Skill Mastery Quotes

Nobody ever mastered any skill except through intensive persistent and intelligent practice.

To become an expert achiever in any human activity, it takes practice... practice... practice.

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

One of the things I'm best at is modeling. I find someone who is best at something I want to learn. Then I model them, and learn it myself. Then, when I've proven it to myself, I teach it to others.

The master of a single trade can support a family. The master of seven trades cannot support himself. The wind is never for the sailor who knows not to what port he is bound.

Life is short, the art long.

I think an actor is very like a sportsman. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work, and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.

Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it – highly skilled. It's about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you that or not. And that you'll be around, in one way or another, longer than anybody else. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that.

Golf is fluid. It's always changing. It's always evolving. First of all, you never master it.

Soccer presented no challenge to me. Playing felt like breathing: I always had a magical connection to the ball. But it didn't feel like an adventure. Music was more of a challenge and, in the end, felt more interesting.

The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don't get appreciably faster. That's because it's become automatic. You've moved it to the back of your mind's filing cabinet.

My goal is to be the Jay Z of DJing.

True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.

Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

You might reduce Lombardi's coaching philosophy to a single sentence: In any game, you do the things you do best and you do them over and over and over.

Genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.

Bowling was my natural skill. I didn't know how I was doing it, but I was spinning it miles and bamboozling people.

Hale Irwin is the exception. He just does everything so well.

When I play guitar, it's automatic. I don't try to do something; I just do it. And it's already so ingrained in what I do, I don't think about it. I don't try to do something - I just do it. And the more I do it that way, the more I surprise myself. And if I surprise myself, that's the best thing.

It is the acquisition of skills in particular, irrespective of their utility, that is potent in making life meaningful. Since man has no inborn skills, the survival of the species has depended on the ability to acquire and perfect skills. Hence the mastery of skills is a uniquely human activity and yields deep satisfaction.

Learn to do the common things uncommonly well.