"The difference between theory and practice is that in theory,
there is no difference between theory and practice,
but in practice, there inevitably is."

Here's an excerpt from one of my trainings on developing the skill of developing skills:

Me: If you enjoy something, do you tend to do more of it or less?

Group: More!

M: If you do more and more of something, do you tend to get better at it or worse?

G: Better!

M: If you are getting better and better at something, do you tend to get better results or worse?

G: Better results!

M: If you are getting better and better results, do you tend to enjoy something more or less?

G: More!

So, to review, the cycle of enjoyable skill development goes something like this:
Enjoy more => Do more => Get better => Better results => Enjoy more!

And the opposite is equally true:
Enjoy less => Do less => Get worse => Worse results => Enjoy less!

So is having fun really the best way to improve a skill? Where is the best place to jump into the loop? Let's check out the options...

1. Do more
I used to believe the secret of successfully developing any skill was simple - do the thing you want to learn every single day. Do it every day, do it every day, do it every day. The only problem is, how often have you set out on a new training regimen only to give up long before achieving any significant progress? It is in fact in the early days of learning a new skill, long before the motivation of noticeable improvement begins to kick in, that most people give up.

2. Get better
Bizarre as it may seem, this is not uncommon motivational wisdom. Well meaning though it may be to encourage someone to "do it better next time", it is a piece of advice that ranks alongside "just try harder" as difficult to act on and even more difficult to quantify.

3. Get better results
In school, were you ever encouraged to "get better grades"? If so, you may have attempted to work even harder in order to meet up to the wonderfully high expectations that were held of you. Trouble is, if at first you don't succeed, the tendency is to give up. "After all, what's the point?" we may say. "I'm not getting any better."

4. Enjoy it more
Is it possible to enjoy learning more in any moment? Let's find out...

Today's Experiment:
(appox. time 1 minute for part one, 10 minutes for part two)

Part One
1. Give yourself a rating from 1 to 10 as to how much you are enjoying reading today's tip, where 1 is "oh my god I've never been so bored in my entire life" and 10 is "wow, this is way better than sex!"

2. If you had to increase your score by 1 point right now, how could you do it?
Example: If I started at a 4, in order to get my enjoyment rating up to a 5 I could shift in my seat to get more comfortable, take a nice deep breath and think a happy thought, make a decision to start enjoying it more, or even get up, make myself a cup of hot cocoa, and return to do part two with a warm, chocolatey smile!

Part Two
1. Pick a skill where you would like to take your ability to the next level.

2. As before, give yourself a rating for how much you currently enjoy practicing the skill on a scale from 1 to 10.

3. If you knew that the more fun you have doing something (i.e. the more you enjoy doing it), the faster and better you will learn, what might you do differently than you are doing now?
Example: Learning to sing. Currently about a 5. If I knew that the more fun I had learning how to sing the faster and better I would learn, I might get myself a collection of only songs I like to sing, I might ignore the "experts" and practice singing songs at least as often as I practiced singing scales, I might get a karaoke machine and throw a party, I might begin to count singing along with the radio as "practice time", and I might decide to make recordings of myself singing along to backing tracks for my own amusement.

Have fun, learn heaps, and....well, have fun and learn heaps!