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Hey what's going on guys?
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So today we are tackling
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how you can learn new skills incredibly quickly.
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Over the course of this video,
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I'm gonna share a four step process
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that you can use to take any skill,
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whether it's related to school or your future career,
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or whether it's just a fun one like guitar or cooking,
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and break that skill down
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so that you can learn as much as you need to
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about the most important parts
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and then start practicing them effectively
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so you can gain basic proficiency really really fast.
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Now this process we're gonna talk about
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applies to any skill,
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because at its core,
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skill development, whether it's really physical
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like basketball
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or whether it's really mental like mathematics,
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it's all learning.
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As you intake information about the skill,
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and as you practice it,
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you're forging new neural pathways in your brain,
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you're connecting them with other neural pathways,
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and you're strengthening them over time.
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As you do this,
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you move though what's called the three stage model
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or skill acquisition,
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which starts with the cognitive stage
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where you're just learning about the skill,
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and you're just forming those neural pathways.
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Then moves into the associative stage
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where you're doing a lot more practice,
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and now you're able to sort of self reflect
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and pick out mistakes and change things
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based on those mistakes.
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And eventually you move into the autonomous stage.
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At that point you have mastered the skill,
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and it's basically able to be done automatically.
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And this autonomous phase takes
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a really long time to get to.
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Mastery takes a lot of hours of practice.
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But that doesn't mean you're doomed to spend
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dozens of hours in the beginning phases,
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because if you know how to structure the learning
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and the practice processes the right way,
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you can make a surprising amount of progress
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in a very very short period of time.
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In fact, in his book The First 20 Hours,
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author Josh Kaufman argues that you can learn
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basic proficiency in almost any skill that exists
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in under 20 hours of dedicated practice.
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And his process for doing this breaks down
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to a series of four distinct steps.
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And in a second we're gonna go over those steps,
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but first I wanna issue you a bit of a challenge.
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If you're sitting there watching this video,
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and you have a skill you've been wanting to learn,
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use this framework to create a plan for doing that.
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Once the video's over,
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take out a piece of paper and create a plan
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going through each of the steps,
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and then start putting it into action.
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So the first step in Kaufman's process
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is to deconstruct the skill.
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Basically you break it down into its component parts,
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and then you prioritize those parts
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based on your particular goals within that skill area.
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Now to give you an example
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let's talk about playing the guitar.
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A lot of people want to play the guitar,
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but there are lots of different ways to play the guitar.
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There's tons of different musical genres,
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you might want to just play a few different songs,
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or maybe you want to be like Slash
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or like DragonForce guitarists
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and be rippin' solos all day long, right?
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These are very different skills.
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So, by breaking it down into individual sub-skills,
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chords, scales, picking technique,
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reading tabs, understanding musical intervals,
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you end up with a list of building blocks
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that you can then prioritize and take action on.
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The second step in Kaufman's process
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is the education step.
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Basically at this point you want to take each sub-skill
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that you've prioritized and learn enough about it
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that you can practice well
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and identify your mistakes and self-correct.
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Now notice I said enough about each sub-skill,
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not as much as you can about each sub-skill.
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Because I know personally I'm the kind of guy
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who will walk into Barnes & Noble
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and look at every single book on the shelf
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related to what I'm interested in,
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and think, I should buy every single one here
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and read them all before getting started.
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And that's just not how good skill development works,
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especially if you want to do it quickly.
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You need to learn just enough about each sub-skill
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so that you can start practicing,
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getting your hands dirty, and making mistakes,
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because then you're gonna know what you should correct.
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Alright, step number three in the process
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is to eliminate any potential barriers to success
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or barriers to your progress and your practice.
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And in my mind,
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the most likely thing that's gonna get in the way
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of your practice is a lack of motivation in the long-term.
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So, find a way to motivate yourself on a constant basis.
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Maybe it's having an accountability partner,
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maybe it's joining a forum where you can talk
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about your interest,
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or maybe it's just making a record
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of every single day you practice
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so you can see a chain developing
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that you don't want to break.
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Alright, so skill has been deconstructed,
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learning has been done,
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and barriers have been sliced in half with a samurai sword.
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We are now on the fourth and final step of the process
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which is simply to practice deliberately.
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In The First 20 Hours,
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Josh Kaufman's rule is that you should practice deliberately
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until you've achieved your goals for each sub-skill
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that you prioritized,
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or until you've hit 20 hours of dedicated practice.
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And what he recommends
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is that you actually practice by using a timer or a clock,
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and track the amount of hours you put in.
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Because when you're practicing something difficult,
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it can be really really easy to overestimate
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how much time you spend practicing.
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Now that we've gotten through the four step process,
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I want to give you a few additional tips
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you can use to make your skill development journey
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even more successful.
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And the first one is to identify the work
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of somebody who is a master
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or somebody who is where you want to be.
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Analyze that work as best as you can,
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and then try to imitate it.
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Now a lot of people are gonna say,
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this is copying, this is ripping people off,
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but actually as long as you're not passing off
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this work as your own,
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this is how a lot of people learn their skills.
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And in fact in Japanese martial arts,
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there's a concept called shuhari
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that is exactly this.
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And in music, it's the same.
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The famous jazz trumpet player Clark Terry
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believed that imitation was in fact
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an essential part of becoming a great musician.
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And he told his students that music learning happens
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in a three stage process,
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which he called imitate, assimilate, and innovate.
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Here's what he said about the role of imitation.
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"By imitating the players you love,
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"you'll begin to understand the music
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"on a deeper level and begin to see a personal sound
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"develop in your own approach to improvisation.
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"Questions that can't be answered
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"by music theory or etude books,
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"like how to play longer lines or how to articulate
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"and swing, will reveal themselves as you start
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"to imitate the masters."
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Part of the reason this tactic works so well
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is it gives you a method to go way way beyond
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your comfort zone and your current level of skill.
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Because if you can take something that a master made,
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and you can analyze it from every angle,
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you can probably recreate certain aspects of it
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even if you don't know exactly what you're doing
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or why you're doing it.
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Then later on as you're kinda backfilling your knowledge
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by learning the theory and all the fundamentals,
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you're gonna be able to say,
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oh that's why I did that, or that's how I did that.
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I didn't understand it at first, but now I get it.
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And I kind of have like a rung to pull myself up
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because I did that work in the first place.
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The Stanford mathematics professor Ravi Vakil
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called it backfilling.
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And here's how he described it in terms of mathematics.
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"mathematics is so rich and infinite
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"that it is impossible to learn it systematically,
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"and if you wait to master one topic
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"before moving on to the next,
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"you'll never get anywhere.
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"Instead, you'll have tendrils of knowledge
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"extending far from your comfort zone.
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"Then you can later backfill from these tendrils,
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"and extend your comfort zone."
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Of course, another way to learn from the masters
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is to simply be taught by them.
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Which is why another way you can really accelerate
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your skill development process
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is by finding a teacher or a coach or a course
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that you can take.
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Now I know from personal experience,
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having a coach or somebody who can tell you your mistakes
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is probably the most valuable thing in the world.
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But you don't have to let geography be a limiting factor
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in your access to teachers
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because there are 100s of 1000s of tutorials
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and online courses that you can use for basically
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any skill that you're trying to learn.
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And one place where you can find those courses
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that I wanna let you know about
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is Skillshare, who's actually the sponsor of this video.
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Now Skillshare is an online learning community
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that has over 12,000 courses in a ton of different subjects.
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And I've actually been taking a few of those
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in After Effects animation,
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but they also have courses in photography,
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graphic design, logo design,
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and things like cooking, guitar, presentation skills.
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In fact, they have a presentation skills class
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from Simon Sinek who gave probably my favorite
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TED talk of all time.
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But one of the reasons I really like Skillshare
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is that it gives you the ability to get feedback
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from both your teacher and from other people
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who are taking the same course.
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There's two ways it does this.
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Number one, below the videos in any course you're taking
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there's a comments section.
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And if you ask a question, you can get an answer
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from the course instructor.
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But also, most of the courses on Skillshare
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have a participation component.
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Basically there is a project section of the course
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where you can upload your own work for feedback.
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Now a membership to Skillshare
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is normally around $8 a month,
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which is right around the same price as Netflix,
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and potentially a lot more useful.
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But, if you wanna get three months
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of completely unlimited use on Skillshare,
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you can get it for 99 cents by using the link
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in the description below,
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and I'll have a few more details about that
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at the end of the video.
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Before we end this video though,
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I've got three additional tips for you.
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And all three of them
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relate to making your practice sessions
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more effective and more useful.
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The first one is find a way to record
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some of the practice you do.