I started skateboarding 5 years ago. Yes, when I was only a junior high school student. I thought skateboarding is extremely cool and interesting, so I bought a skateboard from online shopping. Then I found a gang of friend and started practicing some basic tricks. For example: Ollie, skater jump up with board so that they can jump over barriers, over stairs up and down. Kickflip, skater catch the board after flipping the board for a round, etc…

In fact, skateboarding is a dangerous and skillful sport. It’s hard to learn a new trick, or do trick with various of spots. Maybe you guys will guess that: will, you want to share how skateboarding taught you keep fighting, keep doing something, never give up, etc. Maybe I would agree with that when I was a beginner. I was so attracted by skateboarding that I could get up very early to practice skateboarding, and didn’t want to back home until mid night, until I was really worn-out, until my t-shirt was always full of my sweat.

I kept practicing, kept paying effort, fighting against my fears for two years. But the most discouraging thing is that, my skateboarding skills were still poor. It was really disturbing me and made me sad. Then, I realized that paying effort is only a method to achieve our goals, but not the goals itself. I wager that you will not be happy if payed but failed. In my case, paying effort without thinking was invalid and useless behavior.

After I recognized that, I stopped practicing without thinking. I reduced my rate of skating, shrunk each skate duration to force myself to value my time, and to force myself to payed more thinking and attention to learn, to practice. For details, I would split a whole trick into several steps, and solve them one by one. If I was stuck by one step, I would try to slip it into smaller step, until I made it. It usually worked, but sometimes lapsed, then I could realized that my state is not enough to learn, then I stopped practicing to avoid wasting of my time.

It did make sense. My skateboarding skill grown fast after I practice with thinking, even though I payed less time. And I didn’t feel anxious or bothered by skateboarding, just thinking, paying attention, and enjoying it. The idea of increasing efficiency really changed my life, I will consider how to deal with a task faster and better, no matter it’s specific or generic.

So I payed so much time, tried to increase my skating skills but fault, what I obtained is a reason, or a idea: The efficiency is the most important thing. Think carefully, do not let invalid work and useless effort waste your time. Split your goal into smaller components and solve them one by one. Thanks for skateboarding, and thanks for your listening.