It’s a new year and you might have a new years resolution planned out and all that.

I hope you had the time to reflect what happened this year and go for whatever you want to accomplish in 2019.

What I’d like to share with you today are skills to help solidify what you plan to accomplish. These skills, when followed in sequence, will cause an infinite loop to help you get better and better. I assure you that whether your goal is to lose weight or to build a house, these skills will give you an unbreakable foundation to accomplish that.

This is in essence, meta-learning. Or the ability to learn better. In an age where information is easy to acquire, this is now a more important skill than ever because it teaches you how to dig deeper and apply more sweat into your goals.

Read more

Not a lot of people read anymore. After high school or college, why should you? You’ve learned everything, right? Very few people actually read long form books after college. So if you read, congratulations! When you read or listen to an audiobook, or highlight on the Kindle, you are making a choice in furthering your education. You are slowly becoming an expert in something that most people just read a Wikipedia entry on.

Reading allows you to dive into the mind of an expert. It is said that if someone wants to be an expert in the subject, all you need to do is read ten books about the subject. Sure, you’re thinking if you read ten different books, you get ten different opinions but that’s actually not the case. What’s interesting is that certain topics have facts, that get solidified as you read book after book. From self-help to survival theory, to food science, all the experts generally say the same thing.

However, what is nice about reading multiple books on the same topic is that you learn different applications. In fact, you can argue most nonfiction books fill out their common message, with examples. The more examples that are presented to you, the more things start to make sense. Perhaps one stick or one resonates and that makes the knowledge worth it.

Podcasts, online courses and other types of long-form media are also really great resources to solidify a team. Most authors have some sort of long-form content besides a book. Like a podcast, or an online course. If they don’t, someone in that list of ten books should. Or that’s just an opportunity to become an expert by launching your own thing.

So a good goal, especially if you want to start becoming an expert at something, is to read ten books on a specific topic, and then….

Apply More

Most people love to read, but they don’t do anything with the knowledge. They might know a lot, but they probably don’t want to do anything about it.

Whenever I do an extension course such as bars and extrusion, because I’ve physically worked in this space, the knowledge that I learn clicks so much better. This is also what I’ve learned through marketing and building websites. When you do the skill, you actually create a feedback loop of wanting to do better.

To learn a specific skill, you loop from reading about the topic to applying what you’re reading, and back again. Eventually, you tinker and work on your craft enough where it actually works. And you continue on.

Build More

When you build a house, you probably have to read how to build a wall, then you fail, and then you read more. Then you succeed. Now you have to read to build a roof.

When you build a food product, you can create a recipe, but then what? How do you produce it? Where do you produce it? What type of package would be right for it? Who should you give it to first? How do you showcase your product to everyone?

As you start building things, the cycle adds on. You repeat the reading and applying process until you build it. Now the method isn’t quite cyclic, but now it’s building chunks and putting them together.

Building things take time and there are two approaches to dealing with this. This is highly dependent on your personality.

You can either envision a big picture project, or you just enjoy the journey.

Fail More

It’s ok if things don’t work out. There have been many times where things haven’t worked and I lost money or time, or people’s trust.

Failing is like getting punched in the face or punched in the gut. It hurts a lot the first time, but it gets better. Perhaps you know how to clench your gut or exhale after a hit. Not only that, but your body adapts to it psychologically and physically.

Failing is kind of like that. It hurts the first time, but after you do it over and over, it’s not that bad.

Never knowing failure keeps people obscure, but perhaps this is a good thing. Most geniuses who make it to college at age 10, are never heard from again because they are afraid to look dumb even though they’re smart. They are scared to go outside their comfort zone.

Having the humility to be dumb is one of the most vital skills you can have to succeed in this world. It allows you to ask better questions, brush off insults, and be grateful to the people who are smarter than you. A person who knows he’s dumb raises his hand during a lecture and asks a question. Most people are scared to ask questions in fear of looking dumb, but in reality, those who ask questions are smart.

Oh, and I don’t get punched in the face a lot. I’m no ruffian. I did do Tae Kwon Do in my teenage years which involved being beaten up for sport.

Succeed more

As you fail through each step, you’ll eventually succeed through each step as long as you’re persistent.

Success is measured differently by everyone. Resolutions fail because the metric of success is something you’re not used to. It’s a balance because you want this year to be the best, so you challenge yourself to do these things. But life gets bsuy and you fail and forget.

For me, I don’t like resolutions. Yes, I have certain goals I’d like to accomplish in 2019, but those are more of the standard things.

What I’ve noticed is that I live my life in themes.

Here’s a post on facebook Janurary 1^st, 2018.

The last sentence “the only thing constant is change”, ended up being a theme about change. As many know, a lot of different things happened this year where I said “yes” to change. At the end of the day, I own a company, and it’s kicking off. When I was approached to start Better Meat Co, this exact quote surged through my head, and the choice was easy.

This year? I want to focus on reducing more. The company’s purpose is reducing meat consumption, so some might think it’s a cop-out.

But I believe that keeping this “reduce more” theme in my head will cause a lot of things to subconsciously happen. Perhaps I myself will eat less meat, or drink less, or not stress out working so much, or reduce my time to play video games. That’s the best part about thinking thematically. You end up making every year special because the theme is constantly in your head.

 

These skills can all be accomplished by working on a specific skill set or project. I hope 2019 gives you the opportunity to write more, make that birdhouse you always wanted to make, cook every recipe from that new cookbook, or start a company that can change the world.