies and techniques. Simply copying at the beginning stages is acceptable, but comprehending the why behind actions helps bypass extensive trial and error. Research shows that individuals struggle to invent effective solutions independently. Recognizing successful methods and incorporating them deliberately speeds up the learning process and prevents wasted effort. Success serves as a valuable teacher in the learning journey of mastering various skills.

Life revolves around learning—in school, at our jobs, even in the things we do for fun. But we often don’t progress in any of these areas at the rate we’d like. Consequently, and unfortunately, we often give up our pursuits prematurely or resign ourselves to always being mediocre in our classes, career, and hobbies.

Scott Young has some tips on how you can avoid this fate, level up in whatever you do, and enjoy the satisfaction of skill improvement. Scott is a writer, programmer, and entrepreneur, and the author of Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery. Today on the show, Scott shares the three key factors in helping us learn. He explains how copying others is an underrated technique in becoming a genius, why, contrary to the sentiments of motivational memes, we learn more from success than mistakes, why experts often aren’t good teachers and tactics for drawing out their best advice, why you may need to get worse before you get better, and more.