In this episode, we discuss how to become a master in your domain and why it’s so important.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how to become a master in your field. In today’s economy, it’s important that you know how to become a master in your domain. I’m striving for mastery because I know once I reach that level, I’m going to have more freedom in my field.
When I was in the Marines, I thought it was weird that I didn’t really see folks reaching for mastery. They were just doing the same thing that everyone else was doing. I was always looking for a way to finish my work faster so I can focus on other things.
If I can figure out how to do something in 15 minutes versus an hour, they will give me so much more time to focus on other things. The first thing in order to become a master in your field is that you have to be a subject matter expert in your field.
I was a beast at my job in the Marines because I was a subject matter expert. It wasn’t enough just to get an answer, I had to know how it was connected to the overall system that I was operating in. Lucky for me, I was given a clear task in the Marines and that task was to make sure the delinquencies from the report were gone.
I remember every week for a year I would take this 140-page report and I would go through it line by line trying to figure out to remove things from it by fixing it. This was very tedious but by doing this, I learned a lot about that report and what to do.
I was eventually able to reduce that report to 80 pages which I was told was impossible but no one worked harder than me on trying to fix it. That’s another thing to become a master. You have to be willing to work really hard on boring stuff. I guess what made it fun for me was that I was trying to prove to my superiors that I could do whatever one else couldn’t do. It was a challenge that I wanted to take on.
I spent a year on figuring how to remove stuff. This required research, to reach out to experts, and just to stick with stuff until I figured it out.
One of the best things that helped me become a master that I was able to bring my excel skills into my work. I was able to copy and paste the report in excel and I was able to break it tasks into different tabs that needed to be done and then I would delegate what needed to be delegated and I would fix the stuff that I could.
With my excel skills, I was able to build reports on different delinquencies that needed to be fixed by other folks. People are very visual and if you can create a chart that shows where people are strong and where they need improvement, then that can cause people to take action.
So the next part of mastery is that you’re able to make changes in your field that make things easier and more productive. I wouldn’t have been able to use my excel skills if I didn’t know how everything worked in the first place. There is a saying that a professional can see what is invisible to the amateur. After a couple of months, I got more and more efficient at going through my supply report and this gave me more time think about how to do things better.
It’s important that you take time to think about how things are going and see what is working and what isn’t working. I was trying to go to night school so I wanted to make sure I got all my work done in a timely matter so there couldn’t be any excuses why I couldn’t go to school. So I guess that gave me an extra incentive to become more efficient.
There are limits to what we can do like people, but if you put an incentive to work more efficient, then that could be very helpful as well. I know it worked for me and by learning to become more efficient, it just made me a master in my field.
It’s also important to learn how to do different tasks that you’re using. With Microsoft office, there are tons of things that most people don’t use that could help them become more productive. Same thing with typing. If you’re a 45 word per minute typer and you can increase your word per minute to 75 words per minute, this can save you so much time.
So ask yourself, what are the auxiliary items that you can improve on so that you can great the main thing done faster and better. This can make you seem like a master and you won’t be that person who doesn’t know how to turn a pdf clockwise. You don’t want to focus on too many auxiliary items. I know there are tons of productivity tools that I can use but if you try to focus on everything, then you’ll have to much on your plate that will just keep in you in amateur status.
Once you’re a master, it will give you more leverage in your profession and it will give you a sense of accomplishment, but you have to choose what you want to become a master in. I know doing administrative work, creating systems, and working that supply report was right up my alley. The person that followed me, was not that passionate about the job and it showed. He wasn’t willing to do the boring tedious stuff but did just enough to get by. So if you can’t be a master in your field, I would recommend that you explore other fields. The world needs professionals, not amateurs but you must be will to do the work to become a master. I’m not willing to become a master in everything, just the things that I enjoy doing and will give me a better future.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you want to become a master in your field. To become a master, you first must being willing to be a student and learn as much as possible from an expert. Then you must be willing to do the boring, tedious work that will take you to the next level, which means you much have a passion to become a master in the field, and then you must know how to create more efficient systems and creative solutions, and you do this by building up your auxiliary skills. Once you’re a master in your field, you’ll have more flexibility and control over your life and you’ll be more satisfied, and who doesn’t want that.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
