How Do I Get Better at Something I'm Bad At?

You get better at something you are bad at by cutting it into one small piece, getting a real person to tell you how that piece went, and repeating it on a schedule you actually keep. That is the whole method, and it is the part almost nobody does, because we confuse repeating a thing with practicing it. Doing something badly for ten years does not make you better at it. It makes you faster at doing it badly. People expect me to say talent or effort. It is almost never either one. Nothing in their week is telling them the truth about how they did.

Steve Peterson walked the plant floor every morning for three hours.

Same route, same order, same departments. He knew the names of people's kids. I followed him for a few weeks when I was new, notebook in hand, because I figured this was what a good manager did. I did the arithmetic years later. Around seven hundred hours a year, and I never once saw a decision come out of it.

Steve was not lazy. He outworked most of us. He had done that walk eleven years and had gotten very, very good at doing the walk. What he never got better at was what the walk was supposed to do, which was find out what was broken and get it fixed. Nobody told him. Why would they? He was the boss and he was smiling.

Here is my part, and it is not flattering. After Steve moved on I ran the same walk for two years. Same route. Same smile. I had watched a man practice something eleven years without improving, and my conclusion was that I should copy his route.

Why Repeating It Is Not the Same as Practicing It

Repetition carves a groove. Whatever you did the first time you do again, only smoother and with less thinking attached. If the first version was good, the groove helps you. If it was wrong, the groove protects the wrong version from ever getting looked at.

I spent my life around machines, and they fail the same way people do. A bearing running a few thousandths out of spec does not correct itself. It wears into the error, until the wear pattern is the shape of the mistake.

We are no different, except we get a story to go with it. We call the groove experience. Eleven years of that walk sounded like eleven years of it. It was one year repeated eleven times, which looks identical on a resume.

The research people say it in colder language. Practice only moves a skill when it is aimed at a specific weak piece and has feedback attached. That is the finding behind the phrase deliberate practice, and it is why a man who has played guitar for twenty years can sound like a man who has played for two. He played the songs he already knew.

How Do I Get Better at Something I'm Bad At?

Three pieces. Not ten. Give a man ten pieces and he does four, quits, and decides the problem was him.

One. Shrink it until it is one thing. Nobody is bad at public speaking. That is too big to work on. You are bad at the first ninety seconds, or bad at stopping. Nobody is bad at writing. You are bad at first sentences. Keep slicing until what is left is small enough to attempt in ten minutes. That is your piece.

Two. Attach a human being to it. Someone who watched you do it, asked within a day, given one specific question. Not "how did I do." Nobody answers that honestly. Ask "what is one thing I could have done differently in the first five minutes." A narrow question gets a true answer. A wide one gets a compliment.

Three. Put it on a day that already exists. Twenty minutes a week that happens beats three hours a month that does not. I once bought a guitar, a stand, a tuner, a book and a strap, and played it four times. The equipment was never the problem. The Tuesday was.

Where Does the Feedback Come From If Nobody Gives It?

This is the real question, and most advice walks right past it. Plenty of people have no boss who coaches and no peer who will risk the friendship. Steve is the proof. Two hundred people could have told him. Not one did.

So you go get it. Easiest first: the artifact. Record the call. Keep the draft. Read the email cold on Friday. Your memory is not evidence, it is a mood. The recording is evidence, and the gap between them is where the improvement hides.

Next: the narrow ask. One person who was in the room, one small question about one small part. Most people will not volunteer criticism, but almost anybody will answer a question that does not require them to summarize your character.

Hardest: the standing arrangement. Somebody watches the same piece on purpose, more than once, and knows where to look. That is what a mentor is, underneath the branding.

Now the honest part. All three require you to be bad at something in front of a witness, on purpose, repeatedly. That is the real price, and it is why most people pay the smaller one instead, which is staying the way they are and calling it their style.

Why Am I Not Getting Better Even Though I Practice?

When somebody practices and nothing moves, it is one of three things.

You are practicing the whole thing instead of the weak piece. Running the presentation end to end feels productive, but most of that time goes to what you can already do. A pitcher with a bad changeup does not fix it by pitching more games.

You are practicing the part you enjoy. This one is sneaky, because it looks exactly like effort. The man who wants to get better at managing people reads another book about it. Reading is the comfortable part. Sitting down with the technician who is angry at you is the part that would move the skill.

Or there is no truth in the loop. You do it, nothing comes back, you do it again. That was Steve, and that was me for two years after him. Run a loop like that for a decade and the only thing that improves is your confidence, which is the worst outcome available. Confidence without feedback is just a man walking the same route and smiling.

Should I Fix My Weaknesses or Build on My Strengths?

Smart people argue both sides, and plenty of ink went into it in the business press this year. Here is how I settle it on a plant floor.

Fix the weakness when it is standing in front of a strength. Leave it alone when it is not.

I had a technician who was the best diagnostic mind in the building and could not write a paragraph anybody could follow. His weakness was not writing. It was that nothing he knew could travel past the machine he stood next to. That sat directly in front of his strength, which made it worth ninety days. Fixing it did not turn him into a writer. It made his knowledge portable.

If a weakness is not blocking anything, you are allowed to be bad at it. I am sixty three and I am bad at small talk at parties. Nothing in my life is waiting on that.

How Long Does It Take to Get Better at Something?

Give one piece ninety days and a real hour a week. Thirteen hours. It is nothing, and it is more attention than most people give a weak skill in a whole career.

Expect this order. Around week two it gets worse, because you are watching yourself and the watching makes you clumsy. That is the feedback arriving, not failure. Around week six you catch something in the moment instead of afterward. Near the end, somebody mentions it without you fishing. That is how you know it was real.

Why This Is Really the Law of Expansion

John Maxwell's Law of Expansion says growth always increases your capacity. Most people picture a bigger container. That is not quite it.

What happens is that the thing you were bad at stops taking up so much room. When you are bad at something you use every week, you spend energy avoiding it, dreading it and apologizing for it. The skill is twenty minutes. The avoidance is hours.

Get better at that one piece and you do not just gain the piece. You get back everything you were spending to stay away from it. That is where the capacity comes from. It was yours the whole time, tied up in the thing you would not look at. That technician gained one skill. The department gained his entire twenty five years, because for the first time it could leave the room with him.

Common Questions About Getting Better at Something You're Bad At

How do I get better at something I'm bad at when I have no time?

You use smaller pieces, not bigger blocks. Twenty minutes a week aimed at one narrow thing will beat a weekend seminar, because the seminar has no feedback and no second attempt. When I was twenty three I had a mortgage, a baby and a full time job, and everything I learned in that stretch I learned in fifteen minute pieces. The pieces were not the compromise. The pieces were the method.

Is it too late to get good at something at 50 or 60?

No, and what actually stops people at that age is not the brain, it is embarrassment. Being visibly bad at something at twenty two reads as promise. At fifty five it feels like a confession. It is not. I wrote my first book in my sixties and I was terrible at it for about a year, in front of people, on purpose. The clock is a much smaller problem than the audience you are imagining.

What if I practice and still do not improve?

Check the loop before you check yourself. Nine times in ten the practice is aimed at the whole skill instead of one weak piece, or nothing is coming back to tell you how it went. Shrink the target, attach one person to it, give it four more weeks. If it still has not moved, the piece you picked is probably not the real bottleneck. Ask the person who watches you which piece they would pick.

Should I tell people I am working on it?

Tell one or two, and be specific. A vague announcement that you are working on your communication invites everybody to grade everything you say. Telling one colleague you are working on ending meetings on time gives them somewhere useful to look and gives you somebody to ask. Small and specific gets you help. Big and public gets you an audience, which is not the same thing.

Reflection Questions

1. What is the one thing you have been bad at the longest, and when did you last actually try to change it?
2. If you shrink that thing three times, what is the smallest version somebody could watch you attempt in ten minutes?
3. Who saw you do it this week, and what stops you from asking them one narrow question?
4. What are you currently repeating that you have mistaken for practice?

The Bottom Line

Getting better at something you are bad at is not a talent problem or a willpower problem. It is a feedback problem wearing a costume. Shrink the thing to one piece. Get one person to tell you the truth about that piece. Do it on a day that already exists in your life.

This week, do one part. Write the shrunken sentence and ask one person one narrow question about it. Ten minutes, total.

I still think about Steve Peterson. Seven hundred hours a year for eleven years, in a building full of people who would have told him anything if he had asked one real question. He never asked. Neither did I, for two years, walking the exact same route.

So here is my question. What are you seven hundred hours into, that nobody has ever told you the truth about?

This ties back to The Law of Expansion — one of John C. Maxwell's 15 Laws of Growth.