How To Learn From the Best With These 3 Simple Steps

You can master your side hustle skills starting with replication.

Mastery is a side effect of constant repetition and perseverance. And if you like something, you must follow a pattern of trial, error, and improvement to become better and eventually succeed.

However, only some mistakes are beneficial for your progress. On the contrary, some of them might push you in the wrong direction. And it will be difficult to turn back and fix all the new issues you have created.

Luckily, many other people made the same mistakes before you did. So use their experience to avoid unnecessary blunders and speed up your growth.

But how could you effectively learn from the best? Here are three simple steps you could adopt from now on.

1 — Observe what they do.

Observation is the first key to mastery and learning from the best.

In the past, people were willing to work for free for famous artists to absorb their knowledge and learn their craft. And history showed us countless examples of artists who studied and worked for other big names. So the practice always existed, but we started to lose it because of schools and online courses.

However, online work has the advantage of being available to anyone. So if you want to learn from your favorite side hustlers and explore their techniques, you can always do it.

But even here, there are a couple of things you should care about.

Start with the basics.

When you are passionate about something, you wish to learn fast. And reaching the most advanced techniques in a short time is a priority.

But without solid bases, you risk higher falls later. So take your time. Learn the basics and study one concept at a time. Building a side hustle requires many soft skills you cannot learn overnight. And if you want to succeed, you must give them time to grow.

Pick comparable work.

When you decide to learn from the best, first, you must pick which work to analyze. And you could make two choices:

• you either go for the best sellers
• or you choose projects that are closer to yours.

If you pick the first, it will be harder to get valuable answers and information from it. And it will be harder to use that knowledge to improve your work.

But if you pick the second, you will find valuable information faster. The familiarity with the subjects and style will allow you to improve easier. So pick work that is comparable to your own. For example, you could aim for 30% better at most.

Don’t focus only on the work.

Building a successful side hustle doesn’t only require mastery. Other countless parameters influence the success of a masterpiece. And the author’s mindset is one of them. So ask yourself:

• When does the author work?
• Which are their routines?
• When do they publish, and how do they share their work?
• Do they use any particular system? Do they work alone, or do they delegate? And if they do, which part of their work do they leave to others?

All these questions help you understand which types of authors and side hustles could make you improve your craft.

2 — Ask why they did it.

Sometimes, you won’t know the reasons behind a choice because of a lack of knowledge about the subject or the context. So you might wonder why the master picked one thing instead of the other. Even more, if that choice is unexpected but brings good results.

In that case, you can only ask.

However, this type of information isn’t always available for free. The creators might have already explained their point of view in content behind a paywall. Or they may find your question uninteresting and skip it. So you must pay attention to how you formulate it.

Don’t waste their time.

People don’t have time to share free knowledge with anyone. So if your question is too long or complex, you may never get a response.

Therefore, pick straightforward questions to improve the possibility of getting noticed. Instead of making three questions, ask the most interesting one. And try to be as efficient as you can. Your message should take less than five minutes for the creator to read and reply.

Use efficient hooks.

Everybody loves to read praises. So you can use that to your advantage.

When consuming content you like, note the things that hit you the most. Find the favorite parts of the authors, and compliment them for making it. And they will be more willing to share the reasons for that choice.

3 — Replicate yourself.

Lastly, you have to replicate yourself.

Repetition is good practice. But if you repeat the wrong patterns, you won’t improve. On the contrary, your ability will focus on harmful behaviors, and you will block your growth.

But if you alternate repetition and replication, the results will improve.

• Replication will force you to improve and learn new concepts you neglected before.
• Repetition will help you fix those new concepts you just acquired.

So take care of how you set up your improvement environment and which people you follow to try to improve.

Keep a 20/80 ratio.

According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of your improvements come from 20% of the work. And you can apply this principle in many fields of your life, including mastering a skill.

So split your practice time into 80% repetition and 20% replication. This way, you can learn a few new things and progressively adopt and master them.

Pick people with similar work ethics.

Work ethics matters more than anything else.

You cannot replicate a piece that doesn’t resonates with you. And even if you do, you will execute poorly and have scarce results.

So pick people with similar work ethics regarding the subjects, working hours, and even habits they have. That could help you empathize with them and embrace their abilities faster.

Final Thoughts

Mastery is the sum of repetition and perseverance. But replication has a significant impact on how fast you acquire new skills.

You could do everything by yourself and follow a trial-and-error pattern. And you would eventually become great at what you are doing. But it will take a lot more time to escape insidious mistakes that might slow you down for months.

Or, you could learn from the best in your field. You could master a new side hustle in a few months (or at least get good at it). And you don’t need to pay for online courses or anything similar. You only need to pick your favorite side hustlers, study their craft, and replicate it.

Cover Photo by Will Suddreth from Unsplash for How To Learn From the Best With These 3 Simple Steps.