TDLR: You can improve your growth but you can't do it without changing the stakes involved & the environment you're in. Here's how:

What if you could speed up the time it took to be great?

You can, and it's not overly complicated either.

As a society, we're obsessed with speed. If the internet isn't fast enough at a hotel, we complain. If our delivery takes 10 days versus 2, we get frustrated. We don't even want to sit through commercials anymore.

We have no time to wait.

The days of dial-up internet and waiting on a page to load? Gone.

We want everything - including our own growth - now.

I think that's one reason most people fail to invest in their own growth truly - it just takes too dang long to see the result.

We can be talking about health, paying off debt, or even building key leadership skills - "It's not worth the effort today if I don't see an immediate benefit" (is probably what they say).

Growth is a long, slow, and inevitably sloppy process.

We suck at the beginning - and that's not something many people's egos will allow them to do. So instead of growth, we settle for something more comfortable until we think we'll be better at the beginning.

(PS - we won't).

Building muscle, losing weight, learning sales, manging your boundaries - all of these are growth opportunities that take time.

Long, slow, (feels almost painful), time.

But that timeline can be sped up with right two ingredients.

To accelerate our skills development we need:

• Better consequences
• Better competition

1. Better consequences = bigger stakes.

Think how motivated you are to train if you have something on the line or something public to do.

Like signing up to do a company 5k.

This public act - knowing you have to a) perform on race day AND b) your coworkers know it - forces you to take training more seriously.

You'll most likely start doing laps around the neighborhood knowing you "have to finish this race."

It's the same motivating act that you get when you...

• Spend significant money on a personal trainer.
• Place a bet with buddies
• Make a public declaration you'll _______ by this (date).

The increased stakes that others will be watching you and expecting you to do something improves how focused and consistent you are with getting better.

2. Better competition = faster learning curve.

The stronger the people around you, the faster youll speed up your success.

Look at something like playing pickleball.

If you're just starting out, you will likely want to play with other people at your same beginner skill level. It makes picking up the rules easier and adjusting to the game.

But it also makes you too comfortable.

If you intentionally play with people who have 1-2 years experience on you, who can play the game significantly better, you will be forced to learn at a faster clip to keep up.

This forced environment against tougher competition, speeds up how quickly to build the skills to play at that level (and dominate your original beginner playing partners).

It's also why most younger siblings become better athletes than their older siblings. The younger ones develop skills faster playing against bigger, stronger, faster big brothers/sisters in order to keep up.

So what do you want to get better at doing?

THE PRACTICE FIELD

Knowing there are two key requirements to increase our learning speed, what can you do this week to improve?

1. Raise the stakes

What is one thing you can do to increase the stakes at what you want to get better at?

One thing I did when writing my first book was post publicly that I wanted accountability to writing daily until I completed - and set a deadline of October 22 to be done by.

Each day I would post a picture to my social media story when I hit the word count.

Each day I failed to post, someone would contact me about it.

Can you...

• Set up a penalty with a friend for each day you don't take action on growth?
• Sign up for a race/Toastmasters/program to where you have to perform publicly - and thus encourage you to buckle down on improvement?
• Enlist a coach or personal trainer that you invest in to hold you accountable to the work?

2. Change your environment

One of my favorite questions to myself is: "Who is doing _______ (that I want to be doing) really well right now?"

I identify the who and then determine how to get in the same room as them.

For example, I invested in a mastermind program to interact and connect wtih a speaker that I see as a master communicator. I want to learn his inputs and studying - not to replicate him, but to replicate his systems to improvement.

Also, putting myself in the types of room he is in means I have to elevate my own performance to stay there. High performers requires those in their space to also be high peformers.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about pickleball, running a business, coaching teams - what are the rooms you need to insert yourself in to be surrounded by those better at the skill than you are?

Improvement requires intentionality.

Ask yourself this weekend:

• What's one skill that I want to improve before EOY and how can I turn up the pressure on myself to get better at it?
• Is there someone around me now who models that skill better than I do?
• Where do I need to insert myself to learn at a faster pace?

Raise the stakes. Raise your circle. Speed up your growth.