Tactics Tuesdays: How to be Mindful (and Learn 10x Faster)

When you set out to form new habits and self-improve, a big part of this is how to remember to make these adjustments in the first place.

Reader Kalyan writes in with a question about learning fundamentals:

“hey, i just noticed that your website lacks a very important article (or maybe i dont know of it. if thats the case please send me link(s)). i know fundamentals are important. and everyone knows eye contact is important for example.. but i find it very hard to consistently remember to consciously focus on eye contact... i feel because of that, mastering individual fundamentals like that is much slower. so, an article about how to learn or focus on fundamentals would be helpful. i know its a good idea to work on one aspect at a time, but how could you actually remember to work on even one thing when youre out and talking to women?”

It’s an interesting question, and in fact is one more concerned with mindfulness – the act of attunement to what is occurring both around you and within your head in the present moment – than the pure raw process of learning fundamentals.

The process of learning fundamentals themselves is straightforward:

1. Pick a fundamental to work on, be that eye contact, posture, vocal intonation, or another

2. Decide what to alter or improve in this fundamental
   

3. Make that alteration/improvement over and over across the next 30-90 days

4. Every time you notice yourself not doing it the way you want to do it, correct yourself

5. After 1-3 months (and many hundreds of internal reminders) have passed, it’s now automatic

This process can transform you into a man with impeccable, powerful body language, mannerisms, and behavior in a relatively short time (six months to a year for really complete change; though you’ll start to see the effects of this exercise as soon as you begin work on it).

Yet you must remember to remind yourself to adopt these better fundamentals to change them.

What if you can simply never remember to do it?