9+ important takeways from this 6 minute video:

00:00:07 Reaching your “potential.” You’ve probably got an idea of what a happier, more successful, more attractive future version of yourself would look like that you’re working towards becoming, and at times you probably get discouraged and wonder if you’ll ever bring this person to real life.

The crushing reality is that most people will never come close to reaching their goals and becoming that person they’d like to become.

Most people overestimate what they can do in 1 year, and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.

– Bill Gates

00:01:00 Jeff Olson, author of The Slight Edge explores strategies to make reaching your goal and becoming successful more attainable than you’d think. The slight edge involves breaking down your daily routine into small, simple, easily attainable actions, and then consciously focusing on performing those easy-to-do routines from then on.

Success is the result of doing small, unremarkable and relatively easy-to-do things over months and years, not doing a very difficult, extraordinary thing just once.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Recall in the video Why ‘being lucky’ is a crutch and five strategies to improve your luck that you need a certain amount of luck when it comes to becoming successful; you have to work hard and prepare for it, and be ready for it if it comes to you. Some people are ONLY successful because they were lucky enough to be a the right place at the right time.

Author Jim Collins argues you must be bold and disciplined. Stay alive because of your discipline to always do all the right preparation; not because of your luck.]

If you want to master a skillset within the next year, here is a formula I challenge all of my clients to follow:

STEP 1. Books. Find the top 16 books you can on your target skill, and invest 30 minutes each day reading 10 pages and taking your own notes. In one year you’ll have read all 16 books and condensed them into a notebook you can refer back to and build upon.

STEP 2. Online training. Find the best online lectures & training courses you can on your target skill, and along side your reading invest 30 minutes each day following the training course and taking your own notes. In less than a year you’ll have completed 3+ training courses.

“Mastery is easy to achieve using a computer because a computer doesn’t get tired of showing you the same video five times.”

– Daphne Koller TEDGlobal 2012: What we’re learning from online education

STEP 3. Informational interviewing. Armed with the information you’ve learned through books and online training, find the best experts you can, get 15 minutes of their time to ask them for tips and tricks they’ve learned along the way to becoming an expert, and get a list of other books, sources, online training, and people they would recommend you speak to on the subject matter.

For more on informational interviewing watch the panel discussion Lessons learned in conflict resolution at Columbia University.

STEP 4. Teach others. Create your own training and offer to teach others who are not as skilled as you.

The plus, minus, equal, system is a strategy to improve your skill sets by training with someone who is better than you, someone who is equal to you, and someone not as good as you who you teach.

-Ryan Holiday: How to improve more quickly : Daily Stoic Youtube Channel