How to Break Down a Skill and Practice Effectively
Most skills are complex, which means that they consist of different smaller skills (sub-skills). Surfing, for example, consists of paddling, popping up, staying balanced, reading waves and a range of other sub-skills. Your performance on the complex skill depends on your proficiency and coordination of many (sub)skills at the same time.
Some sub-skills can be mastered relatively fast, while it usually takes years to become proficient at a complex skill.
Trying to become better at all parts of a complex skill at the same time isn’t the most effective way to improve. This would be an overwhelming amount of new information for your body and brain.
When learning a skill, it is essential to break it down and choose which sub-skill(s) to focus on. Some will be more important for performance than others.
The most effective way to become better at a complex skill is one sub-skill at a time.
But what should you focus on?
If you’re starting to learn a new skill, the fastest way to improve is to get very good at the basics. These are the sub-skills that you will see most often in the performance of the complex skill. And since they are done all the time, your performance on the basics…
