The 3 steps to mastering any skill faster
And now you can too
Hey there! I’m Robert. Welcome to a free edition of my newsletter. My main obsession is self-improvement. My second obsession is sharing what I learn and lifting others up around me. Every week, I share 1 piece of advice 📖, 1 breakthrough recommendation 🚀, and 1 challenge 💥 to help leaders in tech achieve a growth mindset, transform their communication & influence, and master their emotions. Subscribe today to get each and every issue.
From the Archives: This is one of my favorite pieces from when our community was smaller — brought back for new readers and those who missed it the first time.
What if the difference between good and exceptional isn't talent, but how you practice?
I'm resharing this piece because I keep seeing founders and leaders plateau in their careers—they work harder, but not smarter.
The framework I break down here has personally helped me master everything from basketball to rock climbing to executive communication.
Enjoy.
Ever felt like you’re on the brink of greatness, but something is holding you back?
It’s that nagging feeling that there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be.
What if I told you…
The key to closing that gap is in how you practice, not just how hard you work?
This week, I’m diving into the transformative power of deliberate practice—the strategy that separates the good from the truly exceptional.
Ready to be exceptional?
Let’s go.
🔤 This Week’s ABC…
Advice of the Week: How I use deliberate practice to progress faster than others at mastering any skill.
Breakthrough: Explore the book that taught me deliberate practice, which is the ultimate guide to achieving excellence.
Challenge: Start your journey of deliberate practice with one small, focused action.
📖 Advice: Master Any Skill with Deliberate Practice
Life Lesson
When I was in 8th grade, I started playing basketball.
I loved it, and decided I would try to make the team in the 9th grade.
I didn’t make it… I was devastated.
But it made sense: I had no jumpshot, and my endurance was terrible.
I asked the coach if I could be the ball boy. Other people thought that would be embarrassing—and honestly I didn’t care.
I wanted to be around organized basketball and understand what practicing really meant.
Before school, I would wake up at 5 AM and practice for a couple hours.
After school, I would practice for another few hours.
I would run liners by myself like a crazy kid, to improve my endurance.
I watched videos of NBA players and how they practiced.
I tried replicating their moves—their shooting form, their crossovers.
I did this everyday for a year.
The next year in 10th grade, I not only made the team…
I started.
I became one of the best 3 point shooters on the team.
All from having no jumpshot and no endurance.
Years later, I realized why I got so much better so fast: deliberate practice.
I never made the NBA—I blame my asian parents for forcing me down the typical engineer/doctor path. (JK mom and dad)
But this experience taught me that I could be complete trash at a skill, and through intentionally working hard—I could succeed.
I never thought I was very smart, or good at anything.
But damned if my parents didn’t teach me how to work hard.
That was my only skill and I latched onto it for dear life.
I still do today, in everything I apply myself to.
For years, I thought talent was the secret to greatness.
Then, I discovered deliberate practice by accident through basketball, and my perspective changed completely.
Talent might give you a head start, but deliberate practice is what makes you unstoppable.
Putting in the hours is very important—and it’s also about how you use those hours to push your limits and improve intentionally.
That’s what this week’s breakthrough is about.
🚀 Breakthrough: "Peak" by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
If you want to dive deep into the science of mastering any skill, "Peak" by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool is the book you need.
Ericsson’s research on deliberate practice is groundbreaking, and his book is empowering.
He reveals how experts in every field—from chess grandmasters to elite athletes—use specific, structured practice methods to reach the top.
He shows that the human brain is highly adaptable.
Our brains are capable of forming new neural connections and pathways (skills and skill effectiveness) throughout life—given the right practice, deliberate practice!
It’s not about practicing more; it’s about practicing smarter.
3 Types of Practice
The book talks about 3 types of practice that people engage in.
Naive Practice: Simply repeating an activity with little improvement.
Purposeful Practice: More structured, with specific goals and feedback, but still limited.
Deliberate Practice: The most effective form, characterized by…
Specific, well-defined goals
Intense focus
Immediate feedback
Constant adjustment
Further, the book gives you a simple framework for deliberate practice.
The 3 F’s Framework To Improve At Anything
In the book, the author describes a simple framework you can use IMMEDIATELY.
Focus: Deliberate practice is about targeted effort. Identify specific areas of weakness and work on them with full concentration. You’re not just doing something over and over mindlessly; you’re refining your approach every time, intentionally.
Feedback: Seek immediate feedback. Whether it’s from a coach, mentor, or even self-reflection, you need to know what you’re doing wrong to correct it. Don’t just rely on how it feels—get concrete insights into your progress.
Fix It: Integrate your learnings from the feedback and try again intentionally. Use mental representations (the mental image of what a successful performance or execution looks like) to improve.
Mental Representations are EVERYTHING.
As your skills improve, your mental representations become more refined, helping you identify mistakes and provide better feedback.
Experts, whether chess players or athletes, rely on these advanced mental models for faster, more accurate decision-making in high-pressure situations.
One of my biggest takeaways from this book is that developing effective mental representations is the key purpose of deliberate practice.
Why?
If you excel at this, you can effectively identify your mistakes in performance and can zoom in on them to improve further.
Better mental representations lead to better feedback, and better training, which leads to better mental representations, and on and on.
Makes sense.
I think of it as visualization—the clearer the picture or video in the your head (higher fidelity), the better you are and faster you will improve at the skill.
You can make exponential progress in whatever you’re doing, just through visualization.
Examples in a business setting…
This could be a visualization of how a public speaking performance will turn out.
What does the audience look like? What does the setting look like? If you trip on a word, how might that feel?
Or how well you do user research.
How might the opener go? If you succeed at gaining great insights, how will you feel? If the conversation flows well, what does that look like?
Or how well you communicate in a decisive meeting.
How might you feel during the high stakes meeting? If you communicate clearly and convey your intentions decisively, what might that look like? Will it be virtual or in person? Will you be standing or sitting? Will you have slides or a document to present, or just yourself?
Or how well you facilitate a large group of engineers to work together towards a common goal with quarterly planning.
What will it feel like to address everybody? What might it feel like to get everybody moving the same way? What quotes or data points will back your influence strategy?
The above are several examples of how I have used deliberate practice to accelerate in my career by visualizing success and everything it takes to get there.
It’ll work for you too.
My Favorite Quote
We all hit plateaus.
This quote hits home because it underscores the importance of pushing past the plateaus we all encounter at some point.
It’s a powerful reminder that deliberate practice is the difference between mediocrity and mastery.
Keep pushing.
What I Did This Week
I started running in May 2025 for my health and longevity. It’s also been a great mental health boost and stress reliever.
When I started running, it was super hard!
Before… an 8 mile run would have me huffing and puffing:
Average heart rate: 150+ beats per minute
Pace: 10:00-11:00 minute / mile
Now, 3 months later… This week, I did one of my typical 8-9 mile runs.
It felt EASY. I felt like I didn’t put in much effort at all.
I’m also doing at least 1 half marathon length run (13.1 mile run) every single week.
And honestly it feels pretty chill now after the first few times. It keeps my body healthy, and keeps my mind sharp. This particular route used to take me close to 3 hours, but after a few weeks of doing it, I hit a PR of 20 minutes last week.
How did I do it?
I studied running.
I looked at cadence, breathing, and strengthening exercises.
I became a student of the game, just like all those years ago trying to make the basketball team.
I talked to elite runners. I built mental representations.
I did the same thing I do every time I pick up a new skill.
Deliberate practice.
Bottom line: it works.
💥 Challenge: Start Deliberate Practice Today
This week, identify one skill you want to master.
It could be anything you’re already working on—coding, communication, leadership, etc.
Now, apply the principles of deliberate practice and execute the skill intentionally:
Focus: go execute on the skill - actually do the thing!
Feedback: garner feedback on how you did by asking a mentor, or even record yourself and watch. Practicing in a mirror helps too. Feels weird. But it helps (I’ve tried).n
Fix it: now that you know where you can improve, visualize how it might go better.
Then do it all over again.
Document your progress, and reflect on what worked and what didn’t.
Remember, greatness isn’t about being the best—it’s about being better than you were yesterday.
Deliberate practice means constantly challenging yourself with tasks just beyond your current abilities. That’s where real growth happens.
Start small.
Be consistent.
Work hard.
Practice intentionally.
GET AFTER IT.
You got this!
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