The 10 Rep Rule & Building Mastery

Hi everyone, my name is Matt Ragland and welcome to another episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. So happy that you're here with me. And today I'm going to be talking about a method, a framework, a concept that I call the 10-rep rule. And what the 10-rep rule means, I'll give it to you really quickly, I'm not going to bury the lead on you here, is when you are starting something new, if there's something that you're interested in doing or something that you want to try, Often you can think of this as habits, but it could just be something, something new. Do it for 10 repetitions, 10 times, to see if you like it, if it's helpful, if it's healthy, if it's something that you're interested in. But do it 10 times so that you have enough repetitions to get some kind of a feel for it. I want to give you a really specific example for this. It's my YouTube channel. I started my YouTube channel in February of 2017.. And when I started, I decided I was going to make 10 videos just to see how much time is it taking me. Am I interested in this? Is this something that I want to keep doing? And after 10 videos, I decided to make 10 more and then 10 more and then 10 more. And now here we are. But I gave myself 10 videos to put everything together and see if it was something that I enjoyed and wanted to keep doing. Now that's like a content creator example, and it can apply to a podcast. That was kind of my initial test, even for Connect the Dots is can I get to 10 episodes? I'm pretty close to 10 episodes. I'm going to keep going. But it could be if you want to start a blog, if you want to write blog articles, if you want to like get into email marketing and start to send emails to your— to people who are interested in learning more about, you know, what you're teaching about. By the way, you should join the Matt Ragland— you should join the Matt Ragland newsletter. Just go to mattragland.com/thinkers or 3keys.fyi. That's the number 3 keys.fyi. Everything's going to be listed in the show notes. But giving yourself those 10 reps to try it out and get a feel for it is a really useful benchmark. Because think about it, oftentimes we will just try something once, maybe twice, and be like, eh, this isn't really for me. And maybe sometimes that can be the case, but often we need to do it enough in order to get a good enough feel for whether or not we like it and if it's helpful and useful for us to keep going. I'll give you another personal example. When I started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I said to myself, I'm gonna go to jiu-jitsu 10 times and see if this is something that I want to keep doing. Now, if I would have stopped after 1 or 2, because I definitely felt like stopping after 1 or 2— I didn't know anything, I kept getting choked, and other wonderful things of jiu-jitsu— and I probably would been like, this is dumb, I might get hurt— still might get hurt— but I'm not going to do it anymore. But after I did it 10 times, while I was learning some things, I was getting kind of a feel for it. I was like, okay, I can do this move, I can do this move, I understand this drill more. When they say that I need to be in the spider guard, I know what the spider guard is. I know what the De La Riva guard is. So there are all these things that I started to pick up, and now I am getting closer and closer to that next stage of momentum and mastery, which we'll talk about in just a couple of minutes. But going those 10 times was a good benchmark for me to understand if I wanted to keep going. I also tried— I tried this for all kinds of things. I did it when I started taking cold showers, not entirely cold showers, but like 2 minutes of cold shower after the normal warm shower. And I was like, okay, well, obviously I— you don't want to do a cold shower either before and sometimes even after you've done it. But by doing it 10 times now, I kind of look forward to it, or it's just something that I've built a confidence in. It's the same thing for journaling. It's the same thing for meditating. Basically, do it 10 times and see how you feel about it. Is it something that you want to keep doing? Even if it's something that you, like, you're kind of like comfortable self isn't 100% in on, that's why you do it 10 times. So you can be like, okay, well, I'm not— like, cold showers is a good example still. I'm still not 100% comfortable with being under really cold water, but the way I've done it enough times now that the way that I feel afterwards and throughout the day once I've had the cold shower, now even when I have that initial like, whoa, are you sure? Are you sure you want to take another cold shower? Now I can be like, yeah, I've done this a bunch of times and I know how good it feels afterwards. You should put a time constraint on your 10 reps though. I would try and do it in 30 to 40 days, really try and do it within a month, 4 to 6 weeks, I would say, because then you don't want to do like 10 reps over the course of the year. You don't have enough consistency at that point to understand if it's something that is going to be valuable and helpful for you. Doing it every 3 or 4 days for 10 reps is something that will give you enough consistency within a realistic amount of time to know if this is something that is going to work for you, or if it's something that you just want to keep going because you know that it's healthy or energizing for you, even if it's not something that you get super excited about before you do it. Now oftentimes this will apply to how you create and build habit loops, and if you want to know more about how to, like, start and stick with healthy habits, make sure you listen to the habits episode of Connect the Dots and also make sure that you watch my 3-step habit building system video on YouTube. Both of those are going to be linked in the show notes below. They will fill in some more of the gaps if you're thinking about like, okay, I want to start an exercise habit, I want to start a journaling habit so that I can get those 10 reps in, but how do I build that cue-routine-reward to make sure that I'm giving myself enough of a power-up to make sure that I'm, you know, doing it consistently. So make sure you check out the show notes for both the podcast episode and the YouTube videos that will help you understand and build your habit loop. Now let me tell you how the 10-rep rule can expand and scale to something that can truly change your life, something that you can build mastery in. So once you've hit those 10 reps and you're starting to build some momentum, you're like, okay, this is working for me, this is good for me, this is something I'm interested in, this is something I'm excited about. The more that you work on those and continue to put in the reps, the more that you'll build this momentum. When you get to about 100 reps, then you're like, oh yeah, I'm feeling, I'm feeling good about this. I'm confident. I've built some momentum. Going back to the YouTube example, this was something that I definitely saw as I put in those first 10 videos and then 50. I didn't actually break 1,000 subscribers until I had published like my 65th video, something around that range. And then it was around 100 videos that I actually like not only felt really good about what I was creating and had a lot of confidence in it, I had found my niche in bullet journaling by that time, but it was right around 90-100 videos that my channel really started to take off and I hit 10,000 subscribers. So it took me 60 videos, 60, 65 videos to get to 1,000 subscribers. But then in the next 30 videos, I hit 10,000 subscribers. And once you put in, once you build that kind of momentum going from, okay, I've done this 10 times, I've made 10 videos, now I've made 100 videos, especially if you're a content creator, hitting that 100 rep mark, I guarantee that things will change for you when you hit that point. Because you will have most likely started to build an audience around people who are interested, and you also will have narrowed down like your topic and your niche. For me, those videos like 0 to 50 or 60 were about a bunch of different things, and I started making bullet journal and productivity videos, and that's where my channel really started to take off. But I had made enough videos at that point to see like, oh, The videos that I make about productivity, this video that I made about bullet journaling and planning, those did really well. But I may not have been able to see that so specifically. I may not have been able to see that highlighted if I had just made like 3 or 4 videos. But since I had made so many, I'm like, oh, this is definitely what people are really interested in because it's doing so much better than all of my other videos. So getting to that 100 rep milestone is where you will start to build confidence just internally. Like, if we're just talking about, like, I'm thinking about when I do my 100th, uh, jiu-jitsu session, when I had gone to CrossFit 100 times, when I hit that 100th meditation session. When you're doing that, then you're like, okay, this is a part of my life, this is who I am, this is a thing that I do. And what's really cool is even if you take a bit of a break at that point, you still know like internally you have a confidence within yourself, whether it's with fitness, you know, could be writing, could be something creative, could just be like a practice like journaling or meditating that you're doing. But when you take breaks after that point, you don't— it doesn't bring you down as low mentally as it may have in the past. Like if you try something a few times, then you took a month off, you know, like accidentally, you'd be like, oh well, I guess I'm not very good at this thing.. But when you've done something 100 times and in a relatively short span of time, let's say if you went to the gym 100 times or you wrote in your journal 100 times this year, or as I make 100 pieces of content over the course of the year, I'm going to feel really confident and sure of myself that I can keep doing those things even if I take a little bit of a break. One of my favorite examples of the 10 and 100 rep rule is Marques Brownlee, who is probably the biggest tech review YouTuber, one of the biggest tech YouTubers there, there is. And he's an amazing creator, and he's been making videos, I think, for 10 or 12 years now. But one of the videos that I found, I found a video of his is like big YouTube milestone. This was from a few years ago. And when I was watching this video, Marques is very young in this video. He's at his, I think he's sitting in his, you know, parents' living room. And he said, "Guys, big milestone in the video today. This is my 100th video on YouTube. Let's just check and see how many subscribers I have." And so he goes, he pulls up his stats, he's like, "76 subscribers! How cool! Thank you so much everyone for subscribing. I'm so happy that I've made it to this milestone of 100 videos on YouTube. And I'd already been thinking about like the 10-100, and then we'll talk about the 1,000 rep rule, in like already at this point. But when Marquis started talking about this and how excited he was to get to 100 videos made, not 100 subscribers, he wasn't even at 100 subscribers yet, but he had made 100 videos and he knew what he wanted to make videos about at this point. He knew that he was a YouTuber. He knew that he could create videos and that people were going to watch them. And I thought this was— this is like locked it all in for me that what we need to focus on when it comes to habits, especially like if you're a content creator and you're listening to this, get to that. You like make 10, make 10 pieces of content, then make 100 pieces of content. I guarantee that by the time you get to 100 pieces of content, you'll be building an audience and you'll have a really good idea of what that audience wants from you and where your expertise and your talent intersects and overlaps with what people are interested in hearing about. Now, I mentioned that Marquis hit his 100-video milestone a few years ago, several years ago at this point. And so I want to let you know where the great MKBHD is now. Well, now he's passed 1,000 videos. I think he's over 1,200 videos published on YouTube at this point. And you want to know how many subscribers he has? He has over 12 million subscribers last time I checked. Insane. So this guy who, when he hit his 100-rep milestone on YouTube videos, had just 76 subscribers. And I wonder how many of us would have stopped well before then if you had made 100 videos and only had 76 subscribers or 76 followers or maybe 76 email subscribers. Be like, well, maybe this isn't— maybe Maybe this isn't it for me. But Marques at this point knew what he was doing and he had so much confidence in what he was doing because he had put in the reps. He had made 100 videos on YouTube. He's like, I'm going to keep going with this. I know what I'm doing. And as he progressed and as he grew, now he's over 1,200 videos published and over 12 million subscribers on YouTube. And I think that's such a valuable lesson, not just in consistency, but seeing like how your work and how your habits and how your practice grow and scale over time. Because we go from like, let's just try this out for 10, 10 reps, do it 10 times, and then we build momentum going to 100 reps. Like, okay, I know what I'm doing. I have confidence. I understand the process. And then it's just putting in the work. It's putting in the reps to get to 1,000 pieces of content, 1,000 videos on YouTube, 1,000 blog posts, 1,000 podcast episodes. 1,000 trips to the gym, 1,000 sessions of jiu-jitsu, 1,000 sessions writing in your journal. And that might feel a little overwhelming at the start, which is why you start with just 10. Just do it 10 times and get a feeling if it's for you. There's one other dot that I want to connect for you on this concept and of this milestone of hitting 1,000 reps, 1,000 pieces of published content, 1,000 trips to the gym, 1,000 sessions with your journal, 1,000 cold showers. When you, especially as a content creator, publish 1,000 pieces of work— I know when I think about the amount of time that creating a YouTube video takes for me, it's about 10 to 15 hours for each video. So if I get to— when I get to 1,000 published videos, when MKBHD hit 1,000 published videos, that means that he, I, we have spent about 10,000 hours on creating videos. And that so closely connects, like literally connects to the 10,000-hour rule research. Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about it in his book Outliers, but it's when you put in 10,000 hours of dedicated practice, you become a true master, an expert, a pro at the thing that you are practicing. And really, when you think about it, that's all it is, is the practice, is the act of doing it and being consistent with it. Now when you get to a milestone like 1,000 reps, obviously you're doing it pretty consistently. I don't know how you could get to 1,000 pieces of content or 1,000 of anything that is like specific and intentional without doing it consistently. But can you imagine how confident and self-assured you would feel about the thing that you're doing when you have done it 1,000 times and for nearly 10,000 hours so far in your life. And when I say intentional, like, this is different than like, of course, you know, hopefully you've maybe brushed your teeth 1,000 times or you've drank 1,000 cups of coffee. I know I have, but think about it, like, I don't worry about whether or not I'm going to brush my teeth properly. Well, maybe sometimes, like right before and right after I go to the dentist, but I certainly don't worry about like, am I going to make a good cup of coffee? I know after definitely over 1,000 cups of coffee drank that I can make a good cup of coffee. And when I— even now that I've gotten to this point of, I think I'm at 200-ish, a little over 200 published YouTube videos. Sometimes, and this may still be the case no matter how famous you get for maybe, or how confident you get in your work, When you're doing creative work, there's often like the still small voice, not the good one, that's like, maybe you don't really have it figured out. Somebody's gonna, somebody's gonna figure you out. They're gonna know you don't have much talent. Even if you hit your 10,000 hours for creative work in particular, it can be like really, really terrible in the sense that you still have some self-doubt, but you can quickly overcome that when you just take a step back and realize like, oh, I've made 200 videos, so yeah, I definitely know how to make videos. When you get to 1,000 videos, like, heck yeah, I know how to make— I know how to make the next video because I've made 1,000 videos. A little like, um, balance, counterbalance to this idea is I was watching/listening to a conversation between Stephen King and George R.R. Martin, two very prolific 2 very famous authors. And Stephen King is notoriously famous and fast as a writer. And he will churn out books so quickly. And George R.R. Martin, who's the author of the Game of Thrones series, is the opposite. He is notoriously and famously slow as a writer. Anyone who's been waiting for, I think it's the 6th book? Yeah, the 6th book. Not even the 7th, the 6th book in Game of Thrones. Knows that this is the case. And as their conversation was wrapping up, King says to Martin, like, well, George, is there anything else that you want to ask me? Because now's the time. I'm waiting. I'll link to this conversation in the show notes as well. But Martin looks at him, he's like, yeah, how do you write so many books so fast? And, you know, King kind of talks about his system. He says, like, well, I write usually 4-ish hours a day, but I just write to get to 6 pages. And usually that's what I can do. Sometimes it's 8, sometimes it's 4, but I usually write from like 9 AM to 1 PM straight through. And then I have lunch and I, you know, have the rest of the day. Maybe I'll do some stuff, but the core writing is done from 9 to 1. And Martin, who again is one of the most famous authors in the world, he says, well, don't you ever have days where you just feel terrible, like you have no talent and you should have been a plumber instead. I don't know if that was the exact, like, other profession that he mentioned, but I listened to that and I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, this is again one of the most famous authors in the world, and he's saying that even after his, you know, not 1,000 books, but definitely thousands of pages written, thousands of chapters, so, so much success and he's still sitting there thinking, "Oh my gosh, do I have any talent at all? Someone's going to find out that I don't." And so maybe there's a piece of this, especially for creators, that may never go away. But I promise you, the more reps you put in, the more that you practice, the more consistent you are, the more your creative confidence will build. So even when you have those moments of doubt, that you can like take a step back and be like, "Oh well, I've made 200 videos. I've made 10. I can make 1 more. I've made 100. I can make 10 more. Holy crap, I've made 1,000 videos. I can make 100 more." And it's so interesting to know, and I want you to be encouraged that it of course just starts with doing something once, But to bring everything full circle, I want to encourage you that as you go into this year and you're thinking about something new that you want to try, and maybe you're a little unsure about it, whether like, is this going to work for more for me, or am I even going to like it, to just do it 10 times. Go to, you know, book that personal trainer for 10 sessions. Eat salad for lunch, like, you know, a big salad in the Seinfeld sense. Eat a big salad with, you know, some, some other good stuff in there, some protein. Yeah, 10 times for lunch this month. Keep it kind of constrained, but start with 10. Try and do it in 4 to 6 weeks, and you'll be able to know, to get a feel for, do I like doing this and is this a good healthy fit for me? Do it 10 times. If you dig it, just keep sticking with it. Get to 100 get to 100 sessions, 100 cold showers, 100 times meditating, 100 pieces of content, and then you'll be rolling and you'll be like, okay, now it's just a matter of time. But I have confidence, I have momentum. Now it's just a matter of time and practice and intention for me to get to 1,000 reps, to get to those 10,000 hours, and to master my craft. Hmm, man, I'm gonna make a YouTube video out of this. That was great, if I do say so myself. Even out— like, this is my 10th. I think this is my 10th episode, and pretty wild. Good for me. I don't even know if this is going to stay in the show. Dalton the editor, you can just let me know if this is going to work. If this is in here, everybody, it's because Dalton was like, heck yeah, this works, I'm going to leave it in. Okay, if you want to learn more about how to be productive, how to be consistent with your habits, manage your time, the best place to learn more from me is not only my YouTube channel, but definitely sign up for the email list. And you can do that by going to 3— that's the number 3 keys, like in a car or a door—.fyi. It's linked in the show notes below, but that's 3keys.fyi. You're going to get my Unstuck Framework. You're going to get goal setting, prioritization. There's going to special training video in there for you. So make sure you check that out. You'll also get regular emails from me about habits, things like the 10-rep rule, about productivity, goal setting, time management, you know, aligning your focus with your purpose. That is what I promise to you and for you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Connect the Dots. Thanks again to Max for leaving a 5-star rating and review. Very kind. And if you're listening to this point and you haven't left a rating and a review, I would really appreciate it. It definitely helps the show grow in these early days. And it just warms the cockles of my heart. I think that's the correct term. But thank you so much for listening, everybody. I'll see you in the next episode. Oh, and make sure you check out the Connect the Dots YouTube channel. I think it's just youtube.com/connectthedotspodcast. Podcast. We have the vanity URL now, so thank you so much for everyone who subscribed there as well. Talk to you soon. Bye.