How to Be Better at Almost Everything

by Pat Flynn

  Now, a lot of people—some much more successful than me—hang portraits of their heroes on the wall, so it might seem a little perverse, some might even say a little narcissistic, for me to find motivation in staring at a picture of myself. But I look at it only because it serves a purpose. This photo of me in an ugly brown-and-white sweater vest, smiling a stretched and dimpled smile, full of naïveté and annoyance, serves as a self-reminder to work hard and become the sort of person whom this young boy would be proud of if he knew exactly how his life was going to turn out.

  It reminds me that I don’t want to be just successful. That I don’t want to be just good at things. That I want to do what’s important, what matters. I’m over being remembered or famous. If it happens, great. Mostly I want to make a difference. And to do that, I need to show up every day and put in the work that would inspire my younger self and cause me to look forward to—at the very least not be worried about—the person I was about to become. More than anything, I’d want to be able to assure my younger self that my life would have meaning. That I would do something. And that this something would matter.

  In the previous pages, I’ve made the argument that meaning is found in freedom but not the kind of freedom most Americans would think of. Freedom comes in knowing and making and doing good things, and all of that is more Aristotelian than it is uniquely American. Americans are—how’s the best way to put this?—umm . . . headstrong? Rebelliously independent? We don’t like to be told what to do. I get that, believe me—I don’t like to be told what to do either, especially by some guy in a book, let alone one I’ve never met. But these types of freedom (freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence) are not mutually exclusive—they’re just different types—and one, as we’ve argued, is merely requisite for another. I said you need skills to express yourself—to do and know and make good things—and to the extent you have more skills, rather than fewer skills, well, all the better, wouldn’t you say? When this is stated simply, I think most would agree. Even we rebellious Americans.

  We also start to go against the conventional perspective of achievement when we talk about generalism—or the idea that it is actually better to eschew hard-core, lifelong specialization and to just get OK, maybe even good to great, at a lot of things and then find ways to combine them.

  It’s good to have skills and know things. So far, I’ve presented a series of principles for developing skills, though all of that has been very general. Now I’d like to get specific. And here’s how I think we should go about it.

  When I first began talking about generalism on my blog, a lot of people asked how I would approach public education, since so much of what I was saying seemed contrary to what we are taught in school, particularly in college. We’re instructed to specialize. We’re told that if we want to get ahead, we need to narrow our interests, not widen them. The whole thing is very screwing. It’s why people get degrees in subjects like economics. And it’s why people then get even more specialized in their degrees upon graduating, like studying international trade theory, for instance. I think this is a misstep for a lot of people. Not because the world doesn’t need specialists, but because it probably doesn’t need another international trade theorist telling us how to run the world economy. We’ve had just about enough of those, thank you very much.

  To answer this question of how I would approach education, I think it might be instructive, and perhaps interesting, to take a lesson from Mister Rogers and enter the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, where I’m the principal—no, take that back . . . Imperial Viceroy—of all the schools in the world. The World School System, let’s call it. And since we’re in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, we can simply ignore any small, technical hiccup that might arise in an actual top-down, centrally planned regime.

  Because even if thought experiments like this one are not practical on a societal level, that doesn’t mean they can’t impart knowledge on a personal one. By explaining how I would educate all God’s children—that is, how I would teach generalism, generally—my hope is that you’ll see how this would apply to you individually—that is, how you could become a generalist, specifically.

  The idea behind my World School System would be to bring kids up through a hierarchy of skills, whereupon the foundation would be skills that are essential and helpful to anyone—these we shall call metaskills—and then the skills would become more particular and specific and (probably) exciting as we go.

  This is how we should create a skill stack: First, we build the bottom and focus on all the skills that apply to everyone, skills like focus and logic and faith. (Those last two may sound contradictory, but you’ll see why they’re not.) From there, we plop on our personal interests. Maybe we want to be musicians or cage fighters or whatever. Wonderful, let’s spend time developing those interest skills. Finally, as it is in most situations, there are “filler” or need-based skills required—skills needed to bridge the gap between being good at something and getting paid to do it.

  So these are the types of skills:

  Metaskills

  Fundamental skills that are helpful to everyone. For example, persuasion.

  Interest Skills

  Skills you are interested in and love doing. For example, playing the ukulele.

  Need-Based Skills

  Skills needed to make a living around your interest. For example, marketing and promotion.

  Looking at the above skill stack, if a person were good at the ukulele, but also knew a thing about persuasion and how to advertise, they would have (almost) everything they need to garner a paycheck by playing their adorable little instrument, even if they’re not the best in the world at it. That would be the objective of my World School System: to teach all kids the skills every human should possess, develop the skills each individual is particularly interested in, and layer on any other skills needed for each person to make a living by doing what they love. That’s a skill stack.

  YOUR FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL

  A Letter from the Imperial Viceroy

  Welcome to your first day as part of the World School System. I’m glad you made it—as if you had any other choice. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters. And we’re all together. Isn’t that nice? I just think that is so nice.

  Since we have so many formative years ahead of us, I thought we should take a few moments to get to know one another and to understand the reason why we’re here. Because the job, of course, of the World School System is to guide our youth—that’s you!—toward competency, productivity, fulfillment, and being a useful, not-too-annoying citizen. The goal is to get the stars to align, so to speak, to ensure that all our students find that just-right mix of success and happiness and peace.

  So here I am, looking at you. And I can see on all your smiling faces the look of carbonated optimism. That is optimism, right? Or do you need to use the bathroom? OK, you go to the bathroom, but everybody else stay where you are and keep looking optimistic. Because I think optimism is just wonderful. I think we can all have trust in some providential hand at play, even if we must not think everything’s going to be done for us. I think we must view the world in a certain, very particular way, and I think a quid pro quo perspective might help. In other words, the universe gives to those who go out and get. There are no metaphysical handouts, so to speak. Only hand ups.

  You may not always get what you want, but you’ll almost certainly get what you deserve, and a few things you don’t. So yes, providence is there, but you have to respond to it. You have to take the time to develop yourself and accept challenges and build character.

  There’s a scene in the 1967 version of the movie The Jungle Book—which is far too old for most of you to remember—where a boy, Mowgli, has escaped into the wild and joined with an army of elephants, lined up in single file. The elephant in charge, Colonel Hathi, is pacing up and down, lecturing his troops. At one point, he examines the trunk of a rookie elephant and associates it with a dusty firearm.

&nb
sp; “Soldier,” he says, “remember in battle that trunk can save your life.” Then, after a short ramble about earning his commission in the maharaja’s Fifth Pachyderm Brigade, he exclaims, “It was then I received the Victoria Cross for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Ha ha! Those were the days. Discipline! Discipline was the thing! Builds character, and all that sort of thing, you know.”

  In that short scene, Colonel Hathi has given us one of the great secrets to life. It’s about discipline. Because discipline builds character “and all that sort of thing, you know.” Discipline, in other words, equals freedom—the freedom to express yourself, the freedom to do good things and make good things, and to know what good things are.

  Discipline is one of the first metaskills we’re going to learn, because discipline, one could say, is the most fundamental, the most essential, of all the skills a human can have. Since without discipline what do you have? What you have are improperly ordered values and priorities. What you have is a lack of the ethic to deny what’s gratifying in lieu of what’s important. And that, my little elephant, is a problem. You are a slave to your animal instincts.

  We’ll work on that shortly, and don’t worry, this isn’t boot camp. But we do have standards. After discipline comes focus, which is in some ways an extension of discipline, though we can think of focus as discipline applied, or discipline concentrated. Focus will prevent us from getting distracted. We’ll examine that in a few moments.

  Next is logic, because if we can learn logic, we can learn how to learn. It’s the skill that takes care of so many other skills above the fundamental level. Without logic we’re lost; we’ll fall for pretty much anything. But with logic we’re found. We can figure things out and not say or do generally unintelligent things. That’s all logic is: thinking done right and done well.

  Next, and this is the one I’m sure everybody will be interested in, is persuasion. Essentially, how do you get along with people? How do you get people to like you? Sometimes people think of persuasion as a series of psychological tricks or clichés or manipulation strategies. But that’s not really persuasion. Persuasion is about taking a stand and having a voice and making what you say attractive to people—or at least some people.

  Finally, we have faith. Yup. And this is the big one. Faith is what undergirds and reinforces all efforts and creations and orients those efforts and creations toward the continuous and purposeful development of self. It’s what stops us from chasing the wrong things in life, like becoming a career prostitute or congressperson, pardon the redundancy. Faith is what keeps us going. It gives us a sense of surety when it seems the world has gone completely insane—which, trust me, it has. So maybe also trust me when I say you’re going to need faith and you’re going to have to work at it. It’s why we think of faith as a skill.

  Now, I get that none of these fundamental skills may seem particularly appealing at first, especially to children. Who really wants to study logic? But I can promise you this: once you see how useful these metaskills are for getting pretty much whatever you want out of life, they will become not only interesting but immensely so. Think of it this way. Learn logic, and never lose an argument again, even if nobody else knows it, and even if it’s only because you’ll learn exactly what arguments not to make. Wouldn’t that be a nice position to be in?

  Lastly, we’ll work on these skills through the principles of generalism—by applying Short-Term Specialization, the Rule of 80 Percent, Integration > Isolation, Repetition and Resistance, and, what’s that other one again?—ah yes, Skill Stacking > Specialization. How could I forget? Because that one is really what this school is about. We’re not overmuch concerned with any of you becoming the best at anything, because, well, let’s be honest here—that isn’t what this is about. We merely want you to be exceedingly competent across a wide swath of human abilities so you can combine the skills fundamental to whatever just so happens to interest you, and be not only productive but fulfilled.

  Let’s begin.

  DISCIPLINE

  You’re not going to have a lot of discipline at first—this is just a fact. You’re going to have a tough time keeping your butt in the chair or getting your butt to the gym. Because your butt has a mind of its own—and this we call Butt Mind—which is notorious for offering temptations and reasons to procrastinate. This is where we need to step in and assertively protest, “No, you listen to me, Butt Mind. I am in control. You listen to me, now.” And I think this is pretty much what discipline is about: getting your butt to sit when it would rather run, and getting your butt to run when it would rather sit.

  Butt Mind is not just a metaphor; it’s something we all say to ourselves, and probably a lot more often than we think. It goes, “Yes, but . . .”

  What is discipline? Discipline is this: putting yourself in a position to follow orders, and hopefully, eventually, your own. We need discipline because we can’t acquire skill without routine, and we can’t find meaning without something to work on, something we feel is significant, like writing a novel, becoming religious, or baking a cake. Without discipline we’re just wishy-washy. Life will toss us whichever way it wants.

  Discipline gives us meaning, then, because it gives us something to do; through discipline, we work at our craft and can make things. We also learn things. And through discipline, we develop a routine that makes sense of our day—we wake up, steep the coffee grounds, and start on something big and fantastic. We sit our butts in the seat or use them to do kettlebell swings. Maybe toward the evening, there’s time for a dessert, but let’s just see how the day goes before we make any decisions about that. Discipline sets the agenda, and that’s what makes us productive and creative.

  Whoever has found discipline has found freedom. Discipline, in fact, equals freedom, and there’s actually now a guy who writes books on this idea, and he’s a former Navy SEAL and people love him. He also happens to be fairly intimidating, so when he says discipline equals freedom, you’re likely to believe him. Now, I’m not particularly intimidating, so I wouldn’t expect I could just say something and have you take my word for it. But hopefully by this point I’ve made a good argument, because I’ve said about a million times that the person with freedom is not the person who chooses to do whatever they want but the person who chooses to not do whatever they want. Freedom is found in restriction, restriction that leads to the practice of something useful. If you want freedom, you need boundaries that force you to improve. You need to impose rules upon yourself, and you need to adhere to those rules as if they were enforced by someone in uniform.

  So, like I said, you’re not gonna have a lot of discipline at first. Because nobody does. You’re probably gonna start out a pretty indolent sack, like me. You’ll slink by. You’ll do the minimum. You’ll cheat on your exams by peering over a person’s shoulder, and if they’re bratty about it, they’ll wrap their arms around their test so you can’t see what they’re writing. But one day something will hit you where it hurts, and you’ll realize you’ve been wasting your life with this attitude of mere survival and disinterest in getting better at things. We can say this is your awakening. You’ll feel degenerate and awful, which, believe it or not, is a good thing. I mean it’s certainly better to feel degenerate and awful now, while you can still do something about it, than to feel degenerate and awful on your deathbed.

  Let’s take a few minutes, right now, to all feel degenerate and awful, so we don’t wind up like that. Everyone feel it? The terribleness? OK, good. Because sometimes you need to meditate not just on what you do want but on all the things you don’t want, to get yourself inspired.

  The problem with calling discipline a skill is that it leads us into somewhat of a paradox. Because what do you need to develop skill, if not discipline? And if discipline is a skill and you don’t have discipline, then how in the name of Jonah and the whale do you even get started on such a thing? I’ll tell you. You go back to that deteriorated and abysmal sense of self—the Lack, as I call it. You
look yourself dead in the eye (most people will need a mirror for this) and say, “Enough is enough, you sack of mildewed shit. It’s time to get it together.”

  Discipline is empowered by passion. Sometimes that passion starts as a negative, and as you improve, it goes into a chrysanthemum or whatever they call it and turns itself into this big, huge, beautiful, and bountiful thing. It becomes gorgeous and worth pursuing. It becomes something you want to chase, rather than something that chases you. But at first, yes, most of us find discipline by trying to avoid some ugly and significant, god-awful, no-good, terrible pain in our lives, so the more we meditate on that pain, the less we stop trying to ignore it or avoid it, and the more passion we have for our pursuit.

  Maybe you’re like I was. Maybe you’re sick of being slower, less informed, and less skilled than almost everyone. Maybe you want to just be happy for a while, to feel that your life has meaning and that you actually did something terrific and awesome, like whoever invented disinfectant wipes. That guy should be super proud. Because honestly, that’s enough; you can’t really ask for anything more. But you need to focus on that sense of inadequacy—like visualize it, you know. Yes, it’ll suck, and it’ll sound like the reverse of all self-help advice that says you should envision your future with mansions atop waterfalls, but it’ll get you going when you don’t feel like you have the discipline to start. It’ll motivate you more than mansions atop waterfalls; you’re just going to have to trust me on that. Pain is the only way out. The Buddha taught us that when he said nirvana is found through way of samsara. He made a compelling point.

  I remember working with a guy—he wasn’t exactly a life coach but he kind of was—who had me do an exercise in which I brought to mind five life instances when I was embarrassed or ashamed because of my lack of initiative; five times when I really wish I had done something, but I didn’t or couldn’t act. He then had me review those scenes repeatedly to build disgust, to the point that I simply had to do something about it. And so I did. I remembered the time I failed to ask a girl to the fifth-grade dance (and then somebody else did), the time I got cut from the basketball team, and so on and so forth. I kept rewinding and reviewing these scenes, over and over. And the very next day, almost entirely out of the blue, I signed up for tae kwon do. Because to me that seemed ideal. Why not start with this one very simple and humble skill and then use it to kick the ass of everybody who ever made fun of me? How perfect.