Brian Johnson shares a three-part formula for rapid skill growth: find someone better to learn from, an equal to compete with, and someone worse to teach. He credits this approach to martial artist Ken Shamrock and calls it the fastest way to master anything.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. The other day I had a great chat with James Altucher for his podcast. Our chat is right up there as one of my all time favorite podcast interviews I've done from my book. And I've been blessed to do a lot of podcast interviews at this stage with a wonderful group of people. Check them all out. Linked in this plus one. We got dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Note the chat I had with Jim Rome for his podcast remains my all time favorite. Check out the chat with Jim Rome in the plus one. We got a link along with the chat to James Altucher as well. Now, as you may know, James Altucher is a fascinating, iconoclastic human being. He's a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, and author. I love this book, Choose Yourself. I read it years ago. I just bought it again so I can reread it and do a note on it. And he's also a chess master, so the very first thing we started chatting about when we connected was chess. He had read the first chapters of the book and knew about Emerson and his passion for chess, and we had a lot of fun chatting about how we're approaching things. Topics covered included the power of mental toughness, the importance of training like an athlete to dominate the chessboard, and a bunch of other fun stuff like that. And today I want to chat about one of the things we chatted about right at the end of our chat, right before I brought Emerson in to meet James. Here's the short story. James told me that one of his friends is a guy named Ken Shamrock. Shamrock is one of the legends of mixed martial arts. He's a former UFC champion and an inaugural UFC hall of Famer. Now, James told me that when Shamrock was learning a new martial art, he tried to do three things to accelerate his path to mastery. First, he'd find someone better than him who could train him to master the new art. Then he'd find someone at about the same level as him so they could train and improve their skills together. Then he'd find someone who is a little less skilled than him so he could teach them what he was learning. He had a handy dandy way to capture those relationships. The teacher was a plus one, the sparring partner was an equal, and the student was a minus one. Plus one. Equal minus one. That's some mastery math right there, my friend. Today's plus one. What are you trying to master? Do you have a plus one? An equal? A A minus one? If so, awesome. Nice work if not. And you feel so inspired. Remember that mastery math and go find a plus one, an equal and a minus one. Hero day one all in. Let's go. P.S. at the end of our chat, I invited Emerson in to meet James and they had a great chat. James is currently on his own heroic chess quest that's a tongue twister to reestablish himself as a competitive chess Master After a 20 year hiatus, he offered to be one of Emerson's plus ones while bringing him in as one of his minus ones. Got goosebumps. Did I type that? We're also planning to connect at an upcoming tournament and dominate our pre chess match rituals together. So fun. I repeat Day one All in. Let's go.
