A little over a year ago, I read the book, The Slight Edge.
Essentially, the slight edge is your philosophy of life. The slight edge is your driving force; your philosophy creates your attitudes, which creates your actions, which creates your results, which create your life. You should live your philosophy each day. By performing tasks which are located on the path to your goals, you can achieve anything.
Each and every day, you and I both have an opportunity to do a little bit and become a little better than the day before.
I can almost guarantee you won’t be successful by putting in 1 hour, or doing something for 1 day.
BUT, doing 1 hour a day for a week will get you closer to your goals. Doing 1 hour a day for 1 year will make you better than 90% of other people out there. 1 hour a day for 5-10 years? You’ll become an overnight success and do more than you could have ever dreamed.
This post is the conclusion to our becoming a better learner series here in May 2018. In this post, I will be sharing with you why it’s so critical to do a little bit each and every day, talk about my progress playing piano, and recap my takeaways on the series.
Concluding Our Becoming a Better Learner Series
This month, we’ve covered a lot of ground.
Self improvement is something I’m fascinated with, and a topic and skill I’ve been working on for the last 5+ years.
My favorite quote exemplifies why I work on myself:
“Your level of success rarely exceeds your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.” – Jim Rohn
I’m going to be successful because each and every day I work a little bit towards my goals. I don’t watch TV, don’t play gaming systems alone (I will with friends once and a while), and I’m conscious of my time going out.
While the effort is there, I can still work to become more efficient.
I dive into a lot of new topics because I want to expand my horizons and knowledge base. If I’m looking at something new, I need to figure out the best way to go about it and to speed up my time to proficiency.
This is why we pursued learning how to become a better learner.
How You Can Become a Better Learner
This May, I’ve covered all of the steps I believe are important to becoming a better learner (with the help of 4-Hour Chef, a book by Tim Ferris 🙂 )
We touched on the importance of learning, why we need to start with why and goal setting, and then got into DiSSS and CaFE.
Here are all of the posts from this month:
- Practicing Learning and How to Become a Better Learner
- Step 0 of Becoming Better at Learning: Goal Setting and What’s Your Why
- Deconstructing Your Goals for More Effective Learning
- What Can You Learn Today Which Will Bring 80% of Your Results?
- Optimally Order Your Actions for Success in Learning
- A Way to Guarantee You Will Do Your Work
- How to Retain Knowledge More Easily
- The Optimal Practice Frequency for Becoming Better
- The Power of Imagery and Association: Remember More with Encoding
My Journey in May 2018 in Becoming a Better Piano Player
Show me, don’t just tell me.
Anyone can put up anything on the internet these days.
I can write all about learning and how to become a better learner, but all of that is wasted knowledge if I don’t actually apply it in my life. (it’s also bogus if I don’t practice what I preach!)
This month, alongside this series of posts, I’ve started playing piano again with the intent to learn how to become a better piano player.
I set out to become better at sight reading and develop a little bit better of a musical ear, and while I’m not amazing yet, I’ve definitely improved.
In each of the posts linked above, I’ve included a video as a supplement, and also to benchmark my progress.
Here’s the last video of my becoming a better people player. In the video below, I talk about how consistent efforts over time will lead to massive results and success, and talk about how I’ve became better at playing piano these last few weeks.
Consistent Efforts Daily WILL Result in Massive Success
After reading The Slight Edge, I started to internalize the principles and concepts, but didn’t do this 100% in all areas I cared about in life.
One of my goals in life is to grow this blog and eventually use this as a lift-off into life post-Corporate America. Last summer, I didn’t have any consistency and as a result, failed to grow this blog. I sat around 2,000 to 3,000 page views a month and had an erratic posting schedule (both in terms of timing and content).
In October, I went to FinCon 2017, and upon coming back, told myself it was time for lift off.
If I wanted a big blog, then I would have to put in the work. 3 posts a week? Let’s do it.
Since November 1st, I’ve posted 3 times a week each and every week.
What have been the results?
Last month, I had over 10,000 page views on this blog. I went from 2,000 page views to 10,000 page views from consistent efforts over 5 months. This month will be 10,000 views again and in the coming months, I know I’ll be going higher.
Was it fun? Kind of. Was it hard work? Yes. Would I do it again? You bet.
These are just 2 examples… here are two more:
- In the last 3 years, I’ve increased my earnings from $63,000 to over $100,000 at the age of 25.
- In the last 3 years, I increased my net worth from a negative $10,000 to over $165,000.
Things don’t happen over night. Becoming an overnight success takes many years.
That being said, the power of compounding is alive and well in the world.
Start today, and you won’t be sorry. Consistent efforts daily WILL lead to massive success.
Concluding Thoughts on Becoming a Better Learning and Consistent Efforts
What do you think? Are you ready to go become an expert in anything you want?
You have the tools to take advantage of the power of compounding, and a strategy for efficient progress in learning.
What are you looking to become better at? Today, after reading this post, go and Google something you’ve been wanting to dive into. Be curious and look to become a little better than yesterday.
You have so much potential – tap into it and experience life beyond your wildest dreams.
Readers: what was your biggest takeaway from this series? What are you working currently? Are you becoming an overnight success?
Erik
