How to Become 10x Faster At Anything You Do

When your to-do list grows bigger every day and the deadlines are approaching like an out-of-control train, do you ever wonder if it’s possible to do all your work 2, 3, even 10 times faster?

Without sacrificing quality, of course.

Well, there are two news — the good and the bad, of course.

The good is that regardless of how slow you might be now, you can become faster at almost anything you want — the secret is very simple.

The bad is that you have no magic switch in your head to instantly overclock yourself to incredible speeds.

Still determined to know the secret? Then read on.

Extreme performance

There are many people in various fields of expertise who are capable of things that seem unbelievable to ordinary people.

For example, world record holder Eliud Kipchoge, who’s recently broken the 2-hour marathon barrier, finishing it in 1 hour 59 mins and 40 secs.

This doesn’t seem as insane on paper as it is in the real life. To run it with the same time you’d need to run a 2’51”/km 42 times. Most people will struggle to run one kilometer in 4 minutes.

And if you’ve ever done some running, you might know that there’s an enormous gap between a 4- and a 3-mins/kilometer run. The latter requires almost double the effort, and you need to train like hell after it to improve it further to a 2’51”.

Now that’s just one, imagine running it 42 times in a row.

It seems insane to us, but for world-class runners, it’s nothing extraordinary. If you watch Kipchoge after the historic run, he looks almost fresh.

There are people in many other fields who achieve similar superhuman levels of mastery. But it’s important to note that such proficiency didn’t come to them by chance. Sure, there are genetic freaks and naturally gifted individuals but such geniuses are one in a million. And even they don’t become the best overnight.

So what’s their secret?

Deliberate practice

To become the best in any sphere of activity you don’t have to be extremely talented. Everyone can become highly proficient by following one simple principle.

The key to mastery is called deliberate practice.

What does this concept mean?

Contrary to the popular belief, simple practice doesn’t make perfect.

Let me give you an example.

Imagine you watched Kipchoge run the sub-2-hour marathon and decided to start running yourself. Maybe even break his record one day.

You start running 5 kilometers every day. Completely dedicated to your decision, you train even on your birthday. A year passes, and you have increased your distance to 40 kilometers daily. You’re in excellent shape and look 10 years younger.

But here’s the thing: you’ve been training alone, no coaches, not tracking your time and progress. You ran simply because you enjoyed it and at a comfortable pace.

Сould you beat Kipchoge after a year of such training? I’d bet 98 times out of 100 you couldn’t catch him even on a bike.

Now I don’t obviously discourage you from starting to train, just don’t run 40 km a day, it’s not good for your joints

This example just shows us that mindless, routine practice can’t make you perfect. For that, you need to practice the right way.

And that means deliberately pushing yourself to evolve.

It means to abandon comfort and do things that demand your focus, attention, and persistence. It will be challenging and demanding, and far from easy.

But if you want to become the top 0,01% in what you do, it’s the only way.

• If you want to play the piano better, you can’t stick with the only melody you’re comfortable with. You have to try those that seem too difficult now.
• If you want to improve your cooking skills, you shouldn’t make only scrambled eggs every day. Challenge yourself to cook something you’ve never tried before.

The secret to mastery is quite simple, but very few are actually dedicated to reaching the top. That’s why mediocrity is everywhere — once the difficulty shows up, most people filter out.

On the good side, it means that if you pull through, you’ll meet no competition and will become the best.

(You can read more about deliberate practice in Geoff Colvin’s book)

Your brain needs a challenge

Here’s another reason why you need to deliberately challenge yourself.

Your brain is one hell of an efficient machine. It can adapt to almost anything. But it’s efficiency means it’s always looking for the path of least resistance.

And this doesn’t always align with progress. When you’re doing the same thing over and over, your brain becomes efficient at it, but if you never provide it with anything harder, it doesn’t see any need to improve. (You can also read about that here)

Your brain is essentially programmed to survive. If you don’t provide it with any challenge, there’s nothing to adapt to and it doesn’t see any reason to become better than what it already is.

But when you constantly push your brain to its limit, force it to evolve and find a way to survive, eventually what seemed impossible at first, becomes the norm.

That’s why a constant element of challenge is crucial to achieving mastery in any field.

Now let’s take a look at how you can apply the principles of deliberate practice when the goal is to do things faster and without the loss of quality.

How to increase your effective speed

Perfectly balanced

In the beginning, there’s something that should be noted to prevent unnecessary frustration.

Your path to the top can be imagined as a set of stairs.

You can probably run upstairs three steps at a time, but if you try and jump over 10, there’s a risk of falling and breaking your back.

In deliberate practice, it’s also important to make the challenge realistic.

If you climb up one step at a time, you might soon become bored since it’s below what you’re capable of. And if you decide to immediately jump from the first step to the last one, it’s probably gonna scare you too much to even try it.

You must find a good balance between too hard and too easy so that you feel slight discomfort, but not anxiety.

And if you manage to find a perfect balance, it’s possible to enter the flow — a state when you improve and enjoy it.

How to practice efficiently

There are also some things you can do before the practice to increase its efficiency.

Consider doing some of the following:

Setting a timer

You may have heard about Parkinson’s Law, which tells us that

“Work expands to fill the time allotted for it”

A 30-min task can very easily consume your entire day and even more if you don’t set any limit on it.

So if your goal is to increase the speed, try setting up a timer on your phone or anywhere you want and give yourself slightly less time than you think should be enough for you.

We’ll talk more about that later, but the point is that you should give yourself a limit on every important task you are doing, to prevent any possible time loss.

Preparing the workspace

To maximize efficiency, your workspace should be as clean and prepared as possible.

It’s a lot easier to work when you have immediate access to everything you might need, than when it’s in complete chaos and you spend 20 mins trying to find a necessary tool.

If you take some time to clean your working area from all the useless stuff and organize all your tools, it will save you a lot of time and nerves later.

Minimizing distractions

You should also consider

• turning off your phone notifications
• putting on earphones
• or if you need to work in silence, warning people around you that in the next X hours you’ll be extremely unavailable and it’s in everyone’s best interests not to disturb you.

Distractions are dangerous because they can break your flow and cause you to lose precious time, which is why minimizing them will again save you a lot of trouble in the long run.

Decide for yourself which things usually distract you the most and do everything to avoid them.

The practice

Everything below might sound absurdly easy, but it’s only until you actually begin doing it.

In short: if you want to work faster — just do it!

As we discussed before, it’s important to provide your brain with a challenge and in this case, the challenge means forcing yourself to do things faster.

From here on out, try doing things that matter to you a little bit faster. Not everything, but these you want to become quicker at.

Applying the principles of deliberate practice in our case means making constant, conscious efforts to work faster even if you’re not used to it yet.

It’s completely fine if your quality can’t keep with your speed at first — your brain will adapt and it’ll inevitably catch up if you keep at it.

Some examples of how you can try and increase your pace:

• If you’re a writer, set up a goal to write more words in an hour or a day.
• If you’re a student, try reading a chapter faster.
• If you do manual labor, try doing your job as fast as possible without hurting the quality — like F1 pit-stop mechanics with their insane tire-changing speed.
• If you’re a software developer, try increasing your coding and problem-solving speed.
• If you cook, try slicing ingredients up faster (but keep your fingers intact).
• In the mornings, you can try getting ready for work quicker.

If the prospect of increasing your speed at multiple tasks scares you, pick up just one, it’s even better to concentrate on one particular activity first.

Like pointed out above, it’s a good idea to set up a timer when it’s possible, and give yourself a bit less time than what it usually takes. This will give an additional portion of motivation and you can record your results to keep track of progress.

If you make constant, conscious efforts to work faster, your brain will have no option but to adapt and improve.

It might be uncomfortable at first, but it’s worth it if you want to achieve true mastery.

Summary

There are people who can achieve insane levels of speed and quality in their craft and their secret is simple yet very effective.

Now you also know how putting the principles of deliberate practice into use can help you become just as proficient as them. You can become 10 or even 100 times faster and efficient, just be completely dedicated to progress.

Perhaps you already decided on an activity where you’ll strive to drastically improve your speed at. No matter what, don’t give up, and soon what seems insane for others will become easy for you.

Today is a great day to start evolving.

(You can also read this article here, on my blog)