Doing good work and learning a new skill is Boring, Just ask Tom Cruise.

I find life very strange. Things happen tremendously fast and we seem to have forgotten how to learn a new skill or do a task.

We are the first generation to transition from sending letters that will take days to be delivered, to having a 24/7 always-online connection to each other, we transitioned from trying to ask a girl out to swiping right at 10 girls on tender.

The idea is everything can happen now. You can see that when talking with someone who learns a new skill. Learning a new skill is a super slow process. There is no way around it, You exert this tedious boring effort every single day.

Let’s talk more about that idea: What it takes to learn a new skill or do a good job.

How changes are made

Let’s say you want to learn a new technical skill for your job or learn a new language. I think people underestimate the power of setting expectations and they need to reconsider the learning process in general.

This article is not about starting a new habit or ditching a bad habit, there are a lot of good sources for that topic.
I am talking specifically about expectations and how to actually be good at a new skill.

Learning a new skill

When you are learning new skills, you have to set realistic expectations, and this is not easy. People always tend to approach the easy solution, the “learn a language in 7 days”, the 30 days boot-camp to be a software engineer.

What they always miss is that there are some things in life that simply need time. Learning a technical skill, a new language, starting a new lifestyle habit, these things take time, there is no shortcut around this. There is no learning without tedious, long,boring repetitive actions.

I remember when I was young, I used to play soccer in a local football club. I trained 3–4 times a week for 6 or 7 years.

Football players need a lot of skills, but I can simply summarize how to be a good football player in three things: how to receive the ball, how to pass it, and how to move without the ball.

You will be amazed at how tedious and boring and repetitive the training sessions were, as simple as receiving the ball is, you need hours and hours of training of just receiving the ball, the same goes for shooting and moving around in the pitch.

I used to go to the training session thinking ok the same as everyday, I think more than 60 70% of the training sessions was just how to receive the ball and how to pass it, of course there is logic behind this, when you play football you have to do this skill every time in the right way, no matter the situation, no matter the score, no matter how tired you are, knowing how to do it has to be in your blood.

But later, and I mean years later, I appreciated that lesson, because now I realize there is no way around it, The most effective way of learning a difficult and complex skill is breaking it down to simple tasks and doing it over and over again. If you want to be good at something, be ready to spend time and effort in doing repetitive and boring exercises.

Tom Cruise

It is not only about learning a new skill, but also in doing your work. In the latest Tom Cruise movie, There is a scene where he jumps out of an airplane.

How do you do this scene? Two ways, CGI using computer graphics and at the end of the day people will know that he was using a green screen and some fancy graphics.

The second option is actually jumping from the airplane. And this was the process so it used 2 camera men, and for each take they had to jump out of the airplane and record the whole scene.

I am talking about this scene because you will be amazed at how dedicated Tom Cruise is in delivering the best work he can do.

How many takes do you think this scene needed? How many times did Tom Cruise had to jump out the airplane and record this scene?

Here is the scene if you want to check it and get back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci1u68ZVcag

30,000 feet 106 times

Cruise jumped out of a C-17 plane 106 times. Imagine doing a task 106 times just to have the perfect output. Again there is no shortcuts, good work need time and repetitive every-day effort.

The last tip is

Take it easy, there is a saying the US Navy : Slow is smooth, Smooth is fast.

Smooth work in the right direction is the correct way.

Ciao.