Secrets to increasing your skills

Have you ever looked at someone and wished you had their level of skill? Maybe you’re just learning how to play the piano, and you want to some day be able to play as artfully as your teacher. Perhaps you’re trying to learn a new language, or want to be able to throw a basketball and actually get it in the basket.

These are all worthy goals, but the saying goes that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become a master. Unless you are utterly devoted to basketball or learning Japanese, you might not be wild about investing that much of your time to get the results.

Science says you can learn faster

There actually is a method you can use to skip a few of those hours on your way to mastery. According to a 2016 study, you can cut the hours it takes to learn a new skill in half by changing how you learn—but not too much.

Most of the time we learn by repeating the same thing over and over again. This might mean spending time tossing a ball at a hoop, practicing scale at the piano, or looking at flashcards for a new language.

If however, instead of repeating these things over and over again you make it a little different each time you practice, you’ll learn faster. This could mean moving to one side by a few inches to practice throwing a ball at a hoop, practicing a different movement on the piano, or reading from a Japanese book instead of looking at flashcards.

The trick, according to the study, is to not make it too different. This method helps through reconsolidation. When you practice a skill, it is stored in your memory. When you do something very similar, it is reconsolidated as the same thing—which helps you learn a lot faster. If it’s too different however, it will be stored as a different memory.

This is really useful if you’re struggling to learn a new language or trying to improve a new skill. Now if you want to be a master you won’t have to sacrifice 10,000 hours of your life to do so.