The Most Important Things to Master Are the Skills and Actions You Perform Daily
Unlocking Long-Term Success By Taking Daily Action
Table of Contents
TLDR Summary
Mastering everyday skills that you regularly practice is crucial because they can have a major impact on your life over time. Unlike skills learned in isolation, everyday skills are continuously applied and refined, leading to greater proficiency and efficiency.
The Importance of Mastering Everyday Skills
Why Everyday Skills Matter
I firmly believe that the most important, impactful, and useful skills to learn and master are those you practice and apply every day as a natural part of your life. This is due to the problem of transfer. When you learn something in isolation, such as driving a car, it doesn't fully transfer to other activities like riding a motorcycle or a bicycle. The skills overlap, but they're not the same. This problem of transfer means that any small change in the conditions can significantly reduce your proficiency.
The Problem of Transfer
When you learn a specific action, your efficiency drops when the task changes slightly. For example, solving a textbook problem using Newton's method might be easy when it's similar to the example. However, when faced with a different problem, you might struggle and need to review the material. This issue is prevalent in all learning situations. Even if you take a comprehensive course, on e.g. How to Master Google Ads, you'll likely only apply a fraction of what you learned in real-world scenarios.
Memory and Retention
Human memory is imperfect. We forget much of what we learn within a few days if we don't apply it immediately. The best way to retain information is through creation and practical application. If you're not applying what you've learned right away, you'll only remember a small fraction of it.
Focusing on Everyday Skills
Contrast this with mastering the elements of your daily life. For example, if you're a developer spending 8 hours a day coding, improving your coding skills makes sense. Breaking down the skill, identifying key sub-skills, and mastering them will significantly enhance your productivity and the value your coding produces. This principle applies to other daily activities as well.
The Compounding Effect
Since you perform these activities regularly, any improvement will have a significant impact on your life, especially over time. The sooner you make these improvements, the more substantial the compounding effect will be.
Key Areas to Focus on That Will Have a Major Impact on Your Life
A hack here is to essentially follow the programs or routines of experts that have already figured it out. I’ll share some of the people and programs I follow below.
1. Sleep
Mastering sleep is crucial because it affects everything you do. Poor sleep impacts your work, exercise, and personal life. Since we spend a third of our lives sleeping, spending time to master and improve sleep quality makes a lot of sense. My recommended tip here is to start out by reading "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker. If money is not a problem, try Eight Sleep or a Nurosym.
2. Nutrition and Exercise
Nutrition and exercise are daily activities that significantly impact your overall well-being. Mastering both endurance and strength exercises will improve your health and longevity.
- Nutrition and longevity: Check out Peter Attia and Bryan Johnson.
- Strength training: For strength there are hundreds of great coaches. But you should 100% be following a specific program. Right now, I'm following ATG by Ben Patrick. Other great coaches are Charles Poliquin, Pavel Tsatsouline, and Jeff Cavaliere.
- Endurance Training: I follow the principles of Marius Bakken’s Norwegian Method of training.
- Rehab / mobility work: The Ready State by Kelly Starrett.
3. Decision-Making and Mindset
Decision-making and mindset are critical skills that come up frequently. Improving these areas will enhance your efficiency and effectiveness in various aspects of life.
4. Planning and Organizing
Planning and organizing your activities increase productivity and efficiency. These skills act as multiplying factors, improving the output of everything you do. First, you need to define your goals. OKRs is a great framework for doing so. Google uses it. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s probably ok for you too.
5. Social Skills
This could be as simple as scheduling time to hang out with friends. Or you can go deep and practice specific social skills such as storytelling, humor, and persuasion. These are essential for personal and professional interactions. Practicing these skills can make you more engaging and effective in your relationships. I really liked how Shaan Puri said that if a skill often comes up in your life, but it’s a bit embarrassing to say that you’re practicing it. It is probably really useful and worth practicing. For practicing social skills, there is a great book by Leil Lowndes called "How to Talk to Anyone". Or check out Shaan Puri’s incredible episode on the "How I Write Podcast" about storytelling.
How To Apply This In Your Life
Key Principle: The more time you already spend on it, the larger the impact of any improvement you make
The idea is simple:
- Map out what you're spending your time on.
- Sort it by time spent. You now have a prioritized list of areas of your life you can work on improving. Your effort spent improving them should be proportionate to the time you spend on the activities up until you've reached a satisfactory level of improvement.
- Work on improving them. It does not have to be perfect. You can iterate through your list multiple times. Something I've done is to set aside 1 hour to work on the most important activity. Spend that 1 hour. Then move on to the next. The time spent should decrease as you move down the list.
Roughly How I’ve Been Spending My Time
Or when the need for a specific skill comes up in your life, for instance, if you have a salary negotiation coming up, read a few articles or fill out a negotiation template (instead of reading a whole book). The Negotiation One Sheet at the back of "Never Split The Difference" is a perfect example. If you fill that out, and role-play it with a partner you'd learn something new and practice your negotiation skill. The next time you have a salary negotiation, you can read more and improve your negotiation skills further. Or you can just repeat what you did last time. Back to one of the core principles of this article: The more often something comes up in your life, the greater the benefit of spending time on improving it. So ask yourself, if I spent more time practicing this skill, how would it impact my life? The answer will decide how much time you should spend practicing it.
Key Takeaways
- Master Everyday Skills: Focus on improving skills you use daily and weekly to maximize the impact of what you're practicing.
- Apply Immediately: Immediate application of what you learn enhances retention and proficiency.
- Practice When It's Relevant: When the need for a skill occurs in your life, e.g., a salary negotiation, that is the best opportunity to practice your negotiation skills.
Author: Marius Norheim