what's up everybody mark manson here and
you know
everybody wants to be great at something
in fact people come up to me all the
time they ask
you know mark how do i become great at
this one thing
i totally get why they ask me because
i'm pretty [ __ ] amazing at like
everything i do is that lettuce in my
teeth these
[ __ ] nose hairs they really spring up
on you
god my sweat smells like onions and the
fact is
i've broken down how to be great at
anything
yes anything into three easy
repeatable steps just one two three boom
you are a world-class performer
and whatever you want to be for a
limited time it's only
nine thousand dollars 999 wait
9 000 i can't even get the price right
just watch the video
[Music]
before we dive into how to become great
at something
this video is brought to you by mark
manson an up-and-coming personal
development author
whose books have sold more than 10
million copies mark manson was a popular
blogger
and now has a weekly newsletter called
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the lens the lighting the chair he's
sitting on
pretty much [ __ ] everything in this
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tried to set up said lighting but even
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still pretty goddamn terrible at it
alright back to you mark ah thanks mark
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uh you know he's doing his best he's
trying pretty hard here
even if he kind of smells like onions
all right so three step process how to
get great at anything step number one
learn the fundamentals figure out what
the 20
is that drives to 80 of results there
was this economist who lived
like a long time ago named ricardo
perretto and he had this principle that
he discovered which was that
essentially 80 of economic output was
generated by roughly 20
of the companies similarly within the
companies about 80
of the productivity came from 20 of the
workers this became known as the 80 20
rule or the 80
20 principle and it applies to nearly
everything
20 of the customers will make 80 percent
of your purchases
20 percent of the population pays 80 of
the taxes
20 of the politicians are responsible
for 80
of the corruption i mean you can just
you can go on and on what's interesting
is sometimes it goes beyond the 80 20
principle sometimes it's the
90 10 principle or the 99 1 principle
for example in music
one percent of the songs account for 99
of what people listen
to in sports one percent of the athletes
make
99 of the money in publishing one
percent of the books
are read 99 of the time so the first
step of
entering any field or developing any
skill set
is figuring out where the 80 20 is what
is the 20
that's going to create 80 of the results
think of these like
leverage points where are the actions
and effort that you can get a
disproportionate amount of returns
for example in writing if you read some
books on how to improve your writing one
of the first things that you'll notice
is that everybody says that
editing has a disproportionate effect on
how good the writing is
editing is the twenty percent that
drives the eighty percent of results
ernest hemingway once famously said the
first draft of everything is [ __ ]
and i can tell you from experience that
is completely true
nobody writes a good first draft
everything is full of inconsistencies
and
[ __ ] and run-on sentences it's only
through the revisions and the edits and
the rewrites that you actually get a
sparkling clean beautiful piece of
writing
similarly in music you find that there's
only a handful of chord progressions and
concepts of harmony
that account for like 80 or 90 of the
popular music that you hear
so if you're able to simply learn a few
of those chord progressions or
understand the harmony behind those
chord progressions
you're going to immediately be able to
play the vast majority of music that
people want to listen to or like in
chess
if you study chess at all you will
quickly find that there are many
repeatable patterns that come up
consistently game after game there are
opening patterns they're mid-game
patterns there are
in-game patterns there are forks and
pins and different concepts around
pawn structure if you're able to focus
on those patterns
that will help you be a better chess
player than 80 90
of people generally this first step it
requires taking an introductory course
reading a couple books maybe hiring a
coach
but the focus should always be what is
the 20 that's driving the 80
a lot of introductory courses especially
in university
they don't tell you what that 20 is that
drives the 80. you have to figure that
out yourself
a good coach will point that out to you
but a bad coach will not
so this is something that always needs
to be in the forefront of your mind when
you're taking on a new pursuit
step numero dos arrange
a system so that you receive feedback
consistently
and reliably you can't improve on
anything unless you receive
feedback on it now that feedback could
take many different forms it could be a
teacher
telling you that this term paper you
wrote was terrible
it could be a coach telling you that
your basketball shot is all off and you
need to
like move your elbow or something
whatever basketball players do
it could be putting your music online
and hearing what your friends and family
members think about it
but whatever it is you need a consistent
system of feedback
you need evaluation on your performance
so that you can adjust your performance
and you can begin to iterate
iteration is the fundamental basis of
all improvement now here's the problem
people make two mistakes with step
numero dos
they either don't receive feedback so
they just write in their bedroom for
years and years and years and never show
it to anybody
or they shoot baskets in a gym and never
play against anybody
and it's because they're they're afraid
of criticism they're afraid of losing
they're afraid of
being embarrassed they're afraid of
being made fun of
or the second problem is that they
receive the feedback
and then they refuse to listen to it in
either case if you don't
accept the feedback then you're not
going to improve this is where ego comes
into the process
you know it's the people who are afraid
of feedback it's because their ego's a
little bit too fragile they need to
protect themselves whatever they're
pursuing it's it's
too fundamental to their identity so
they can't allow themselves to threaten
it
that's not a healthy way to pursue
anything if if the thing you're pursuing
is the only meaningful thing in your
life
you're not going to get very far
similarly a lot of people
they think they're hot [ __ ] before
they're hot [ __ ] they're sitting there
publishing short stories online and
nobody's reading them and they're like
man you know it's just because
i'm just too [ __ ] brilliant people
don't you know people don't get it
if you're ever telling yourself that
you're probably full of [ __ ]
step number two also kind of explains
why coaching is a thing
because you know it's easy to ignore
your friends but if you're paying an
expert to give you feedback it's kind of
hard to ignore that feedback i mean
otherwise why the [ __ ] are you paying
this guy
the other great thing about a coach they
can point out when you're protecting
your ego they can point out when you're
deluding yourself and ignoring the
proper feedback so while this step
sounds
very simple like oh yeah i get feedback
all the time it's actually very
difficult
it's very difficult for most of us to
listen to criticism and be realistic
about it
be honest about it actually taking it
into consideration
and changing what we do step number
three
now that you know how to iterate wait
where's my microphone now that you know
how to iterate
iterate for five thousand to ten
thousand hours
i know what you're thinking right three
steps wow that's easy
ten minute youtube video here we go all
right you get to step number three and
it's like
10 000 [ __ ] hours are you [ __ ] me
who has that kind of time
all right all right this is one the
this is the harsh truth
[Applause]
harsh truth of the day there are no
[ __ ] shortcuts
okay there's no short nobody took a
shortcut anything you hear about the the
overnight success you heard about in the
paper
you read about on facebook it's [ __ ]
don't listen to it
you gotta put the time in you gotta
iterate man like
one way i think about this is that if
i'm gonna try to become
excellent at anything i need to fail a
thousand times
and the faster i can get those thousand
failures out of the way the sooner i
will start experiencing success at that
thing
as a culture we love we love
like we get such a [ __ ] hard on for
these over
overnight success stories there's no
overnight success
it's absurd you take like the beatles
right it's like one of the most
uh storied important music careers
of the last century in people's minds
it's just these like
random 20 year old kids from liverpool
just show up and have all this amazing
music
the beatles [ __ ] grind it they were
playing
five to six hours a night in germany
like
old dank german bars in the red light
district for like
no [ __ ] money nobody was listening
six nights a week
for like a year that's so much [ __ ]
time
one of my favorite interview moments
ever i remember i saw an interview of
the facebook co-founder dustin moskowitz
and the interviewer actually asked him
what does it feel like to be an
overnight
billionaire and he like just laughed and
he was like
if by overnight you mean working all
night every night for seven years
it was really tiring and stressful
that's what an overnight success is i
ran into this stuff with my own book you
know when i started doing tv interviews
and
press interviews people were like oh
this came out of nowhere right it's like
no [ __ ] i've been blogging for
eight years
i was writing [ __ ] online dealing with
[ __ ] hate mail and trolls
since 2007 this did not happen overnight
this was nine years in the making all
right so that that's it for today go out
and you know become excellent at
something let me know how it goes
10 years from now and uh you know by
then i'll probably forget about this
video and i won't care anymore so
peace
[Music]
step number three
please don't use that