A lot of us work hard and do our best to become better at certain areas of our lives at different points, but achieve little or no success at all.

The process of self development or improvement does not have to be so difficult.

To become more effective you need to alternate between two zones.

  1. The learning zone.
  2. The performance zone.

The goal in the learning zone is to improve, so we need to do activities for improvement. Since we are concentrating on things not mastered there’s room for mistakes. However, when we’re in the performance zone, the goal is to do something as best as we can, using acquired skills and minimizing mistakes.

The problem is a lot of us spend more time in either the performance zone (deliberate practice) or the learning zone. In the learning zone you need to break down abilities into component skills, using frequent feedback with repetition and adjustments. To get better you need to keep learning and practicing the learned skills to get better.

The way to high performance is alternating between zones purposefully building skills in one and applying in the other.

But How can we really improve and make good use of the time spent in the learning zone?

  1. We must believe and understand that we can improve.
  2. We must want to improve at a particular skill.
  3. We must have an idea on how to improve.
  4. We must be in a low stake situation, that is a situation where the consequence of mistake cannot be catastrophic; in a a zone were we expect mistakes.

But you’d notice that often times our environments are unnecessarily high stake; always far from ideal.

So what can you do about this?

You need to create low-stakes island in high-stake seas.

P.S: I can write about creating low-stakes island in high-stake seas if this get a lot reactions or interests.