Why Listening to Experts Rarely Works and What to Do Instead
Most people who want to get better at something, only have a vague idea of how to get there.
If you’re like most people you’ll probably decide to start by reading an expert’s advice about what they did.
Unfortunately, this rarely accounts the natural advantages or the privileges they had. It takes for granted the context for why their strategy or approach worked.
This is why so much expert advice fails to produce any real results when you try to map it onto yourself.
Before venturing down that path, I recommend a more personalized approach to becoming superhuman. I’m going to show you how to build your own personalize growth plan that is guaranteed to help you become better at whatever you want.
Complete the sentence:
“I want to get better at _____ .”
Ready? Let’s dive in.
1. Identify YOUR Motivation
If you want to grow in any area of your life, it helps to understand what that means to YOU and why it’s important to YOU.
Among those I’ve spoken to, I’ve narrowed it to three primary understandings and motivations.
- Being the best at something (legacy)
- Being better than the average ability (excellence/success)
- Being better than your previous ability (growth/progress)
Whichever path you choose will shape everything that comes next…
Question to answer
Relative to the growth you have in mind, which of these most resonates with you right now?
2. Practice The Disciplines in Context
Improvement in most areas of life are a function of three disciplines.
- physical
- mental
- communication
Your ability to leverage growth in each of these disciplines is inseparable from your understanding of your unique context. This is why advice from experts often doesn’t work.
I am 5’5” tall. My physical context limits my ability to dunk a basketball significantly more than it does 7’4″ Victor Wembanyama.
I am Autistic and have ADHD. My mental context limits my ability to perform tasks that require consistency and short term memory significantly more than those who do not have Executive Functioning deficits.
Understanding my built-in limitations helps me avoid unnecessary struggles. I choose to look for opportunities to lean into my unique physical, mental, or communication context in search of strengths I can leverage for outsized gains.
Each of us has a unique situation that presents opportunities and challenges. The key is to lean into the three disciplines in ways that align with your context, so you can amplify strengths.
Question to answer
Relative to the growth you have in mind, what ways could you leverage your unique context to achieve outsized gains and avoid unnecessary struggle in each or any of the three disciplines?
3. Choose Your Strategy
The last step is to decide your method for improvement.
- learn to perform an extraordinary feat
- master the fundamentals
- develop the capability to see and take advantage of opportunities.
Each of these are paths to help you achieve more success.
Learning an extraordinary feat is about mastering a single, highly visible, and impressive or valuable skill. It could be memorizing the first 1,000 digits of pi (π), being able to deadlift 3x your body weight, or mesmerize a room full of decision makers for 45-minutes with a sales pitch your’ve refined to perfection.
This is about practicing one, specific skill, over and over until you master it.
Mastering the fundamentals is about developing the ability to deliver results consistently. It’s the marketer who stays on budget, always delivers a positive return on investment, and has a well rounded strategy that hits most KPIs.
This is about being reliably excellent, not flashy.
Developing the capability to see and take advantage of opportunities is about seeing loopholes, shortcuts, and ways to do something unconventional while still playing by the rules. These are the video game champions who find the one unbeatable strategy and master it to perfection. These are the people who win a martial arts competition by exploiting a loop hole in the rules. These are the people who capitalize on unforced errors in a chess tournament.
This is about finding leverage, often through the wisdom of experience.
Question to answer
What strategy sounds like the one you most want to pursue?
Your Personal Growth Plan
Rather than follow some expert’s advice, build your own growth plan that is unique to you. Use the 3x3x3 exercise above and layout a plan for yourself over the next 3 months. After that, reassess, and make adjustments.
Without question, you will get better.
Remember that the more ambitious your motivation, the more of the disciplines you will need to practice and the greater the number of strategies you will need to use. If you want to be among the very best at something, you’ll need to max out in each of the disciplines within your unique contexts, and you’ll need to master the fundamentals, be able to see opportunities, while also performing incredible feats.
But contrary to what you’ve been led to believe, you don’t need to be THE BEST at anything. It’s fine if that’s what you want, but if you let go of that idea, you may find that you will be more satisfied with your growth, and will remain committed longer.
Question to answer
What is my personal growth plan over the next 3 months to get better at _____?
Thanks for reading. I’m looking forward to hearing what you do with this.
Email me about it: [email protected]
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