I want to learn as much as possible from those who do what they do well. I'm sure many of us here have this mindset of wanting to improve themselves, especially when it comes to hacking their performance instead of doing what they're already (unsuccessfully) doing, only harder.

What do you do exceptionally well? How do you do it? If someone spells better than you do, chances are they are doing it differently (mental images of pictures instead of sounding them out). If you have such a skill, even if it's an unflappable ability to find your keys every time, this is the place to bare it all out. Let's make life easier, more fun, and become more skilled at what we do.

Begin your strategies with "How I..." and really try to mentally recapture the elements that make it come together. I really hope this thread takes off. I'll start:

How I harass my badminton opponent and exhaust him. Part one.

When I'm practicing my shots, I imagine a small, colored line (mine's neon blue) made of light that traces the exact trajectory my shot has taken. It hangs there like a jet stream, but looks more like a curved laser sight. As I practice the same shot, I vary the angle and the force of it, and find out how exactly it affects the trajectory by comparing the lines. This can (and should) be done with all your basic shots (clear, drop, lift, push) and varied. The aim is always to land the shuttle as close as possible to the corner lines I'm hitting towards. It helps me to sharpen my precision, and the lines will be useful later.

During a game, I play the first few rallies with only the goal to gather information. I make my opponent move to as many positions as possible from as many positions as possible, and each time measure his speed ('How fast can he move from here to there?'), his agility ('How quickly does he change directions here?') and his reach. I mentally create an after-image of his main shots in a balanced posture at full extension and place them on the court. These are usually vague red shapes with the racket standing out, as this is the most important part. There's no use creating a picture-perfect afterimage.

Once I've measured his reach in these positions, I play a game where I try to make my shot lines go as close as I dare to the afterimage's racket. This automatically gives me the most efficient and most difficult shot for my opponent to hit. I calibrate as I go and as my opponent tires or changes his technique. Your opponents will drop dead before they know how you're doing it, will think they are having a 'bad day' and will find each shot difficult to return.

This is part one of my overall strategy to win at badminton despite a handicap, be it experience, technique or endurance. I don't want to overwhelm you guys.

Who's next?

Hi Phoenix,

Interesting thread.

Hi, Ed.

With 2 years' experience playing, I was beating about half of the regular players in the college team. They had the advantage of experience (by at least a decade), technique and, by far, physical condition. In the grand scheme of the badminton world, I'd say the players were 2k-2D.



If we equate pro-level to actual professionals, then zero. There was a player on the team who was heads-and shoulders above the others and was probably more on the order of 5D. Then there was a girl who trained with one of the world's foremost professional players, Peter Gade, in Denmark. She came back with an injured knee and absolutely crushed him in an official game.

She turned pro soon after. I've played the guy once and scored three points (out of 21). This world is very much like Go in many ways.



Overwhelmingly superior technique, physicality and experience. My strategy is designed to help make up for a difference in these things, but there are a few factors that distinguish a very strong player. Things such as a very high pace and great control of the pace, very short reaction time, fluid and powerful footwork, 'iron curtain' court coverage and defense, and of course amazingly sharp and tricky technique, plus consistently hitting the shuttle at the earliest possible point. It's absolutely impossible to tell if a top player which shot a top player is going to play until after the shuttle has been hit, giving you precious little time to react.

So yes, you could say their basics were hard as steel.

Funny thing is, I've never been able to elicit their mental strategies, as these players never seemed to know what was going on in their minds. I know because I've constructed my own strategy artificially, and therefore can easily trace all the steps (with part two coming up as soon as more people have participated!). These strategies are mostly unconscious, and the players couldn't be bothered. Physically, however, I was sharp enough to know exactly how I'd been overwhelmed and done away with.

And now that I've answered your mostly-but-not-quite off-topic question, I'd like your input. Is there something you do consistently well, big or small, whether or not you think it'll be useful to others, for which you can trace back your steps? If so, let us know what is it and how you do it!

I suspect that if someone spells well then they either had it drilled into them as a child or they have decent command of Latin and Greek roots.

As for something I do better than most, I have a very clear mental picture of numbers which allow me to do calculations much quicker than almost everyone I know. As a young child (6 or 7 years old) I visualized numbers in a way which I later learned was a logarithmic scale. The first twelve numbers I still imagine on a clock face, with a straight line as a tangent at 12 o'clock going out to 20. After that imagine something like a fence post every 10 feet up to 100 with a chain sagging between the posts to represent each group of ten, except that the image contains just the chain and no posts. Between 100 and 1000 there is a post every 100 but mentally I can quickly zoom in to look at intermediate posts every 10. From 1000 to 10000 it is a post every 1000, and so on up the scale. I have had this picture in my mind for well over 50 years and I can calculate visually very quickly by using it.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Hi Phoenix, yes, there are a few. At pro and near-pro levels. (Obviously, Go is not one of them. ) But I've been teaching beginners in a few fields over some years, and I enjoy the interactions with them; it's one reason I hang out here and KGS.

As for how to become proficient at something,
people have written countless books and millions of words about it.
It's quite difficult to try to capture this kind of understanding in a few paragraphs. Or even in a few books.

But it's still interesting, and perhaps entertaining.

The basics are very important. Basics, basics, basics.

Wow, now I come to think of it, there must be many little these things everyone does (including me) that just gives things that extra edge-- right now I can only think of two of the top of my head.

For some reason, each element on the periodic table has their own personality, depending on where they fall. For example, it is rather amusing finding that the noisy bunch of elements-- none other than the "group 7 gang", also know infamously as the haloge-- are causing a commotion right next to the noble "monks" pretending nothing is happening. It certainly helps with Chemistry! AAnd/or being able to tell the difference between balancing chemical equations and making kikashi exchanges on the Goban certainly has it's benefits! ( Want some Mathematical Joseki? The quadratic formula is one of my favourites)

i.e. So-called academic subjects are really skills like any other skill, like ago for example.

ps.

I like the badminton technique, you really apply it to many other sports as well!

_________________
On Go proverbs:
"A fine Gotation is a diamond in the hand of a dan of wit and a pebble in the hand of a kyu" —Joseph Raux misquoted.

Nothing.

_________________
Occupy Babel!

I think the point of the thread is to explain just how you do nothing well.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Think deeper and broader. We all learn skills as we plod along through life, do we not?

You don't have to be world-class at your own abilities or to be able to use them competitively. It doesn't even need to be something you think we will want to use. It could be waking up on time each morning without an alarm, or waking up with energy (some of us curse the heavens every morning). It could be a way to organize your thoughts so you can always find your computer files though others think it's a mess. It could be a funny way to remember people's names or make them smile. It could be an internal shift that makes you feel really good.

It could be something that is not PG-13. In that case keep quiet about it.

Here's an example. I work in customer service. I like my job, but I'm tethered to a phone, at the mercy of the next caller. But whenever a customer is being abusive and unreasonable and keeps piling that sort of language, I do three things.

First I dissociate from the situation. I'm at the phone and he's not angry at me personally. Since I can't stop him at the moment and do not need my mental faculties at their sharpest to answer them when they pause for breath, I step out of the experience and I make a mental image of the customer instead.

Second, I think to myself verbally: "What kind of life does this person have that they call into our lines and yell at us instead of letting us help? They're quite good at yelling. They must practice a lot!"

Third, I now picture them practicing. They're yelling at their cereal, yelling at their coat, yelling at a wall. It's like they sit down and decide to sharpen their yelling skills for the Yellympics. It's crazy and bizarre and it completely changes the interaction, because this time they're practicing on a phone. Notice in my imagery that I never have them yell at other living beings.

I also have them yell strange things at these objects, as if they're just beginners practicing. "You suck because you... uh... stole my doughnut you... you good-for-nothing cold teapot!" That way I realize they're actually doing really well right now. I let them have their best performance, their moment in the sun.

Now, you may be aware of having a new idea of what to think about as you read these words. You might have an idea, or the beginnings of an idea, or you might find yourself thinking about what you do well in everyday life. Your conscious mind holds the belief that you're not skilled, but your unconscious mind has been practicing these things in the background all your life.

You may become aware of your own special way of running your thoughts when you next do something quite well. I absolutely believe that everyone has mental strategies which take advantage of creative ways to gain an edge over themselves. Even the dirt-poor alcoholic jobless couch potato football fanatic needs intricate ways of keeping track of what's going on in the stadium. And because he believes in his own internal processes (though he is unaware of them), as he has developed them himself over the days and years, he gets upset at the referee on the screen. Come on, that long pass was obviously caught properly! Obviously.

Open up to the idea that you have your own sharpened processes. You may not be able to explain them or you may think you share them with everyone else. For some, this will not be the case.

I'm actually with hyperpape. I'm not incredibly good at anything. I'm above average in many things (ever the dilettante), though, and in some I may be quite good, but I don't think I'm excellent at anything, or at least, in anything competitive.

Well, I may be the leading expert in entire transcendental families with a fixed Siegel disk. But it's not like a competition

_________________
Geek of all trades, master of none: the motto for my blog mostlymaths.net

How I consistently reached Master level in Starcraft 2 despite playing very little games and having lower than average APM (actions per minute):

i've always been a very disorganized person, but i've learned some nifty "tricks" to help keep me organized.
a specific DO NOT LOSE IT! folder.
writing brief reminders on my hands. (such as putting a letter r for return book)
keeping a journal to-do list.
keeping an extra pencil in my pocket at all times.
just a few things that have helped.

I've always thought the ability to make mistakes well is useful.

When Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, he did it by proving a conjecture which related elliptic curves to modular forms. The conjecture was initially the work of Taniyama and Shimura.

Taniyama committed suicide in 1958 at the age of 31.

Shimura later commented on his friend's work, saying: