The Trinity of Progress

When it comes to learning a new skill, whether it be a new sport, hobby, or otherwise, there are many ways to make progress towards your end goal. In his book 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades, author, blogger and content creator Thomas Frank talks about 3 core ways in which someone can progress in their journey of learning a new skill: Gear Acquisition, Conceptual Learning, and Deliberate Practice. In this article, I want to summarize the main points he made, but I also want to talk about how I would best use his insights to my advantage.

Gear Acquisition

Gear acquisition refers to the act of acquiring new tools that are either required for, or may help you in the learning process. For example, if you’re learning photography, you may go out and buy yourself an expensive camera, different types of lenses, a tripod, and maybe pay for professional photo editing software. If you’re learning to play golf, you might invest in a set of expensive golf clubs, balls, and a membership a premium golf course. If you’re learning to play the guitar, you’ll need a guitar, maybe an amplifier, microphone, and audio software to record and edit your music. Every discipline has a plethora of gear you can use.

As nice as it is to buy yourself all the tools you see professionals using, be careful, because gear acquisition gives you the highest perceived jump in progress. When you spend money on new and expensive gear, it gives you an instant dose of satisfaction and tricks you into thinking you’re progressing. This can lead to disappointment because your true skill level is much lower than your perceived skill level, and when you try and attempt a difficult feat, you’ll fall flat on your face and may quit. Out of all 3 types of progress, gear acquisition is the most misleading when it comes to gauging how much progress you make while learning a new skill. Just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you’re a pro.

Conceptual Learning

Conceptual learning is the process of teaching yourself new concepts, ideas and techniques about the skill you’re learning. Again, if you’re learning photography, you might read up on scene composition, lighting setups, camera settings and how best to use each one, color grading, etc. This may also include you telling yourself things like “just one more course”, “just one more book”, or “just a few more YouTube videos”. You fill your head with as much pure knowledge about the skill as you can.

Once again, this gives you a major perceived jump in progress. I am guilty of this too. As a personal example, I read books about software engineering principles, but I frankly probably know more about writing good code than I can do, because actually applying what I learn is usually much more difficult. The satisfaction you get from finishing a course, book, or a series of article/videos is not as quick as compared to gear acquisition because you need to read/watch and understand the content, but it can still give you a false sense of progress if you aren’t careful.

Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice is the act of practicing a skill while being mindful of what you’re doing. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits says,

Deliberate Practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “practice makes perfect”. This quote isn’t entirely true because practice alone will not improve your abilities. It’s the act of figuring out what exactly you need to focus on next, and implementing a system where you can practice, get feedback, learn from your mistakes, and repeat the process in that specific area, that is going to bring about the most return. If an artist who wants to learn how to draw portraits only ever practices drawing circles, they’ll never reach their goal. You have to decompose the end-goal into smaller pieces and systematically tackle each smaller skill to eventually reach mastery.

This is the most difficult progression technique to implement, but it’s also the one that brings about the most progress in the long-run. Deliberately practicing your skill will allow you to make true, undeniably real progress in your learning journey. If a photographer wants to take better photos, they need to take more photos while being mindful, for example, of their composition and lighting. If an songwriter wants to write hit songs, they need to write more songs while paying attention to the lyrics and rhythm and ensuring they go well together. The reason people avoid deliberate practice is because it sucks to suck. It is painful to produce bad work when the people you look up to consistently produce quality content. However, the uncomfortable nature of producing garbage is one that you must become familiar with if you ever want to grow at anything, because deliberate practice is the most significant way to make progress.

Progress

Now that you’re aware of the 3 core ways to make progress towards learning any skill, you should be asking yourself “How do I best use each one?”. The thing is, all three of these techniques are important, but knowing when to acquire new gear, learn new concepts, and deliberately practice will allow you to rapidly progress in any area. Striking the correct balance between the three is the key.

Here’s my advice: Learn 2 or 3 new concepts, acquire the minimal gear required for each, and then deliberately practice until you’re comfortable and confident in your ability to carryout and teach the concepts learned with practical examples from your own practice sessions. Then repeat.

In my experience, this strategy works for a few reasons. Firstly, you need to gain some level of knowledge about the skill you’re trying to learn. It’s rare to find a skill you can directly jump into without ANY idea of what you need to know. So, I’d recommend learning about 2 or 3 core, beginner-level concepts that are relatively easy to understand and won’t take you weeks to research. It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of advanced and niche techniques, but stick to the basics to start with. Don’t try and learn too much or else you’re likely to get “analysis paralysis” which is where your brain is so overloaded with information that you don’t know where to begin. This can lead to you quitting prematurely.

Off course, once you’ve learned a little bit about the skill, you may need certain tools to practice. Photographers need a camera, artists need paper and pencils, and content creators need certain software. Here, I’d recommend not overspending. Try looking for free or cheap options before investing too much money. Sometimes, this may not be feasible, but try not to go all-in right off the bat. Remember, spending too much will give you a perceived boost in progress which you want to avoid. (In some cases, you might need to acquire gear while still learning new concepts, for example, if you’re following a course or tutorials.)

Now for the fun part. Schedule time throughout your week to actually practice what you’ve learned. The way I gauge whether or not I understand a concept is by producing as much work as I can, and trying to explain what I did (either to myself or to an actual person) The teaching aspect forces me to fully understand a concept as it’s difficult to teach something to someone else without fully understanding it first. More importantly, I critique the work I do. This gives me feedback about what I’ve done right and what I need to improve on. It helps if you can have someone else who knows the skill more than you critique your work. Remember, this stage should take longer than the other two (especially at the start). Be mindful of what you’re practicing so you don’t keep repeating what you already know, but instead actually practice what you don’t. If what you’re doing makes you uncomfortable, that’s a good sign you’re practicing the right things.

Conclusion

The road to mastery is difficult and long, but knowing what to focus on and how to avoid deceiving yourself will accelerate the learning process. Understanding and internalizing the 3 types of progression techniques will allow you to pick-up any new skill and start becoming better at it almost instantly. The backbone of it all is knowing how to deliberately practice your craft without being too caught up in the expensive gear and hours of conceptual learning. What makes someone great at what they do is not the tools they use, or the pure knowledge they possess, but the countless hours they put-in to mindfully internalize the application of each of those.