Top 5 most important things when practicing a new skill
20/05/2025
As you already know, I help people reach the best version of themselves and here is a short but quick post on the most important 5 things you need to do in order to succeed no matter what you start doing and no matter whether you are on your own or supported by a coach:
Stay consistent and keep the course, no matter what happens: Whenever you decide to go for a certain goal, you must be committed in order to ensure that you will eventually succeed. The level of expertise required to achieve great results is increasing by the day and given the age we are living in, with both humans and AI systems increasing their level, people must raise to the challenge in order to succeed.
Value incremental gains instead of quick results: Getting better at something, especially when your goal is to become as good as possible requires a lot of work and even though sometimes quick work can help you improve, life is not a sequence of school tests or exams where you can cram your way through, but a sequence of events where only long term actions will bring any meaningful change. Even though if you look at things on a daily basis, the changes don't seem that big, over time, they accumulate and become a big factor behind every success you achieve. As the saying goes, doing something better every day, even if it's just a small change leads to large improvements over time.
Embrace the setbacks and accept that nothing will go perfectly from the beginning to the end: Even the greatest people, teams, performers have bad days or bad spells, so if it happens to you it doesn't mean the end of the world by any circumstance. The best thing you can do when it comes to dealing with these moments is to assess the situation, learn from the mistakes and emerge stronger for the future challenges. Sometimes it happens that in spite of your best efforts, things don't click in that day. Therefore, you need to stay the course and as long as you will keep doing the right things and follow your strategy, good results and improvement will come.
Accept that there are always so many things to be improved: Most techniques, skills and getting better at anything in general requires a lot of work and this is why discipline is once again essential to ensure that you reach the results you want to. Even though at times there will be moments when you don't feel like doing a certain thing, it is those who do it when they don't feel like doing it who succeed. The inspired over the uninspired. The hardworker over the casual. All in all, a famous saying claims that mastering something requires 10000 hours of work, and even though the exact number is not always the same, we can still conclude that you need a lot of work to become good at something
Tracking your progress is essential for future success: I learned this as I earned better and better results in Informatics Olympiads and the more I worked with my various students and with other people in projects, tracking the progress makes the goal easier to achieve. Knowing that you reached particular checkpoints and milestones makes things so much easier and it helps you stay focused and motivated as you get closer to your ultimate goals.
There are many other things you need to consider, but as long as you follow these 5 key pillars behind success, you will clearly emerge as a winner no matter what you are going to do, be it learning a language, playing a certain game, studying a certain topic or really anything you can think of, because at the end of the day, only those who never give up eventually succeed.