 If you guys have not been following along on my journey, I'm actually doing my doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine because it's the form of medicine that when I went to the normal doctors, got no answers about my digestive problems, it was a Chinese doctor that first got me these holy crap, what did you do results? And the thing is, this work is really my life's passion. It's my calling. It's what I love more than anything else in the world as much as I love YouTube and writing books. This is what I love more than anything. But because this is finally the work I love the most, this is something I want to dedicate myself to try and become one of the best in history at. Now that's an ambitious goal, but in this video I want to share the first step I'm planning on taking to the road to mastery and I hope it will help you. What's up guys? Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day. Now, if you are personally as ambitious as I am and you really want to become exceptional as you do, regardless of whether or not it's your passion right now or your job, I would highly recommend going through that one page journaling worksheet. It's the first link in the description box there below. It'll help you go through some exercises to do exactly what I'm going to talk about right here. Figure out the vision, reverse engineer it, and then get tactical specific on what's due today. So you can check that out right in the first link there below. So where do you even begin with the goal to become the best in history? Like what an egomaniacal idea, right? Like what a complete egomaniac I have to be to be like I'm going to be the best in history. But really, I think it's an interesting challenge because of the fact that I finally found the work I view as my passion, the thing I want to learn more about than anyone else in the world. And I want to see how far you can go, much like the icons in history of Einstein, Tesla, Benjamin Franklin, all these other people that have done incredible things and are remembered as these icons. But where do you begin? The answer for me is following the people who have studied the best in the world. And the best researchers in the world regarding this, one of them is Anders Ericsson, who you may know this idea of the 10,000 hour rule. Well that's really from Anders Ericsson's research on chess masters, Olympians, on violinists, on swimmers, on all these kinds of different professions and different domains where achievement and objective performance can be obsessed. So I want to share the first and most important step of mastery, according to Anders Ericsson's research. Now Anders Ericsson, this 10,000 hour rule concept came because that was the median number, the middle number, that he and his research colleagues found studying expert performers. Now what that meant was that these people, when they had been the highest performance in terms of objective performance, they won competitions, they were objectively somehow studied and voted to be the best. Now this is different and slightly harder to study when it comes to things like music and musical performance, but really that was the middle number of what's called hours of deliberate practice. So there were performers that had over 20,000 hours of practice when they became world renowned, but very few were under 10,000 hours. Now the big thing is that number one, expert performance, being the best in the world, is strongly correlated with the number of hours you put in. Number one, number two, just putting in 10,000 hours does not guarantee you will become the best in the world at what you do. Again that was the middle number and of course it was the middle number of a very specific form of practice. So let's talk about deliberate practice now. With deliberate practice it's very, very, very important to establish what it is and what it isn't. Me wanting to become a pro at tennis and then every day and just showing up hitting balls, trying to get it over the net, that does not constitute one of my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is outcome, feedback driven. There is some kind of feedback regarding did you improve? Did you not improve? It's drilled in the sense that you practice very specific skills. So deliberately practicing the sport of tennis does not mean you practice tennis. It means you drill the overhand, you drill the serve, you drill the backhand, you drill your movement, how fast you go from the left to the right. Deliberate practice is all about number one, is there some kind of objective feedback? Did I return the ball faster? Did I hit it at a higher top speed? Did I get it closer to the net tighter? That's the objective feedback. Then there's also the fact that you have to drill a specific skill. The specific skill may be I'm going to drill my backhand. I'm going to practice returning backhands faster. I'm going to practice keeping the backhand closer to the net so the ball doesn't go high. It stays low and it's fast. I'm going to practice the direction I put the backhand shot. So with deliberate practice drilling a very specific skill set as part of your overall domain with feedback. Did it work? Did it not? What do I need to do differently? And then only then drilling and setting up a new practice session where you can evaluate your performance. So one thing I found super interesting about his research was that the highest performers in football in terms of quarterbacks, in terms of chess masters, and in terms of other Olympians was the strongest correlation with becoming the best was the number of hours spent reviewing performance. Not the number of hours playing the game. The most successful quarterbacks were the ones that spent the most time reviewing the tapes of their performance, therefore evaluating where they needed to improve. And the chess masters and some other sports, the people that spent the most time reviewing their game and figuring out what they needed to tweak. Again, it wasn't the number of hours in the arena. The number of hours reviewing time in the arena and then what needed changing. So what are the takeaways here? So let's say, for example, your goal is to become a successful YouTuber, trying to find something generic that you want to learn. If you want to become a YouTuber, let's say the skills that you require are video editing, so the video quality, the video performance on YouTube, your actual delivery. So those are three big things that you could each apply deliberate practice to. So one, you could focus on how do I improve my video quality? Maybe I need to add more b-roll, more visuals, maybe I need to cut faster, maybe I need to do more alternative content, just more creative content. Those you would each drill and then objectively test their performance on YouTube. You could also say, what are my actual video performance metrics? Maybe you need to study video SEO, how people are finding your videos, getting in the recommended video feed, different thumbnails. That would be a whole different realm of deliberate practice. You train that skill set, you drill it, see the performance in the video, and then you adapt. The last aspect might be my performance. It may be, for example, getting to the point faster. Talking slower, maybe getting clearer on the points I need to deliver and having a more sequential video. Those would all be tactical ways you could apply this. So I hope that helps. That's an intro to what, to me, is one of the most important concepts and practices I'm studying in my life that I want to dedicate to, not only what I do now, obviously, but really becoming the best Dr. Alex in the world. So wish me luck on this journey. And of course, if you want to become the greatest or good at what you do, deliberate practice can help no matter what you're trying to get better at. Again, that goal-setting worksheet, the first link in the description box, go through that and that's going to help you figure out what are my deliberate practices and the deliberate habits to work on. The first link right there below. You also can check out my last videos right there.