How I learned to drive stick shift in less than four hours.
Over the last two weeks, I have been learning a new skill; how to drive stick shift. This is a skill that I have always wanted to attain, though had internalized this thought that it would be just too difficult for me to stick with.
Yesterday, I drove from where I’d practice all the way back to where I live – with only one stall!
In picking this skill up quite rapidly, I thought it could be useful to unpack some of what made my learning process so efficient, as I believe this can translate towards virtually every skill one could want to learn.
1. Break down the skill into it’s components and identify the few that you’d need to use the most.
In stick shift driving, the most critical aspect is being able to smoothly start and stop the car. Without knowing how to do this, you literally will not be able to drive a car with manual transmission. I identified this as the fundamental skill I would need to focus on first. You can apply this to virtually any other skill, so be sure that you’re clear on what aspects of the skill will give you the most mileage (forgive the pun). This can be found through common sense, consulting an expert, or a quick google search in most cases.
2. Find a place to practice where you’re not going to hurt anyone.
This is fairly straightforward. If you’re learning a skill which involves heavy machinery, chances are you’re not going to start practicing in a school zone. Now that everything is remote, maybe that is different, but you get my point. Find a place where you can focus on learning the skill and be less concerned about how you look or other environmental factors that would make it difficult to be present.
3. Drill that skill like there’s no tomorrow.
When you’re a beginner, you’re going to be wanting to make mistakes. Mistakes are feedback that you learn from. So, practice the foundational aspect of your skill until it’s second nature. Learn to get through the feelings of frustration, rather than to let those feelings have power over you. Frustration comes with the territory of learning anything new, and sooner you recognize that the easier it will be to get out of your own way and focus on the task at hand.
4. All the while, if possible, get feedback by someone who is better than you at this skill.
This is essential if you want to learn something fast. Having someone close at hand, could be a friend, a coach, a parent, a mentor, to give you the feedback will be much more useful than self assessment. If you’re a beginner at something, you’re just not going to be able to give yourself the specific and esoteric wisdom that someone with more experience can. Be wary, obviously you want to go to someone that you can trust (I did in my case), and actually listen. You’ll find yourself improving at rates that you previously did not think would be possible if you find the right mentor.
5. With the foundational skill becoming second nature, start expanding where you apply it.
Proverbially speaking, this is when you take your skill out of the parking lot and start driving it around the block. This is the new territory where you can apply your foundations and learn to adapt it to new circumstances. Beyond driving, take learning how to draw as an example. This is the moment where you’d have mastered how to draw the core shapes and now are putting them together to form the shape of something more complex. It is critical at this stage that you remember you’re no longer an absolute beginner, but will still be prone to making more mistakes. Learn from them, and keep moving forward.
As soon as you can, you want to be honing your capacity to self assess. I found that in speaking to my mentor about a ‘failure’ and articulating what I think went wrong, that I actually am able to understand the underlying mechanics and thus can perform at a higher level.
Once you’re here, celebrate your wins – but do not stop. This is the moment where you can begin to practice the skill with a little more autonomy, and it is essential that your progress does not deceive you into thinking that you won’t make any more mistakes.
Keep pushing yourself, showing up, drilling the essentials and exploring the new territories with them. As someone who learned something that I thought would literally be impossible two weeks ago, I speak from experience when I say this has worked for me. I hope it can be applied to a skill you’re seeking to develop and work for you too.
