by Pat Flynn
Chapter Four
HOW TO PRACTICE BETTER AND IMPROVE FASTER
Now that I’ve explained the principles of generalism, I’ll tell you how I came to learn about each of them through a specific skill or teacher. I want you to know before we begin, however, that these principles are universal and not attached to any particular skill, even if I happened to learn them through playing guitar, growing eggplants, or what have you. There were also times when I already knew the principles, but they hadn’t yet gelled completely in my consciousness. They were merely a blood pudding of amalgamated ideas that needed more time to congeal. I suspect this might also be the case for you—a lot of these principles are pretty much common sense, and sometimes people just need to structure them up or flesh them out or allow them to marinate. My hope with the sections that follow is to do exactly that, by giving a fuller representation of each of these five principles and some context about how they apply or at least how they applied for me. Later, we’ll get specific on how and what to practice in accordance with these principles for assembling a skill stack.
Please understand that these five principles are the orienting and philosophic foundation of generalism, and without them, any tactics we’ll examine later may still be limitedly useful but might also send you in the wrong direction, chasing pointless things. Principles are what guide us, so don’t skip ahead. Be patient and thorough in examining these following few pages. The lessons are neither long nor lugubrious, but they are important.
PRINCIPLE 1: SKILL STACKING > SPECIALIZATION
I learned about skill stacking from my high school guitar instructor, who made me very unhappy at first because all I wanted was to learn shredder-style guitar solos. But every time I proposed doing so, he’d say we should take the time to learn other kinds of music too. He’d say he could tell I was very eager to play shredding solos, but that alone wasn’t going to make me a better musician.
Essentially, he taught me that since I was already good at that type of solo, getting better at that wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go, and he’d explain how he’s kept himself in business as a guitarist by filling whatever roles people needed in either a studio or a band. That isn’t something a specialist (particularly a shredder-style guitar soloist) is able to do. And then to prove the point, he’d show how he could play rock music and jazz and country, and how he could sing, and how he could riff on the piano and the bass and the drums, all hootin’ and hollerin’ like, and so I came to decide that maybe this guy was onto something. But that was hardly the half of it, because then he’d show how adept he was at producing and marketing, as well, since he had thirteen albums out, and not one of them was a total flop by any conventional standards of self-publication. Meaning they sold more than thirteen copies.
So you’d think at this point I’d have been receptive to what he had to say, but don’t worry, I definitely wasn’t. I was still stuck on being a specialist—the greatest shredderstyle guitar soloist in a time when nobody listened to that technique. But he kept trying to get me to understand and take his advice to heart. He’d explain that it was because he was not the best at any one thing that he always had a paying gig and had always been able to make money on his own and support his family. He also explained how getting good at many different things gave him many different streams of income, including playing in a band, playing in recording sessions, selling his own music, and, of course, giving guitar lessons to friendly people like me. This is how he was making half a million dollars or so a year as a guitarist without being famous or the best in the world—without even having a college degree. When he told me that, I was like, Wow, this guy makes more money than my dad, and I kid you not, he actually said, “I bet that’s more than your dad makes.” It struck me: You know that’s kind of weird you’d say that, but technically I think you are correct.
Now, here was a guy who made good money, and he was doing something I admired: he was playing the guitar and he was awesome at it. Sure, he wasn’t famous like Angus Young of AC/DC, but he was really good, and he was beholden to no one. He made his own music and his own schedule. He was doing what he loved and thriving while doing it.
The secret to all of it: skill stacking.
Not only did he play a number of diverse styles and instruments, but he took the time to learn all the necessary business-related skills, such as producing and marketing and sales. He was the first to admit he wasn’t the best at any of it, but he didn’t need to be. Just as any true generalist knows (right, friends?), you only have to be just good enough at the various necessary skills and then stack them together in a unique and useful way. My guitar instructor did exactly that, and that’s why people chose him when they needed someone on their recordings, since most bands don’t need a musician who’s the best at just one thing—they need somebody who can play rock one day and jazz the next, and maybe even sell some paraphernalia.
What I learned from my guitar instructor is that skill stacking applies at the bottom level and at the top, within a specific skill and to the whole lasagna of life itself. For instance, he could also get the word out about his skills and what he could offer, and he could cut albums that didn’t sound half bad—that were quite catchy, in fact. I never appreciated that until I became older, but looking back, now I can see this was all very deliberate and effective and good.
He was a stark contrast to a lot of my previous guitar teachers. Yes, some were more skilled guitar soloists or had better dexterity, but they were not as musically versatile. Few knew much about marketing or producing or sales. So maybe that’s why some of them were still living in a studio above the music shop, with their girlfriend subsidizing the rent. They didn’t have the skills to stack, so they were hoping they could become a good enough specialist to be signed by a record label.
I think that last point is among the most significant differences between generalists and specialists. Specialists try to be the best at something so they can get enough attention for somebody to scoop them up and offer them a contract of some kind—they end up being dependent on somebody else. Generalists, however, acquire whatever skills they need so they can be successful entirely on their own. That, my little rabbit, is the secret to sweet, sweet freedom.
I learned this principle as a young guitarist, but I didn’t fully apply it until I was a business owner—that’s when it finally became obvious. When it comes to business, I’m not the best at any one facet of it—I’m not the best at writing or sales, and I’m not the best at training employees. But I’m good to great at all of it, which is why I’ve been able to make money doing what I like—really, doing what I love. It’s only because I’ve been able to stack skills that I’ve gotten ahead of those who are clearly more capable than I am at a particular specialty. So what if someone can do more pull-ups than I can, because I can still do a lot of pull-ups, but you want to know something? I can also launch a successful ad campaign, which that person probably has no idea about. And maybe someone can launch a better advertising campaign than I can, but I’m guessing I’m in better physical shape.
See how that works? As a generalist, you always win, so long as you know what to compete in.
Here’s the short of it: skill stacking lays a foundation for success that gives you a chance at a thriving, meaningful, productive, and independent existence, something like a Huacaya alpaca—standing ever so strong and free atop the Andes mountains. And fluffy, let us not forget. Now, how you go about stacking those skills is something we’ll get into later. But first, let’s spend some time on the next principle, which applies more specifically to skill development—Short-Term Specialization.
PRINCIPLE 2: SHORT-TERM SPECIALIZATION
I finally decided I needed to get a handle on things when my anxiety became enormously high—I felt it was time to start meditating. I hired an online coach, some Zen guy, and the first thing he asked was how often I was practicing meditation. I told him not very often, just a little bit here and there. He asked me how ma
ny minutes a day that was, and I said sometimes five minutes and sometimes zero minutes because I’ve got a lot of other things to do. He then asked how much time I put into things that really mean a lot to me (like exercise and guitar), and I said typically I practice those every day. At that point, though, I could see what he was trying to do, so I got ahead of him and said, “You know, coach, I think what I need—you know what I need, coach?—I need to start practicing meditation like I practice the guitar. Now, what do you think of that, coach?” He said that sounded infinitely wise and wondered how I ever came to such an enlightened conclusion. He told me that meditation, like any skill, must be honed with focus and intensity. He said that it would not do to meditate just “whenever the convenience presents itself,” just as it would not do to exercise or play the guitar in such a haphazard way and expect to get better at it. That is no way to make progress. “What you need to make progress,” he continued, “is consistency.” He asked how much I wanted to get rid of my anxiety, and I said I wanted to get rid of it more than anything. He said that sounded significant but asked, “Do you hate it more than anything—even more, say, than those little tiny hairs that fall down the back of your neck when you’re getting a haircut?” I thought about it and concluded they’re about equal. That’s how he knew I was seriously afflicted.
He asked why I was prioritizing so many activities other than getting rid of anxiety. If anxiety was my biggest concern, he wondered, why was I so focused on things that had no relevance to that? I told him that I didn’t know why, and he speculated that perhaps I was afraid of something. And he was right. I was afraid of what I might be giving up by getting rid of my anxiety. I admitted I was scared that if I started to specialize in something like meditation, I would lose progress elsewhere and not be as good at those other skills anymore. He understood; I told him this, in itself, gave me anxiety.
He seemed almost irritated at that, and he advised me that all progress is a matter of managing compromise and I shouldn’t hold such a childish view of things. If I want to fix one problem, I have to be willing to make a little less progress on another, at least for the time being. He noted that if I’m working especially hard on getting rid of my anxiety, then I shouldn’t be concerned with setting all-time personal records in weightlifting or perfecting my songwriting; I should just focus on getting good at meditating. I shouldn’t let other areas of my life fall apart, but I need to be willing to let progress slide occasionally and become OK with the notion of “opportunity cost”—sacrificing some gains in one area for focus on another.
I understood what he was saying but didn’t like it. He said it didn’t matter whether I liked it—this is how we improve, and I didn’t have to specialize in meditation forever. I only needed to dedicate a long enough period of time to make progress and establish a routine, and then I could back off a bit. He explained that meditation is just like exercise in the sense that I must devote more effort and energy up front to overcome my inertia, but once I’ve built the momentum, it becomes fairly easy to maintain. I didn’t know it at the time, but this man was explaining the principle of Short-Term Specialization to me.
The fear I had is the same fear I think all of us have. We make progress in one area, but then we’re afraid to switch focus because we don’t want that progress to taper off. We’re afraid that if we focus on adding muscle after losing weight, we won’t be as lean as we were before, so we keep ourselves in a cycle of dieting. Sure we stay lean, but that comes at a cost. We never really grow or improve in anything else.
However, if we would have just been OK with shifting focus for a while, we could have added strength and muscle, and so what if we gain a little weight in the process? We could always focus on leaning out again later, and when we do, we’ll look even better than before since we’ll have a lot more definition in our muscles.
It’s that little sacrifice in the short term that allows for considerable progress in the long term. That’s Short-Term Specialization.
So, yeah, while I was meditating, I made a lot of progress reducing my anxiety but not as much at everything else. But I still maintained everything else and I even improved upon some skills. Just because you switch emphasis doesn’t mean you have to let other skills fade away. It’s not actually all that hard to get good at meditating while doing other things, like staying physically active, for example. There’s enough time to short-term specialize in each. But it is hard to start a successful business while training for a bikini competition and recording a guitar album, for instance. These types of goals are better done one at a time, I would think.
The point is that you have to be OK with letting some areas develop more slowly as you surge in the area you most want to improve. You also have to be OK if progress in some areas slips off a bit as you’re doing this.
This all sounds fine in theory, but in practice it comes with a lot of hang-ups, because once we get good at something, we can hardly stand to see it recede, even if only an inch. You’re going to have to get over that, like I did. At some point these sacrifices have to be made, so they might as well be made intentionally.
And remember you’re not letting progress slide forever. When you come back to something later, you’ll probably make more progress than ever, since you’ve given yourself the time to improve in other areas that might very well support the previous thing.
For example, say you got strong at deadlifting, but then you decide to lose some weight, so you go on a diet. Well chances are, while you’re leaning out, your deadlift isn’t going to be as strong as it was, even though you should still train the deadlift. Just accept that your deadlift will fall off a little because the sacrifice you’re making with that skill is more than offset by the progress you’re making in body composition. Once you’ve reached your desired level of slimness, you can focus on deadlifting again, and the next thing you know, you’ll be stronger than ever at it—this time without being thirty pounds overweight. That’s the power of Short-Term Specialization.
Back to my meditation example. After my coach said I was being silly about this, he told me to start meditating first thing in the morning and to put my best effort into it. He said to also challenge myself with one anxiety-producing activity a day and use mindfulness to see my way through it (see Principle 4: Integration > Isolation).
I followed his advice, and because I was willing to specialize for a little while, I began to see a fantastic improvement in my quality of life: I became way less anxious and started to sleep better and was a lot nicer to people because of that. Obviously, this carried over and improved my performance elsewhere, since less stress meant more attention, more focus. In a roundabout way, it was specializing in meditation that made me better at a lot of other things, including working out, because of the carryover benefits, just like the carryover benefits you get from exercise. Not all skills work this way, but a lot of them do. It’s nice when it happens.
Speaking of fitness, this may be an appropriate segue into the next principle: the Rule of 80 Percent, which is perfectly illustrated by the gym.
PRINCIPLE 3: THE RULE OF 80 PERCENT
The Rule of 80 Percent was taught to me in the weight room, since my original fitness coach was also my tae kwon do instructor, who knew very well there was little point in trying to be the best in the world at exercising. Everything we did had to make me better at what I was trying to be good at, which was kicking and punching things, and to do this, he wanted me to improve as many areas of my fitness as possible, without going too far in any one direction. This would lead me to being well-rounded, which also means I would be better at tae kwon do.
We spent a lot of time strength training. But we also ran and stretched muscles. He was making me a generalist in fitness, even if I had never thought of it that way. And the one thing I most expressly remember about training with him was that good enough was good enough. He never pushed me to have the world’s heaviest front squat; he wanted me to have only a heavy enough front squat to get what
I needed from the exercise (in this case, it was a stronger anterior chain, which meant more powerful kicks) and then leave it at that. If an exercise wasn’t making me better at everything else, we stopped focusing so much on it and moved on.
Well, fast-forward a little more than a decade and here we are with the Rule of 80 Percent, which, as mentioned, states a that a generalist should go up to, but never beyond, 80 percent “good” at anything. This principle was again reinforced by my business partner Som Sikdar.
Som holds a major in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and yet makes his living owning martial arts studios. He’s a proficient generalist and he’s also good with graphs and numbers. The reason I mention that is because Som once said that the closer you get to 80 percent good at something, the more the rate of return diminishes, until it’s not worth putting any more effort in—unless you’re trying to be the best in the world at that particular something. He calls this point the “asymptotic trade-off,” so if you’ve ever seen a chart where the slope suddenly rounds off and starts decreasing at an increasing rate, you have some idea of what Som’s talking about. It’s a sort of flattening-out point, as far as progress goes.
As I explained in the previous chapter, if you’re already 80 percent good at something and not reaching your goals, that something isn’t your problem. For example, imagine being 80 percent good at bench-pressing. Well, I just looked up the world record drug-free bench press, which the internet tells me is 713 pounds. So if 713 pounds is 100 percent, then 80 percent good at bench-pressing is 570 pounds (for men). That is way more than any person needs to get the benefits from bench-pressing—believe that. I repeat, there is no reason a generalist needs to be more than 80 percent good at anything; there is no reason a generalist needs to be more than 80 percent good at anything; there is no reason a generalist needs to be more than 80 percent good at anything.