My 3 Step Framework for Developing a New Skill

My last game

The buzzer goes off. I look up at the scoreboard and then over to my coaches and teammates on the bench standing up and clapping. The coaches that poured their heart and soul into our team. My teammates, many of whom, I’ve been playing basketball with for half my life.

I take one last scan of the crowd. Its the first round of the playoffs and we’re playing in our rival’s gym. There is less than one minute left in the game and we are down 15 points. The game is over. My high school basketball career is over.

I jog over to the sideline as one of the underclassman takes my spot for the final seconds of the game. I hug my coaches and take a seat next to my teammates. I think to myself “I can’t believe this is really how it’s going to end”.

Thinking back on my career

For the past 10 years, I’ve always chalked up my basketball career as slightly above average. I made Varsity as a sophomore, was named team captain, and played a lot of meaningful minutes in big games.

I was never the best shooter, best ball handler, or lock down defender but I was well rounded and had a lot of the intangibles that coaches look for in players. I wasn’t going to turn the ball over, I knew how to run the system our coaches taught us, and I wasn’t afraid to get scrappy taking charges or diving for loose balls.

Last week, I was reading an E-book totally unrelated to basketball that made me question if I changed my approach back then, could it have led to a different outcome that senior year season?

The E-Book was a 60 page document titled “How to Start Writing Online: The Ship 30 for 30 Ultimate Guide”. One concept they highlighted was to “treat writing like a startup”. They simplified it into a four step process:

1. Make small bets

2. Listen to the data

3. Double-down on what's working

4. Repeat

Writing is a skill I am trying to learn how to build. Could a similar framework be applied to developing any skill (e.g., basketball)?

As I reflect on my basketball career, I believe there was one part of the equation in developing my skillset that was missing.

It wasn’t a gap in knowledge. I had great coaches with years of experience coaching basketball who taught me all the fundaments, showed me what drills to complete, and how to execute the playbook.

It wasn’t my effort. I was in the gym every day after school for practice, showed up for 2-a-days on the weekend, and played summer league ball.

It was the adjustments I needed to make, but didn’t. I did not take the time to assess my game and determine what was I best at, what area of my game should I devote more time into practicing, where could I make the biggest impact on the team?

My team senior year needed a scorer. We were an incredibly disciplined team that played top notch defense, but we lost too many games because we just couldn’t score a decent amount of points. If I had doubled down on my shooting skills, then maybe we wouldn’t have been knocked out of the playoffs in the first round.

My 3-Step Framework for developing a new skill

1. Learn

We are in an incredible time in history where knowledge and information is everywhere. There are the free/cheap options like books, Youtube videos, and podcasts. And there are more expensive options like online courses, paid communities, and in-person conferences.

Numerous experts that have already put in 10,000 hours of practice share their models and can help us exponentially speed up the learning curve. It can be overwhelming due to the mass amounts of information available, but I typically start with the free materials from people that have been recommended to me by someone I know.

2. Consistent practice

Most people read the book or listen to the inspiring podcast but don’t take action. Or they take action for a few weeks, then stop.

10,000 hours seems intimidating. Do I really need to spend that much time writing before I’m good enough to call it a skill? Absolutely not.

Sahil Bloom has this 30 for 30 challenge that resonates with me. If we commit to focused effort on something (a skill, habit, or anything we want to improve) 30 minutes a day for 30 days, we will get drastically better. That is 900 minutes, which is a lot more reasonable than 10,000 hours. If we can do that, I’d like to guess that puts us in the top 20% of people working on that skill.

3. Calibrate and double down

Here is where I think a lot of people get stuck and myself included growing up playing basketball. Showing up for with focused effort every day is not enough. We need to be aware of feedback loops.

Study the data. For example, if I really struggled from the free throw line the past 3 games, I should shoot 100 extra free throws after my next practice. If I posted 3 different structured tweets on X, and one of them got 10x more impressions than the others, let me write more of those.

If data isn’t readily available, ask for feedback from from coaches, managers, customers, or peers. I’m constantly asking for feedback on this newsletter. Does my writing make sense? Is it formatted to read easily? Are the topics of interest?

I take the feedback into account and do more of what is working and less of what is not. Simple as that.

Final thoughts

This saying has become cliche but I do believe it to be true - “Simple, not easy”.

There is a simple formula (whether its my 3 step process or any other self development thought leader’s) to developing new skills. Everyone can read it and understand it. Not everyone does it though because it takes discipline and sustained effort to see results.

The good news is, even if I had calibrated and doubled down on my basketball skills, I don’t think I’d be in the NBA today. But when I stick to this process and improve my writing skillset, I think it will open up a lot of interesting opportunities.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated with you, what you disagree with, or what this made you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew