so a couple of weeks back i interviewed a world-class circus performer Laido Ditmar
for my new podcast the other pill podcast lido is a world-class juggler that still performs in the
cirque du soleil and he's one of four people in the entire world who have ever been able to juggle
11 rings at the same time this is definitely someone who is at the top of the top of their
field for a particular skill so i decided to spend a large portion of the interview trying to figure
out exactly how he got that good and today i'll be summing up what i learned to show you the secret
to mastering any skill now according to lido the secret all comes down to how you practice if you
think about it most of us practice like this we warm up for a little bit then we run drills
on something that we're familiar with to try to perfect it and then at the very end of the session
or a little bit here and there we'll try to do something new something that's on the edge of what
we're comfortable with something that is outside of our comfort zone so it's probably something
like 10 warming up then 70 percent practice and trying to perfect old stuff and finally the last
20 is trying out new stuff that's beyond what you're comfortable with i could definitely relate
to this because i first got introduced to the world of dance all the way back in middle school
and i remember back then i would just practice the same four to five moves over and over again i was
obsessed with perfecting my footwork so i ended up spending maybe ninety percent of my practice
time throughout the next three years on just those couple of moves and now that i'm thinking
about it this was probably the reason why i did not see much improvement in my abilities for the
first couple of years now according to lido the easiest way to start massively improving is by
adopting a completely different way of practicing he suggests warming up and quickly transitioning
into the stuff that's past your limits and then at the very end of your practice session
going back to the things that you want to perfect so his formula looks something more like this
ten percent warming up seventy percent trying out something that is beyond your current capabilities
and then the last twenty percent when you start to feel a bit tired that's when you go back to the
stuff that you want to perfect when he revealed his unique way of practicing i immediately thought
of a kid who can't really swim being thrown into the deep end of the pool so i'm going
to call his method of practice deep and practice and i can definitely attest to the efficiency of
this form of practice because when i finally got to college i remember thinking to myself
damn my footwork is pretty good but i don't know what to do with the rest of my body
so i started placing limits on myself when i practice for example i would tell myself
okay i'm gonna dance to the song but only with my arms or only with my head and the moment i started
practicing like this the moment i spent the majority of my time on things that were outside of
my comfort zone that's when i started seeing rapid improvements that's when i finally became a decent
dancer now some of you might be thinking well how can you perfect the old stuff if you're spending
so much of the time on practicing new stuff and that's a valid concern but what's interesting
is according to lido if you spend time on things beyond your capabilities you'll often notice
a significant improvement when you go back to practicing the old stuff for example he discovered
that trying to juggle eight rings at the same time actually made him better at juggling six rings as
compared to only practicing with just six rings and the reason this happens is most likely because
when you practice things outside of your comfort zone you're actually learning new techniques that
makes your overall skill better you're also being forced to be more present when you're trying to
push your limits and this causes the quality of your practice sessions to be better as you're
putting in your entire 100 focus into the session so to sum things up if you want to become the best
of the best you should try deep end practice by spending the vast majority of your time
on movements and techniques that are currently beyond what you are capable of spend time pushing
your limit as compared to practicing the old stuff try it out and let me know what happens
and of course since we're talking about skills this episode is brought to you with the help of
the guys over at skillshare which is an online learning community with thousands of classes
topics ranging from things like copywriting to animating speaking of animating i know a lot of
you have been asking about how we make these videos if you want to learn exactly how some
of our artists do this all you got to do is check out animation for illustration by libby vanderblog
on skillshare it's a beginner friendly course that will introduce you to many of the things
we use for our videos skillshare is giving away access to the premium membership to the first 1000
people who click on the link in the description box below after that it's only ten dollars a
month which is incredibly affordable compared to what you would have to pay to learn these
skills in an in-person class so definitely check it out besides that guys stay tuned