As freelancers, we’re often only limited by our imagination, so it can be difficult to see whether we are progressing in our given field. Sure, we can produce some great logo designs or write an article, but we were able to do that a few months ago as well. In order to stand out in a sea of talent, it’s often the case that you need to take your skills to the “next level,” something far easier said than done.
Today I want to look at plateaus in terms of ability, and four tried and tested methods to help you get through them. The journey of mastery is an on-going process, but there are lots of ways to improve our talents along the way.
1 — Slow Down
I’m not sure if this is common across the board, but I can have periods of a few weeks or more when I’m really productive, I’m firing on all cylinders, and everything is going smoothly. Then, for no known reason, I’ll start putting things off, focusing on the easy work so I can skip the hard and checking my email just to feel busy.
Put simply, the dreaded p-word kicks in. Yeah, you know the one…procrastination.
This type of slowing down is usually due to a lack of self-discipline, and not what I’m referring too here. Instead, in order to improve your skills, one effective technique is to stop rushing through your work habitually, and slow down to focus on specific actions.
Once World Champion speed-typist, Albert Tangora, would intentionally type at half his normal speed for a few weeks whenever he hit a plateau. He took time to get the feel for what he was doing, and once he started pushing himself again, he found that he easily broke his previous records.
Improving your skills isn’t always about frantically trying to push your limits further and further. Sometimes it’s good to slow down, really focus on what you are doing and take everything in.
There are lots of ways you can implement this ’slowing down’ into your routine, depending on what you do:
- Chase the smaller, easier clients for a while instead of the big fish
- Write your articles slowly, with more care and attention
- Obsess over your lines of code and really force yourself to think about what you are doing
The aim here is to try to turn-off the auto-pilot and concentrate on specific actions at a slower speed. You may only need to do this for a very short time-frame to notice improved results.
2 — Go Back to Basics
The process we have each used to build our current ability is quite honestly, just a case of trial and error. Our mind stores our successful actions and over time these successes become natural. You can look at driving to see a good example of this. Once you have been driving a car for a while, you don’t need to think about when to use the clutch or change gear, you just know.
One of the reasons we can hit a plateau (or at least feel like we have) is because we have forgotten what it feels like to succeed. We’ve forgotten what it is like to notice our own improvements and achieve things we have never thought possible. We’re often lacking, what scientists call (seriously), the winning feeling.
The winning feeling is simply an emotion we get when we accomplish certain tasks. This is a huge necessity for beginners, but when you’re very advanced in your field, it can be hard to know that you’re improving. It’s often the case that the better we get at something, the more critical we become of our own work; practically eliminating this winning feeling from our realities.
Just for a while, try going back to basics so you can re-live this winning feeling in your chosen field. Write a simple program that you know will do its job, create a website design that doesn’t have any fancy features or write a basic article for a directory that nobody will see. Go back to basics and recall what it is like to prosper.
When you return to your more important tasks, you can start to see how far you really have progressed.
3 — Practice
I know this point is fairly obvious, but obvious just means most are aware of it, not that it is bad. “Practice makes perfect” has to be one of the most common phrases in the English language and for good reason, it’s true.
I recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and while he missed out one very important point, it was packed with fascinating information. One point that really struck a chord with me were all the examples of talented and successful individuals (in their field) who had spent at least 10,000 hours honing their skills. (10,000 hours, by the way, equates to working on your talent: 5 hours per day, 7 days per week, for just less than 5 and a half years).
What really interested me was that when looking at current professionals such as violinists and pianists, there was not one exception to the rule. There was nobody who appeared to have some God-given talent and didn’t need to practice that much; they all had to put an extreme number of hours in to get where they were.
I think that this in itself really shows the power of practice.
4 — Look at Finished Results
I am under no illusion that I still have a long way to go in order to improve my skills as a writer, but I have definitely progressed a lot over the last few years. One thing that I can recall being very closely linked to my improvements as a writer is when I started to read more books.
I read about one book every week and whether I enjoyed the content or not, I always felt that even just looking at different styles of writing helps me to better my own. This doesn’t just have to be an idea that writers can use though, far from it.
If you’re a designer, look at logo design books or CSS galleries. If you write Facebook applications, look at the developer forums to see how people are doing things or try to dissect what is already out there. Whatever field it is that you are in, take time to look at the end results from other talent, and you’ll no doubt be inspired to improve your own.
If you keep doing this you’ll start to begin to define what is good to you versus the type of work you wouldn’t want to produce, and then use those good examples to benefit your own output.