Mastering the art of becoming an expert

 Here's my question to you all !

Ever wondered why sometimes you attend a lecture at university / seminar / classroom and the instructor seems brilliant but you walk away not learning a thing? 

Often times Instructors have lost conscious awareness of 3 elements to becoming an expert and may neglect them from practice.

We all are working towards becoming a master or an expert in a field. So what steps does it take to become an expert?

Probably these three elements are required to developing mastery. 

We must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what we have learned. 

Let me break these down one by one and also provide you with some tips on how you can practice these for your own learning.

Acquiring Component Skills

Acquiring component skills include the basic learning of skills such as reading writing, analyzing, critical thinking. For example: when you are reading something, be it a novel or a book chapter or while analyzing a case study, component skills would include identifying the question, articulating perspectives, recommending solutions.

Tips for practice:

• Identify your blind spots
• Seek support from your mates, guides or supervisors with task decomposition
• Discuss with colleagues
• Explore more materials 

Integration

Practicing these component skills is needed to integrate them into your work, both separately and in combination with different skills. This element is often more difficult and demanding than the first.

Tips for practice:

• Give yourself time to practice and increase fluency
• Temporarily constrain the scope of the task by breaking a large task or skill down and focus on one aspect at a time
• Explicitly include integration in work activities by being intentional with practicing these skills into your day to day

Application

Obtaining the ability to integrate component skills successfully, knowing when and where to use what you have learned is as important as learning it. 

Tips for practice:

• Identify conditions of applicability i.e. identify contexts of where and when you can apply certain skills
• Apply skills and knowledge in diverse contexts meaning application of these skills in multiple situations
• Use comparisons to help identification. This requires identification of other problems, scenarios or tasks to differentiate characteristics and hence the application of the learnt thing in the most suitable situation / task

In order to become a master in your field, acquire the needed component skills, practice and integrate these components for grater automaticity and then understand the conditions and contexts on when and where to apply.

I found this helpful for my learning, I hope you do too. 

Power of little things

Today's post is inspired by the quote "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way", often attributed to

Martin Luther King, II

Sometimes, we set a high bar for ourselves and strive to do the same, if not better. We set high expectations on who we should be, what we should do and push ourselves to so just that.

Except that it doesn't always work out. It fails as we become weighed down by the enormity of our goal, and stresses by the need to do great things, we decide to do... nothing. Days turn into weeks, which turn into months, and nothing happens as we hold on tight to our grand goal, waiting for the perfect moment to set ourselves onto it.

In such cases, here's something to remember: If you cannot do great things now, for whatever reason, then start by doing small things in a great way.

This means,

• If your goal is to start your restaurant, then start by perfecting your recipes for your meals, right in your kitchen.

• If you goal is to develop the next big app, then start by developing tools that people will use, that solves people's pain points.

• If your goal is to be a best - selling author, then start by refining your writing skills, through your daily writing and researching to understand what makes other tick.

• If your goal is to be a top YouTuber, then start by creating simple videos that convey your ideas well.

Whatever big goal you have been putting off, ask yourself: What is that small thing I can do well instead?

Because it's so easy to overlook the small things in favour of that big goal we want to get to. Yet our results in the long-term are built on the little steps we take today.

• An athlete wins the race because he has spent each day following his workout regime without fail.

• A singer achieves her / his big break because she/he has performed many small gigs which helped hone her / his vocals and develop her/his onstage persona.

• An author publishes a best - selling  bool because he has spent years building his expertise and his writing skills.

We are, in essence, not what we will do on some fine day, but what we do today.

While doing small things well today may not seem like a great deal, especially when we stack them up against our final big goal, a 1% improvement each day, done for 365 days, leads to a 37 - times improvement.

But it starts by first committing to these small steps and doing them well. it is not that grand big goal that you're going to work on at some point in the future that matters. It is what you do now, today. these small steps determine what you eventually become.
So, what small steps can you take today? And how can you do these small steps in a great way?

I am starting with my YOGA JOURNEY today by a small step of 1 hour for at least 3 days a week.

Looking forward to knowing about yours...