Change Your Life Without Self Improving - Change it with Skill Stacking

This is what I thought of myself growing up. I wasn’t an introvert, but I was always in my head. I was too afraid to NOT pay attention to myself. Dreams were high but confidence was low. As I got older, it only got worse until I started going to the gym in my late teens.

No big deal.

I only started gym’ing to feel less shitty and guilty about my self-image. This will never lead anywhere (or so I thought.)

Around the same time, I also began studying acting as I wanted to become an actor. No confidence, yet I wanted to be in front of the camera…I know.

But what happened next was incredible.

Fast forward some time, and I suddenly realized one day that something within me had changed. I looked different. But more importantly, I felt different.

My social skills all of a sudden were on another level. Public and private encounters suddenly became “easy.” I felt like a superhero (I’m not even exaggerating.)

My confidence began to bleed into all my actions. My ability to look outward and not focus on myself was just… not an issue anymore (or at least I didn’t care about it.)

Social encounters also became easy to handle.

Life became so easy that I started to feel like I was at the zoo.

What do I mean?

I mean talking to people became less about me, and all about me watching them.

I began noticing things that I had seen a thousand times before but never picked up on.

Bodily cues that reflected what people meant to say, but didn’t. How they chose to hold my gaze (or not.) How much personal space of theirs they allowed me to invade (or not) - among countless other things.

This level of awareness gifted me the ability to get along with almost everyone from here on out.

Life wasn’t about “me, me, me” anymore. It was about everyone else.

This mindset and newfound ability allowed me to dominate encounters with people (friends and foes alike) in subtle and not-so-subtle ways from here on out.

But here’s the thing.

I didn’t have any superpowers. I didn’t achieve anything that others couldn’t have achieved themselves.

But what I did gain were fundamental life skills that changed my life…and I wasn’t even trying.

I was able to reach my goals, and change my life without working on my goals (on the surface), without much stress, without much worry and overthinking, and without much effort.

I got to have my cake and eat it too.

Practical application = knowledge learnt = skills gained

By unknowingly developing in my 2 activities (Bodybuilding & Acting), I gained the ability to become proficient in 4 other areas of my life (at least.)

• People skills

• Confidence

• Discipline

• Mindfulness (being in the moment)

These are just the most obvious skills that I gained experience in. But I can assure you that learning BB & A benefited me in more areas of my life than I could ever realize.

Below are how those skills (above) translated into real-life practical advantages for me:

• Relationships (social and intimate)

• Work ethic and increased risk tolerance

• Increased baseline level of happiness (in myself and with others.)

This is what this whole article is about. This is what gets me excited.

And no, I am NOT talking about self-improvement.

Self-improvement is overrated (at least from how I see it playing out online currently.)

This topic interests me because my journey in this space started before it became trendy.

Years ago, I didn't even realize that I was on this journey. I was just learning 2 activities at the time. One I did to get fit, and the other was mandatory for me to learn for my career.

That's it.

I never thought either of these two would lead me anywhere (other than just hating myself a little less and being a "better" actor.)

Back then I was learning something much simpler than “self-improvement”.

I just didn't realize it yet.

I was learning -

The art of skill stacking.

The Underdog of the Self-Improvement Niche

Self-improvement and skill stacking may seem like similar things, but they're not. When someone mentions self-improvement, the words themselves are very vague.

Skill stacking is a lot more specific. It hits closer to home the idea that we are trying to convey. Skill stacking hints at the true meaning of bettering yourself.

Stack or combine various skills = being more capable at handling "life."

What it takes to handle life is diverse, and so should you be.

Self-improvement suggests the idea of bettering yourself but doesn't get specific on the HOW. And while this may seem like semantics, it's not.

How we define a goal depends on how we are able to identify the things that it takes to achieve that goal.

Skill stacking is easy because it's not vague.

Do you want x in life? = Define and break down what x goal is (for you.) Then select activities that will teach you x goal indirectly. Work backwards. That is skill stacking.

(We’ll break it down more below.)

Why the skill stacking concept works for beginners

Amateurs who don’t know where to start will benefit from this best. If someone new to the space searches for self-improvement online, they will get bombarded by a thousand messy ideas (do this, do that etc..)

This will make change seem impossible or overwhelming and the ideas being presented do not get to the root cause of the why.

Don’t tell me “this works”, tell me WHY it works.

For example: So many times I see videos titled "Wear this colour to attract x".

While this idea may help you dress better, it doesn't tell you the why behind it. It's giving you a “fish” but it isn't teaching you HOW to fish.

I want to teach you how to fish - so you don't have to rely on these types of videos or me ever again if you don't want to.

And this can be done with the framework that I talk about below.

Another problem with the word “self-improvement”

A word being thrown around these days that has become synonymous with self-improvement is the word “optimization”.

• Optimize your life with these 5 tips

• Optimize your sleep with this great routine

• Optimize your dating with these amazing strategies

etc…

Self-improvement and the idea of "optimization" go hand in hand - at least these days online… unfortunately. And now many think you need to optimize your life in order to become better.

This is false.

Self-improvement ≠ optimization

The word optimization means “the action of making the best or most effective use of a situation or resource”.

This definition is why I don't like the word “optimization".

From my viewpoint, I don't think you don't have to spend time trying to be the best in a few things just to have a better life.

The point isn't that any particular interest is exceptionally valuable, but that combining unrelated areas of “expertise” can give you a broader view of problems and unique insights into solving them.

Life is not about "optimizing" or "mastering" a few things (controversial take.)

It's about being competent in MANY things.

There’s a huge difference.

And this is why I know that there is a much easier way to drastically change your position in life.

Stop trying to improve your life. Start trying to improve your skills.

Keep things simple, stupid. 

Skill Stacking = The Pareto Principle

What if you could do less and get more done?

The Pareto principle is an economist term that states that 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In other words, 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort.

The concept of skill stacking is literally the same thing (but cooler? :D)

Changing your life doesn't have to be so complicated, because it wasn’t for me.

I genuinely mean that.

80% of my results came from 2 activities.

But here’s the catch: Your stack of skills that you select should be fundamental to what you hope to achieve in an abstract sense (abstract goal.)

It should also take into account your lifestyle. Then, with a straightforward framework, you can begin working towards obtaining those skills.

Once you achieve those skills, you will inadvertently have reached your abstract goal. It’s like magic (but this “trick” is very real.)

You already know how to skill stack - you just don’t realize it

One way skill stacking is practised in daily life is through school.

Why do schools offer sports for children?

Physical fitness aside...there is a second very important reason.

The real world requires children to be fitted with certain skills that will help them thrive later in life. In order to reach those skill sets, playing sports is one way to obtain a TON of skills indirectly by doing ONE thing.

Playing sports helps children improve their:

• Cognitive

• Social

• Physical

• Emotional skills.

As you can see, this one activity helps children learn skills so fundamental to daily life. And the skills learnt here will transfer into other areas of their lives - because they are fundamental.

In this instance, the end abstract goal is for the children to be more “competent” in life.

The means (AKA the actions) in order to get there (becoming competent in life) is by playing sports. And in the process, the student gained 4+ various skills doing ONE thing.

This is what skill stacking is.

Is this starting to make sense?

Like in any other field, there are a few ideas that are core to understanding everything else. In marketing, it may be product, price, promotion, place, and people (5 p’s of marketing).

In biology, it may be the theory of evolution. For both these topics, it’s hard to study those subjects and get ahead without learning the core ideas first.

Life should be approached the same. If you want to get better at it, gaining competency or even partial competency in certain core-related areas will help you in many other areas of life later down the road.

Go broad, go basic = Developing the Fundamentals

Here is a birdseye view of “life” topics within the self-improvement space (or at least the ones I think are most important):

• Habits

• Goal setting

• Systems (designed to help make decisions, manage knowledge, organizing approaches to specific domains of life)

• Emotional self-regulation

• Learning/AKA skill acquisition

• Values & meaning (spirality/philosophy )

I dare say the skills above might just be the only skills you may ever need to “learn” because they are so fundamental to everything else in life.

Learning those skills will help you learn anything else you want to learn after that.

To be clear though, this idea of skill stacking can be for any end goal you may have.

Whatever the skill that you want to learn, whatever you want to be (eg."be more attractive"), there are a thousand ways to reach your goals.

That's the cool part - this framework is so customizable!

This idea of tailoring your skills stack to achieve your goals can work for anybody, in any way, in a variety of ways.

Once we identify the end objective:

Eg. "have a better dating life"

Then we identify the core skills needed to reach that goal.

From here we can set up a framework compiled of activities to help you have the best goddamn dating life you could ever have, without stress.

Sports, bodybuilding, and acting isn't the only way to reach any desired skill. This framework accidentally worked for my specific goals. It got me 80% of the results, and that's good enough for me, for now.

Now, I'm moving on to other things.

You are making self-improvement too complicated!

Maybe...

But I'm willing to bet that my method of getting results in the long term has a higher success rate than how most people achieve their goals. Here’s why:

Let's say someone's goal is to "become more confident".

How would he go about achieving this goal? Would going up to random people/ girls and talking to them help him gain confidence?

Maybe...

But this is a very narrow-minded view of trying to solve a fundamental problem.

Going and talking to strangers is simply ONE way of trying to achieve confidence. It is a means to achieving your goal, it is NOT the goal.

You don't HAVE to go and talk to people on the street in order to gain confidence. There are other ways to achieve this state of being.

Most people will follow this simplistic approach. But over time they begin to tie their self-worth to the activity and begin to think that the activity (the means) is the goal.

Eventually, they start to think that if they don't do this activity, or they fail at it, then that means that they are failing to reach their goals.

Also, because they've started to focus so much on the means (the activity), they begin to see the activity as a chore/ too stressful and they may get bored, and/or give up.

I've seen this happen before.

There are other MUCH easier ways to gain confidence/whatever other skill you want to achieve, by approaching it my way.

“Wax On Wax Off” - How The Karate Kid practised skill stacking

When I was learning about bodybuilding and acting (especially the latter), I was only thinking about those activities - I was too busy focusing on doing "the thing".

Again I did all this by mistake, I didn't realize I was on this journey.

My transformation was much like Daniel Laruso's journey with Mr Miyagi in the 1984 film "The Karate Kid."

In the film, Mr Miyagi taught Daniel karate by having him do seemingly unrelated tasks, such as waxing cars and painting fences. He managed to teach Daniel karate without actually teaching him karate.

He was able to do this because he distilled the fighting skills down to the basic movements. And figured out other activities that mimicked the same movements.

This allowed Daniel to learn from the "bottom-up" as opposed to "top-down."

Granted, this was a movie, but the principle remains the same.

Learning indirectly helps you cheat the system and…your mind

Daniel Laruso was able to learn what he needed without being in his head, where frustrations, worries and self-doubt would have had him questioning his journey.

Mr Miyagi accounted for this and made him gain his fighting skills in a much less stressful way.

And as someone who overthinks a lot (blame my big brain), I welcome this “easier” approach.

You must work backwards to break down your end goal and find activities that will grant you the skills you want indirectly (allowing you to reach your end goal eventually with much less stress.) Even if that isn’t the original intent of that activity.

Let me break this down below:

Example 1: Martial Arts teaches you skills in how to fight, but it also teaches you skills in how to be more calm, mindful, and disciplined. 

If you were someone who wanted to learn the skills listed in bold and NOT how to fight, you could still take on this activity, because the end result would still be the same (for you.)

Because this activity seemingly doesn't focus on the mental aspect (i.e. you’re training to fight), gaining the mental attributes will come without you thinking about it. You’ll be too focused on “doing the thing.”

Just like I was.

Example 2: If you wanted to be more successful at your job (be less stressed, and work better), instead of buying expensive seminars on how to “be more productive” and worrying if its working, you could break down what you end goal really means (i.e what skills do you think you would need in order to “be more successful at your job.”)

One activity that could indirectly benefit you by helping you reach your end goal (being more successful at work) is meditation.

Why?

Mediation has been shown to decrease stress levels, improve working memory and skilled executive decision making etc = you become more productive at work = the end goal is achieved.

You would also benefit from gaining way more skills through this one activity (mediation), than if you tried to do 9 other things to help you become more productive. Saving you time, effort, and focus.

This is skill stacking.

Disclaimer: For some things in life, practising a skill by doing the skill is best.

But, this idea of skill stacking is meant to open your mind to the variations of how self-development can be approached.

A lot of the time, there are other ways to "skin the cat."

The contrast, not the amount, is what makes you happy - Morgan Housel

This period of skill acquisition also doesn't have to become your identity. You don't have to learn a skill until you achieve mastery.

I call bullocks on this.

I strive for competency in many fields over mastery in one.

As one of my acting coaches once said to me: 

“Back in the old days of film, a star was born when they were spotted on the street. These days, you need to be your own actor, writer, producer, and director in order to increase your odds of making it.”

You need to be multi-faceted in order to thrive, and not just in the film business.

This is the way to approach life in the modern polycentric 21st century…

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Work on developing a skill through an activity until you are satisfied with where you are with it. Until it serves you the results that you want.

If you want to drop it after, fine. If you want to keep working on it, fine.

Don't worry about "optimizing." Let intuition guide your actions.

My current approach to skill acquisition is relatively new. It's similar to how bodybuilders go through phases of gaining muscle and losing fat. The duration of each phase could ideally be between 1-3 months (never more.)

For those of you who are not familiar with the bulking/cutting cycle:

-Bulking phase is when someone begins eating more food than their body needs while they train at the gym, putting on excess muscle but also fat.

-Cutting phase is when someone decides they’ve put on enough fat (and muscle) and decide to eat less calories than their body needs, losing the excess fat they’ve put on during their bulking phase, and hopefully keeping most of the muscle they gained as well.

-Maintenance phase is when someone has reached a point where they are happy with what they have achieved during their bulking and cutting cycle, and now want to simply maintain their new level of homeostasis.

Bulking/intensity phase: Intensity period of acquiring knowledge of the skill, putting in a little more work than usual is to be expected. Continue working on the activity(s) until you begin to feel “groggy” and demotivated.

Cutting phase: After the intensity phase of acquiring knowledge, you cut back on your effort. Now we see if what you built during your “bulking” cycle of acquiring knowledge has made you noticable progress in gaining a skill.

This time is for reflecting on what went wrong and what went right. Figure out what you actually NEED to be doing to sustain some level of the skill(s) you have gained.

Maintenance phase: Maintain your new current level of self for however long you want, until you wish to acquire new skills, or work on a skill you already possess even more deeply.

Rinse, repeat.

*I can’t take credit for this analogy. I got this from the legend on Youtube and Twitter known as “Dan Koe.” Go check out his channel here, it’s great.* 

However, life isn’t about just acquiring skills constantly.

Life is about life. Do what you need to feel content and move on.

I try to always stay curious but never obsessed (though I'll admit I'm still finding a good balance overall.)

Below is my current long-term beta skill stack plan (subject to change because life isn’t rigid):

This pyramid shows the potential that skill stacking can have. Whether you wish to work on skills fundamental to daily life, or ones hyper-specific to your needs.

While I’ll admit, I don’t have the full answer to my skill stack for life just yet, this is something I be will exploring in later editions of this newsletter and my Youtube channel. But as you can tell from the example above, you can apply this framework right away to any situation that you want, even if it's short-term.

One thing I know for certain is that by using my approach, you can make most life improvements less daunting and without too many distractions.

The Ibn Sina Framework: How to set up your skill stack

Ibn Sina was an 11th-century Persian polymath who invented the steam distillation method. A separation process most commonly used to extract natural products from plants.

This is also how I view my skill stack framework. We’re extracting skills from core sources of knowledge, whether they were intended to be used that way or not.

In order for you to apply this framework, we must begin by first identifying your needs.

Below is a simple layout example of how the Ibn Sina framework could be used:

1.) Define the end goal of what you want (by identifying the core components of what makes up your end goal.)

• Figure out how this end goal is generated. Understand its mechanisms.

  • I want x. What is x? What is the definition of x. What makes up x goal (work backwards.)

2.) Knowing what makes up x goal, create a real-world framework to help "train" you to reach the x goal (the end goal.)

• Do this by selecting an acitivty/s of choice (based on the above factors) that contains inherent components of your end goal.

Below is an example of how you could apply this framework to any end skill you want to achieve. This is essentially how I discovered this concept (without realizing it at the time.)

Wants:

• I want to be more confident.

• I want to look better

Want 1 (being more confident):

Defining end goal and identifying core components

1.) What is confidence (defining the end goal): Confidence is an internal feeling that comes from knowing you are competent overall or in something.

How is it generated? (understanding mechanisms of the end goal):

• Confidence can be generated through positive thinking (but that can be difficult if you are hard on yourself.)

• Can also be generated by setting goals of "desirable" difficulty, designed to be overcome with some effort, practised daily to help aid long-term change in thinking. Will help you get into the habit of turning general thoughts from negative to realistic.)

2.) Best way is to gain x skill through real tangible action (creating a real-world framework):

Fix confidence through social activities (group setting NOT solo.)

Reasons behind this (group setting): Being placed in a group setting is most optimal (i.e. NOT just going up and talking to people.) More optimal to gain confidence by joining social groups in a "desired difficulty" setting (low pressure.)

“Desired difficulty” according to Robert Bjork: Introducing a mild element of struggle or difficulty into the learning process can improve long-term retention, forming deeper neural connections.

• Since confidence is internal (you can’t see it), the setting must help accommodate ease of mental ability. We must take into account our own self-doubt and getting in our head during this process (which will hinder progress.)

Activity of choice to help fix confidence (based on the above factors):

Comedy improv class.

• What is comedy improv?: Must routinely get up on stage in front of people you don't know. You make up stories with a partner live on the spot and must act it out as you make it up. It is very silly.

How comedy improv skills can translate to social and professional skills (Harvard Gazette)

This activity includes a lot of unknown variables that you cannot account for. Over time, you get more comfortable handling these variables in a mildly stressed environment.

It also presents a light challenge. You naturally don't want to suck in front of people, so you will likely try your best to think about how to be better at the challenge as you are doing it. This will help you practise getting out of your own head.

Why comedy improv is better than just going up and talking to strangers:

Going up to talk to someone and then freezing up will just make that person leave. It doesn’t force you to continue to deal with your awkwardness/lack of confidence.

You also might then get too scared to go up to a stranger the next time, this makes the whole process go by way more slowly. This process is more stagnant, and jarring.

Secondary benefits of gaining confidence through comedy improv (how this skill stacks into other skills):

Improv comedy relies on great timing, and how you react to the other actors. You work with them to tell a crazy story. This means you are saying yes and saying yes to all the different crazy scenarios that you and the other person make up on stage.

• Skills for comedy improv involve teamwork, collaboration, listening, communication, the ability to adapt and problem solve. 

• Because these skills are so fundamental to daily life, skills learnt from comedy improv here will translate into dating, networking, marketing, spirituality, and more. Learning any of the bolded skills after will be much faster since you previously worked on a skill in a way that had immense carryover into so many other areas.

This is skill stacking.

Want 2 (looking better):

Defining end goal and identifying core components

1.) What is “looking better” (defining the end goal): To look objectively more attractive.

How is it generated? (understanding mechanisms of the end goal):

• There are a lot of ways to do this, but the quickest way that will arguably help the most long-term will be through fitness and fashion.

  • Reasons behind this: “Looking better” while vague, usually will stem from your outward perception. How do people perceive you? Looking objectively better means increasing perceived status.

  • A greater degree of perceived status will make someone be seen as more of an acceptable authoritative figure to others. Because of this, people are more likely to forgive any flawed behaviours you may present (i.e. you can get away with more shit if you look better.)

Caveat: People like to overcomplicate this. If you want to feel better about yourself, the quickest way to achieve this goal is by working from the outside in. You gotta DO THE WORK. “Finding yourself” through other vectors like spirituality and mindfulness is good for long-term mind maintenance.

But trying to find yourself is no small feat, and takes time. The journey and end goal is also unknown. Start small, from the outward in to get a bird's eye view of where you want to go by starting with a superficial goal.

2.) Best way is to gain x skill through real tangible action (creating a real-world framework):

• Fitness

• Fashion

Activity of choice to help fix confidence (based on the above factors):

• Fitness

  • Bodybuilding program (hypertrophy-focused NOT strength.)

    • Extra Info: For fastest results choose training in the gym over sports. Sports prioritize your ability to learn that sport first. It’s also endurance based. It may help you lose FAT, but it will not help you build muscle as effectively. For the fastest visual change, hypertrophy training will be best. Body recomposition (gaining muscle and losing fat for beginners) will make the fastest visual change.

• Style

  • Do not follow fashion (seasonal), follow style (timeless.) Work on getting fitted clothes, understanding what colours work for your skin tone, and wardrobe men’s essentials (look up: capsule wardrobe/interchangeable wardrobe.)

    • Extra info: Start following people on social media who look like you, see what they wear. Once you have the fundamentals worked out, begin looking into what kind of style you like (clean-cut “old-money” look? Miami Vice look? Streetwear? etc.)

You get the point…

This concept as you can tell is still in development. But I hope I have introduced you to the core foundation of what I will be setting out to examine, improve, expand upon, and eventually…achieve.

An exploration that is liturgical in nature and that I hope to document right here.

Till next time.

Stay Rogue.