In examining skill development, I decided to go a step beyond the generic ‘slow and steady wins the race’ advice. Instead, I decided to dive into how mindset shifts can lead to massive gains quickly. I didn’t just want to be the tortoise, but the hare as well.

The following are lessons I’ve gained from experimenting with mindset shifts in respect to the skill I’ve been developing in my life, drawing people, but these insights can be applied to any skill you’re developing.

Choose: Make mistakes or Give up

The past seven months, I’ve been rigorously studying how to draw human anatomy: how to capture a person’s personality and expression while they are going about their business in the public. I’ve been attending weekly three-hour nude figure drawing classes, and have been people sketching in public places.

Here’s some recent work:

For seventeen months outstretched over 2014 and 2015, I wrote for my blog that I called Cheating College. I gave it this slogan: lifelong learning without lifelong debt.

Cheating College was a way for me to chronical my alternative education pursuits and to dispel advice I learned while on my journey. It was also a great way for me to build the habit of writing regularly and creating content with the intent to be read by a specific audience.

It empowered me to figure things out for people, to study problems and present solutions, and to make myself of value to others.

During that time, I wrote over 30 articles, totaling over 54,000 words, and made over thirty custom graphics/ illustrations.

I shut the blog down when I hit a number of brick walls in my career and family lives (which I will share once the emotions aren’t so raw…) When I shut down the blog, at first it felt like I had removed a part of myself from existence, the beacon that had been letting the world know “I am here, and this is what I do” had been extinguished…

In the uncomfortable darkness, I eventually learned more about myself and how I want to start again: better, stronger, wiser.

Here’s a list of what I learned from the entire blogging experience, and how I will do things differently this time around.