When learning anything new in your life you can think of it like building a ship. First, you must nail it, then you can scale it, and finally, you can sail it. Too often we try to sail or scale before we nail leaving a leaky ship that is only half-built and either sure to sink or puts us in a situation where we are constantly bailing water to prevent sinking.
How to NAIL IT.
Clarity
You must have clarity and a plan. Without a clear picture, plan, and blueprint of a sailboat, you will likely end up with something that resembles a dingy, if you’re lucky. In that, you must know what you want and the more clear you are of what you want the better your chances of nailing it (however, life gives no promises except for death). You will also need to include in your plan the type of water you will be taking your ship on. Open water is different than rafting down a river and sitting in a swimming pool. The ship and where you are taking it are both important aspects of your plan.
Skill Development and Acquisition
Akin to Alfred Korzybski “a map is not the territory” a plan for a boat is not the boat. There are numerous skills that must be learned to build a ship and the better you get at the skills needed to build the ship the better ship you will build. For most skills, you will be well served to practice apart from the ship. Once you have become proficient at said skills then it makes sense to use them to build the ship that you will risk your life at sea in (more on this in phase two). For the Nail It phase focus on honing necessary skills.
Fine Tuning
Invariably through practicing you will find things that don’t work or you don’t like as well as you originally thought you would. You will tweak, rebuild, and fine-tune these things until you feel those things are up to your standards and to your liking. The more you tweak and fine-tune your skills and the component parts of your ship the smoother the sailing are likely to be. During fine-tuning, you will be testing both the component parts of your ship and may even have your ship built and ready to take for a test run.
The more time you spend in the Nail It phase the further and smoother your trip will be.
You will know you are done when you can say with confidence “NAILED IT!”.