How to Master Any Skill

Step 3: Connect the Ideas to Reality

One of the most important steps to master a skill is to figure out how your study material works in the real world.

If you cannot make the connection, you do not master the skill. In fact, you feel uncomfortable.

“You’re trying to teach this fellow all about tractors and you’re not giving him any tractors. Well, he’s going to wind up with a face that feels squashed, with headaches and with his stomach feeling funny. He’s going to feel dizzy from time to time and very often his eyes are going to hurt.” — L. Ron Hubbard

Which would you prefer?

1. Read an article of how to make sushi, or
2. Go to a live workshop where you watch someone make sushi that you can then eat?

Of course, you would like the workshop best because you connect the ideas to reality.

Six Signs You Are Not Connecting Ideas to Reality

If you study but don’t connect the ideas in your material to the real world, you can feel:

1. Eye pain
2. Headaches
3. Bored
4. A funny feeling in your stomach
5. Dizzy
6. Pressure on your face

Fortunately, you can eliminate these feelings and connect ideas to reality with a simple demonstration. Just use any physical items near your hands.

How to Do Demonstrations

“A ‘demonstration’ or ‘demo’ is usually done with a ‘demo kit’ which consists of various small objects such as corks, caps, paper clips, pen tops, rubber bands, etc. The student demonstrates an idea or principle with his hands, the paperclips on his desk, etc. Sketching is also a part of demonstration and part of working things out.” — L. Ron Hubbard

Let’s say you are learning to make sushi rolls and need to follow these instructions:

1. Place a thin layer of the cooked sushi rice on a sheet of dry seaweed.
2. Leave an inch of seaweed uncovered by rice at the top.
3. Place cucumber strips, crab or other meat horizontally about an inch from the bottom edge of the seaweed.
4. Roll the seaweed from the bottom to the top, but leave the top edge exposed.
5. Moisten the top edge with water and finish rolling the seaweed.
6. Cut the roll into pieces.

After you read the instructions your eyes hurt. So you do a demonstration with a demo kit on your desk, and make a cucumber sushi roll on your desk.

1. You get a piece of paper to act as the seaweed.
2. You then sprinkle some paperclips or coins on the paper to act as the rice.
3. You uncover 1 inch of paper at the top of the paper.
4. Next, you use a few pens to be the seafood or cucumber strips.
5. You roll up the paper and pretend to cut it into pieces with your hand as a knife.

What happened when you used your demo kit to do the demonstration? Do the instructions make more sense now?

Exercise

Let’s say you want a new way to make money. Start by reading these three steps.

1. Think about your resources. What do you love to do? How much time do you have available?
2. What is a service or product you can sell.
3. Find out who will buy this service or product from you and how much they will pay.

If you reading these steps over and over, or just think about them, you eventually feel dizzy or feel some head pressure.

Now demonstrate these steps using your demo kit objects on your desk. What can represent your product or service? What can represent your customers? What represents the money you earn?

Make the connections to the actions. Experience getting rich!

Notice how you feel after you do the demonstration.

Sketch Example

Let’s say you are learning how to design kitchens.

You read “Design kitchens with the work triangle for the most efficient use of the sink, stove and refrigerator.” You feel a small headache.

Fortunately, you realize you need a demonstration so you pull out a piece of paper and draw little boxes for the refrigerator and stove, a circle for the sink and the points of a triangle between them.

You now understand the kitchen work triangle. Your headache goes away and you get excited to design your first kitchen.

Sketch Exercise

In this exercise, demonstrate an important way to get rich. Rich people know this idea, poor people do not. Let’s learn this idea and connect it to the real world.

Start with these words:

1. Compound: The combination of two or more things.
2. Interest: A fee paid for use of money. For example, when you save money at a bank, it agrees to pay you a specific amount of money to use your money. For example, 5% of your savings is paid to you each year.
3. Compound Interest: Interest to be paid on both the original amount AND the interest you already earned.

Do a sketch showing compound interest of 10% per year for two years. Click here if you need an example.

Continue the sketch showing the compound interest after 10 years.

Benefits of Connecting Ideas to Reality

Thanks to this brilliant way to study, you can earn these eight benefits.

1. Each time you make a connection between your study material and the real world, you’re making a tiny, but stable step toward mastering the skill.
2. Studying becomes easier and more enjoyable for you.
3. Whenever you feel bored, you quickly connect what you are learning and connect it to the real world. Your boredom vanishes!
4. You can also handle any eye pain, headaches, dizziness and face pressure that comes with studying.
5. You get a sample of how you will actually be  using your skill.
6. You have more confidence that you are going in the right direction.
7. Because you are already connecting your material to reality, practicing the skill is going to be easier for you.
8. Best of all, you discover that you actually love to study!

Give it a try!

Next Step: Use the Best Runway Speed