All beginners want to know what the key to mastering the new skill is.
The answer is always the same.
What is it?
It’s knowing and doing the basics so well that they’re second nature. Most people want to find a short cut so that they can advance to the more advanced techniques. After all it is probably these that attracted them to learn this new skill or sport in the first place. If you want to learn to play tennis inevitably you want to be playing fast and furious tennis not drilling your backhand and foot placement.
But guess what …….
The only reason the pros can play that sort of tennis is that they know the basics (foot placement etc) so well that they don’t even need to think about them anymore. If you still need to think about it when doing the basics then the more advanced things are really are very hard to do. Someone who has mastered the basics will be able to concentrate on the more advanced stuff. And guess what, they�ll blow you off the court.
So it’s back to the training court for you. Master the basics and work on them until they’re second nature.
What put me in mind of this is an infographic from Acuity Training that I saw recently. It lays out what the basics for success in an interview are. The key fact is that 93% of success in job interviews is determined by a candidate�s preparation but only 10% of candidates bother to do more than 2 hours of preparation.
It’s the iron law of doing the basics again. You can guarantee that most people know that they need to prepare for a job interview. Even so the vast majority don’t bother.
Just doing the basics of reviewing your skills against the job spec, researching the employer and their industry and making sure that you are well rested and clean and tidy for the interview and you’ll put yourself in the top 10%.
Amazing really given how much time people spend bitching about their jobs that most of them don’t bother to do 2 hours of work when interviewing for a new job. The thing that they forget is that those 2 hours of preparation mean that they will feel confident and well prepared. This will show as they will be more relaxed in the interview, making them far more attractive as a potential hire. That’s the other thing about the basics, if you can do them really well then the more advanced stuff becomes pretty easy as well.
