By Leo Babauta

There’s a certain group of learning activities that I like to classify as “mental training,” because we’re retraining the brain. It’s got a lot in common with physical training (learning a sport or martial art, for example), but it’s all about the mind.

Some common types of mental training:

• Learning a language
• Studying an academic subject deeply
• Learning chess or go or poker or bridge
• Getting good at focusing on work despite inner resistance
• Studying history or geography for fun
• Memorizing a bunch of facts (like trivia)
• Learn to become a writer (or other kind of creator)

I’ve put myself through fairly intensive mental training in most of these areas — I studied chess and go, attempted to learn a few languages, learned to focus despite my innner resistance, became a writer, etc.

And here’s what I’ve been finding are most important to getting good at this kind of training — which isn’t easy!

1: Let Yourself Be a Beginner & Suck At It

When I start some kind of mental training — say I’m trying to get decent at chess or writing — I always hope that I’ll get good at it really quickly. This is misguided, because as a beginner, I won’t get even halfway decent for a long time.

In fact, I’ll suck at it for awhile. That’s expected. If you hope to be good in a short time, you’re going to be disappointed and discouraged.

So encourage yourself to embrace this beginner stage — you won’t be good for awhile, so let yourself enjoy the learning itself, as opposed to needing to perform well to enjoy yourself.

2: Immerse Yourself

Sometimes people have hopes that they’ll learn something in just a few minutes a day, or maybe a good long weekend of hard work. Neither of these work very well.

What works is immersion, on a (nearly) daily basis. Imagine if you wanted to learn Italian, and looked at vocabulary flashcards for 5 minutes a day … or alternatively, you could instantly travel to Italy for an hour every day. In the second scenario, you’d be surrounded by people speaking Italian, you’d be immersed in it, and you’d be much more motivated to learn.

This works not just with languages but with anything. If you surround yourself with good chess players and lots of games and puzzles, you’ll learn much more than if you just browsed a book for a few minutes a day. Same with chemistry, writing, or high-performance focus work.

You don’t need to be immersed all day long. But you do need to immerse yourself regularly. I’d say 30 minutes or more on a mostly daily basis is the minimum for strong progress.

3: Be Consistent with Your Training

The mistake I’ve repeatedly made over the years when I’ve taken on a learning project is that I give up when I get derailed or discouraged. It’s hard to get myself back into it.

When I give up, it means I don’t get very far. When I stick with something for a long time, I can really impress myself!

So a big part of the consistency I’ve found important is not giving up, even when you get discouraged. But another part of this consistency is doing it on a near-daily basis. It’s much better to study or practice most days of the week (say 5-7 days) than it is to do it once a week or a few times a month.

Small consistent efforts pay off with mental training. It’s like compound interest — it compounds over time.

4: Let It Be Play

If you’re grinding out your mental training, and it’s just hard hard hard, you’ll drain yourself. It becomes a “should” instead of something you want to do. But the problem is … you need to do hard work!

The solution for me is to bring a sense of play to the training. If you’re trying to get better at a sport like basketball, soccer or pickleball … the hard training can be a ton of fun, because the whole thing is playing games!

So make language learning, or studying an academic subject, or learning chess or writing, become that kind of play. It can all be a game!

For example, can you make it a game to see how many language flashcards you get right every day, and try to beat or match your best score? Can you find a learning partner and bring a sense of play and humor to your sessions with them?

It can be a challenge to find ways to bring play to your mental training, but I think it makes a huge, huge difference.

5: Get Over the Fear of Embarrassment

One of the biggest obstacles to learning is that we don’t want to look or feel stupid. We don’t want to make embarrassing mistakes. But of course, at the beginner stage (and even in later stages), we’ll make plenty of mistakes!

The problem is not that we’re going to make mistakes — it’s that we’re afraid of making them. Making mistakes is a crucial part of the learning process, but we let the fear of embarrassment stop us.

The key then is to let yourself make mistakes, and even let yourself be embarrassed. It’s OK to be embarrassed! We’re human, we make mistakes and fall on our faces. A key part of this kind of training is learning to brush yourself off and learn from the mistakes. Encourage yourself when you feel embarrassed — be proud of falling on your face!

With practice, we can get over this fear, and falling becomes an integral part of our process.

6: Don’t Be Afraid to Do Hard Work

I said to turn the training into play … but that doesn’t mean we should think that everything should be easy. We want to be able to focus and put in the hard work, because that’s where the biggest gains will be found.

If you’re lifting weights, and you only do easy lifts, you’ll still get stronger — but if you do sets of hard lifts where you don’t have any more to give, you’ll get stronger much, much faster.

The same is true if you were practicing for a sport — the athletes that give it their best will get better much faster. And the same is true of mental training — if you’re being lazy about it, you won’t progress very quickly. But if you’re willing to do some hard work, you’ll see impressive progress.

7: Use Your Stumbling Blocks as Learning Tools

You’re going to make mistakes — and those are your best lessons for growth! What holes in your knowledge or skills do these mistakes show you? What can you learn from them?

You’ll also find other stumbling blocks: fear of embarrassment, discouragement, frustration, and more. That’s a part of the process. Mental training includes learning to deal with these, so that you don’t give up.

How can you train yourself to be better at each of these stumbling blocks? By just practicing. Let them be lessons in themselves.

By using every stumbling block as a place to practice, you’ll grow with leaps and bounds.

Mental training isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding if you let yourself trust in the process, and really pour yourself into it. Immerse yourself. Play in the midst of the hard work. And enjoy the process.