378. Effort and Skill

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 378: Effort and Skill.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to talk to you about this topic today, effort and skill. And this is going to apply in a whole bunch of different areas of your life. Before we dive in, I just want to welcome anybody who might be new to the podcast. Welcome, I’m so glad that you’re here. If you are new to me and my work, or even if you’re not new but you’ve never heard me coach, I’m just going to brag for a minute, because coaching is my super power.

I am a very good coach, not because I’m special but because I’ve been coaching for almost nine years now. And I’ve coached thousands of people on all kinds of problems. And I really want to encourage you if you’ve never been coached or heard coaching to come and check it out because what I can do here on the podcast barely scratches the surface of what I can help you do through coaching, either getting coached yourself or hearing someone else get coached, it’s just as powerful either way.

And I know this because I’ve had thousands of people tell me that, people who have been listening to podcasts for years who come along and hear coaching and go, “Okay, you told me it was going to be different but I didn’t really believe you until I saw it for myself.” And so that’s why I am offering occasionally these coaching intensives. It’s just 19 bucks. It’s a really low commitment, just come try out, see what coaching is all about experience.

And you can learn more about it at jodymoore.com/intensive. Coaching intensives, come and check it out. If you’re curious about coaching or especially if you’ve never heard coaching or been coached.

Okay, so today I’m going to talk to you a little bit about effort and skill. So here is the thing, let’s just talk for just a minute about some different things that human beings do in today’s day and age, in our world. Playing the piano, singing, singing well, being able to sing, not the kind of singing I do sometimes in the ward choir where I can let myself be drowned out by the other people that actually know how to sing, and they’re not going to kick me out. Because you don’t get kicked out of the church choir, anybody can sing.

But real legit singing, any kind of music for that matter, playing any kind of musical instrument, dancing, anything musical, how about art, painting, drawing. My daughter’s into creating digital art these days, and marker art. And there’s all kinds of art. People make art with clay and different mediums. How about sewing, sewing clothes, using a sewing machine, cutting out fabric, sewing it together in such a way that it looks good on somebody’s body or creating a quilt or something else with a sewing machine or sewing by hand.

How about felt flowers. I have a sister who makes the most beautiful amazing felt flowers. I swear, she can recreate just about any plant out of felt and make it look even better than the real thing. Cooking, oh my gosh, let’s talk about cooking for a minute. Cooking a meal, making a nice dinner, baking, baking beautiful cakes like Cake by Courtney does online, or baking bread or rolls.

How about writing, writing a blog, writing a book, writing articles for a magazine or a newspaper. How about social media posts, how about figuring out how to run ads on a social media platform. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to run ads, figuring out how to set up an ad account and run ads.

Okay, obviously I go on and on all day. But these are things that came to my mind that most people don’t just wake up and decide to do and then do well, most of us for most of these tasks. There might be some people out there who are exceptionally gifted or genius in one area, sports would be another one. There are people who have an unusual amount of talent that with very little effort get really good at something very quickly, that happens on occasion.

It is rare, for most people most of the things that we might try out doing for whatever reason we want to try out doing them, require a significant amount of effort and/or skill in order to achieve a certain result. Things that are interesting to us in life, results that people create or achieve that we would say are interesting, or significant, or that we pay attention to, that we even pause and consider, require either a lot of effort, or a lot of skill, or some of both.

This is why your child comes to you and shows you the thing they made at school and you’re happy that your child is sharing it with you, and maybe you wouldn’t find it to be cute and clever what they did. But you’re not overly impressed because the skill level of a child is so much lower than your own. So, odds are, the thing that they created at school, the picture they colored or the work that they did etc. is not challenging enough, that you pause and go, “Whoa, what is that, what did you do?”

It’s simple and basic and that’s okay because that’s where the child is developmentally. But this is the other reason why you’re going to be bored if you’re doing a bunch of things that you’re already really good at doing, either you master them or in most cases they just aren’t that hard for you anyway based on where you are developmentally, cognitively, physically etc.

So, results that stand out, results that we really admire, or that we really want, that we think will make us happier, which is a whole another podcast for a whole another day, but results that we are either striving to achieve that we then feel really proud of ourselves for, or are really admire other people or maybe we feel jealous of other people. Results that are interesting require a significant amount of effort and/or skill. Are you with me?

Okay, now, I know you’re like, “Okay, Jody Moore, duh, tell me something that I don’t know.” But here’s what I want you to think about. In just about every area, in most areas anyway, you don’t have to have the skill in order to achieve the result because your effort will compensate for your lack of results. So, let’s just say for example that – let me take one of my teenagers.

If I said to my teenager, “Hey, teenager daughter, you are now responsible for keeping the kitchen floor clean.” If she’s never cleaned the kitchen floor and I’m going to teach her how. Then she’s not going to be great at it at first. She doesn’t have the skill yet. She might slop water somewhere where it’s not supposed to be, or she might miss certain corners, or whatever.

Even though maybe we would say clean the floor isn’t a super challenging skill, it is something that requires a little bit of practice. But if she just cleaned the floor every single day then it wouldn’t matter that she’s not very good at it yet, the floor would probably still be as clean as I would want it to be, or as clean as I could do it if I cleaned it once once a week. Are you with me?

My piano teacher who moved away, hi Melanie, if you’re listening, I miss you. I still haven’t found a new piano teacher because no one compares to Melanie Hawkins. But at any rate she is a really, really skilled pianist. And I’m very much a beginner pianist. So, if there’s a song that I pick out that I decide I’m going to play, and Melanie wants to play that song, I will be able to play the song maybe almost as good as Melanie. It’s just going to require a lot of effort on my part.

I’m going to have to practice it over, and over, and over, and over again. Whereas Melanie can take the same piece of music, sit down and sight read it and play it. But my effort can compensate for my lack of skill. I don’t yet have the skill level that she has, but my effort will compensate. Are you with me?

Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur like me and you’re trying to do some online marketing. There is a skill to being able to market your business or services online, there is, there is a skill. People get better at it over time, you get better at writing. Let’s just take emails for example, you’ll get better at writing good emails. You’ll get better at formatting them in a way that helps people read them. You’ll get better at writing email subject lines that makes people want to open them. You’ll get better at email marketing if you choose to study it.

But you don’t have to be really good at it if you just send a lot of emails. If you send enough emails you can get the same result as somebody who sends fewer emails but has overall better emails. We’ll use one other business example from myself.

So, if you use Instagram and you’re an online marketer then you probably know that Instagram favors video these days. That’s why everybody’s posting reels because reels do better in terms of they get to more people, they get higher engagement, and more views, and you can get your message out. Typically, you can reach more people through a reel than you can through just a picture, quote, or something like that.

The bummer is a lot of us are like, “What? I don’t want to do reels. I don’t want to be on video. What does that mean, I have to dance, or point at words or what are we talking about? How do I even make these reels? How do I not look like an idiot? I am not good at reels.” But guess what? You don’t have to be good at reels if you just overcompensate for your lack of skill with effort. So, I have a new Instagram business page for those of you that are entrepreneurs, make sure you’re following me. It’s jodymoorebusiness.

And I decided, I don’t have very many followers there. I don’t know what I’m doing there. I’m just going to post a reel every day. I started this a couple weeks ago. I was like, “I’m posting a reel every day from now till the end of the year.” Other than, not on Sundays, and I’ll probably miss a day or two here and there. But for the most part, I’m going to post a reel every day. Notice I didn’t say I’m going to post a great reel. I’m going to do a good job on my reels. I’m going to post a reel that goes viral.

No, I’m just going to post a reel every day from now till the end of year because I’m not good at reels but you know what? Effort can compensate for lack of skill, it can. Now, I’m not going to post a reel every day for the rest of my life, but I’m going to do it right now for a short term. I’m going to put in extra effort because I don’t have the skill yet. I don’t know what I’m doing. Now, obviously the more effort we put in the faster we develop the skill.

The only way I’m going to get better at playing the piano is by practicing the piano as often as possible, that’s it. If I could somehow purchase Melanie’s talent I might be in for that, but I can’t. I mean I can pay her to guide me, but I have to put in the effort in order to develop the skill. And the only way I’m going to get better at Instagram reels is by doing a bunch of reels, by doing a bunch of not good reels, a bunch of crappy reels. Eventually reels are going to get easier, they already have gotten easier. I know what I’m doing a little bit better, picked up on a few things.

But I imagine I have a long way to go to be like I’m really good at reels. And then by then they’ll change it and it’ll be something totally different. So, effort can compensate for your lack of skill and still giving you the result, you want. And it’s also the way that you develop the skill so that eventually you can scale back your effort and not have to put in so much effort. It gets easier.

Speaking of reels, I posted a reel about this very topic, a one minute version of what I’m teaching you here. And somebody commented on there and said, “Yeah, this is how I feel about writing.” I think it was writing, the person that commented this, you know who you are. She said, “People say is writing a book hard?” And I say, “No, it’s easy?” And then she’s like, “For me it’s easy because I have the skill of writing.” But it wasn’t easy in the beginning when I started out, it was challenging but then obviously this person has done a lot of writing to develop the skill of writing being easy.

I don’t know about you, but the things that I have skills around, I often don’t give myself the credit for all the effort that went in to getting good at that. Because it’s true that effort is the way that I developed most of my skills. I don’t have very many like just I was naturally born good at this kind of thing. I don’t know if I can think of any. I think I just got good at things by doing them over, and over, and over again.

And so, when other people ask me, “Should I start a podcast? Is it hard to have a podcast?” I say, “No, it’s easy. You should totally do a podcast, it’s super easy. All you do is get a mic., you talk into it and you upload it to iTunes, boom, done.” That’s how my brain thinks about it now because my brain has erased the somewhat traumatic part where I had to figure out podcasting, the tech that’s involved, the how to find ideas, the work that I’ve done on myself to get over hating my own voice, or worrying about what people are going to think of me.

There is actually a lot of work and I’m not saying, don’t do it, do it, but it’s going to be hard and then eventually it’s going to get easy but only if you keep doing it, keep doing it, put in the effort. Do you see what I’m saying?

Okay, I think that in our world today we overvalue skill and we undervalue effort. Now, this is, as I was writing my notes for this it was reminding of Carol Dweck’s book. Carol Dweck is really well known for her book, Mindset. And she talks about having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And that’s the basic premise is we overvalue skill, if you can just do that naturally without having to try hard, that’s impressive.

We undervalue effort which is if it takes you lots of tries, lots of trial and error, and being bad at it for a long time until you get good at it. For some reason we’re less impressed by that. But actually, isn’t that even more impressive? And isn’t that a more useful journey because then you can apply that to anything you want to do that you want to get good at? If we have to be good at it naturally we’re somewhat limited. Some of us are completely limited.

But if we can be bad at it and keep going, and be willing to keep doing it, then we can get good things and we can achieve the results we want to in our lives, even if we don’t get good at it. There are things that I do in my business, you guys, that I’m still not good at but I just put in the effort and then I get the result that I want. I don’t have to be good at it because I’m willing to work hard. Do you see what I’m saying? Now, I think that we overvalue skill and undervalue effort, not just in general but even for ourselves.

I was thinking about this, again back to my experience with playing the piano, and my dear friend, Melanie. I remember being at a piano lesson one time and I told her that I wanted to play some church hymns but I wanted not just the hymnbook, I want some unique arrangements. And so, she helped me find some music. And we would pick a song and she’d be like, “Here, let me play the song and if you like it then you can start learning it.” And she would just sit down and sight read it play it beautifully, a song that would take me months of practicing to be able to play.

And I remember thinking, gosh, that would be so cool to be able to just sit down and play that song as easily and as beautifully as Melanie can. I want that skill. I still do. I still am like, “I want to get better at reading music and playing the piano. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have that skill?” Melanie then made a comment one day. Sorry, Melanie, I’m just sharing all of this online. I don’t think she’ll mind.

But she made a comment to me one day, she said, “You know what? I’ve tried to find music, sheet music, piano music for church hymns that is harder because I want to be able to also play some church music but I want it to be at a harder level so that I can feel challenged and grow. And I haven’t been able to find anything. I can’t find music. I can’t find arrangements of church hymns that’s at a high enough level for me to feel challenged.” And I realized, that’s fascinating.

You know what it reminded me of? The truth is there is a tiny moment between the satisfaction of mastering a skill and then the boredom of mastering that same skill. It’s a tiny moment. When I say tiny moment, I mean maybe it’s a few weeks, or a month, or even a year. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny moment. There is that moment when you’re like, “Look what I can do. I can actually sit down and play this music and I don’t have to spend months learning it. I can just sight read it and play it, that’s cool.”

And then not too long after that comes the boredom that Melanie has. When she plays my music she’s like, “This is fine but it’s boring. I would like a song that’s more challenging, that allows me to access that part of my brain that wants growth and challenge.” This is what I mean by we overvalue skill and we undervalue effort. How many of us think, I just don’t want it to be so hard? Well, guess what? There’s a part of you, that if it wasn’t hard, once you get good at it is going to go, I’m bored. I need something challenging.

I need something to get excited about. I need something else to learn. Isn’t that crazy to think about? So be willing to put in the effort because that’s what it’s about. That’s actually when we feel most alive is when we are learning, and growing, and trying things that we aren’t good at yet. When we just repeat the things we’re already good at, we get bored. We’re stagnant. We’re not designed for that. We’re designed for growth.

Now, you can do some of that and not every area of your life has to be challenging. But you need something that’s challenging that causes you to grow or you’re going to feel that stagnation or sometimes we call it burnout. Sometimes we call it unfulfilled. You guys know this feeling.

Now, the other ironic part of all of this is that so many times we won’t go try things. When I ask people, they’ll say, “Well, I secretly want to be a life coach, or a part of me really wants to go try this thing”, whatever the thing is. And I’ll say, “Well, why don’t you do it?” and they’ll say, “Because what if I’m not good at it? What if I’m not good at it?” And a part of our brains thinks that would be disastrous, that would be embarrassing, that would be a waste of time, or money, or effort. That would be a problem if you’re not good at it.

And I just want to offer to you today that that’s not a problem. What if it’s not a problem? What if it go try to be a life coach and I’m not good at it? Well, then you’ll have some choices. First of all, nobody’s good at it right away because it’s a challenging skill. Any skill that’s challenging, I should say almost nobody’s good at it right away, I certainly wasn’t. I can’t think of anything significant or interesting that I’m like I was just born good at that. I think some people do. I don’t know. Certain athletes were just naturally gifted at things.

But even let’s look at Tiger Woods, he wasn’t born a great golfer, he just started studying golf and golfing when he was a toddler, effort. So, what if I’m not good at it, the answer is of course I’m not going to be good at it. I’m going to be terrible at it at first. But you can bet I’m going to be putting in the effort. I’m willing to put even a disproportionate amount of effort into getting good at coaching.

I have these coaches who I love, who are in my advanced, I do an advanced certification in coach training. And these are coaches who are already certified but they want to get good at coaching. So, they coach my clients in Be Bold So that they can get lots of practice coaching. Because you know how you get better at coaching? By coaching. That’s effort. That’s going to increase your skill. If we thought, I have to be a good coach before I coach clients, we wouldn’t have any good coaches in the world because you can’t get good at something that’s challenging without doing it.

So, when your brains says, well, there’s something I want to try, and I’m just using coaching as the example but you can apply this to so many things. Maybe you want to get good at like I said, something artistic. Maybe you want to learn how to eat in a way that serves your body long term. Maybe you want to declutter a part of your house and keep it. There’s people’s houses like my friend, Shira Gill, I see pictures, I think her house always looks that way. I want to get good at that. I’m not good at that yet.

So, you know what we do instead? We walk away, we give up. Well, I’m just no Shira Gill over here. My house is never going to look like that. No, Shira Gill maybe has a disproportionate amount of talent in that area. But also, she’s worked at it. She’s developed that. She’s put in the effort. And I might have to put more effort than her but I could get that good at it if I wanted. I just have to put in a lot more effort because it doesn’t come as natural to me yet as it does to my friend, Shira. Hi, Shira.

Okay, so listen, whatever it is that you want to get good at, when your brain says or that you want to try and your brain says, “What if I’m not good at it?” The answer is, well, then I’d better do it 10x. I’d better do it a lot more so I can get good at it. And the good news is that putting in all that effort will help me achieve the result I want even before I’m good at it. Effort and skill, are you guys in? I’m going to work on increasing some skills in some area by putting in a lot of effort. Let’s go my friends.

Alright, thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next time, have a beautiful rest of your week. Bye bye.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking. And it’s available now at Amazon in print or kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too. Just saying.