Adopt the "How hard could it be?" mindset!

There are three stages in becoming at master at something. Amazement, exploration, and commitment.

Learning is intimidating. You first look or come in contact with some great piece of work. Maybe a beautiful illustration, a novel, or perhaps even a software project. You look at it, you interact with it, you appreciate it. You will notice the details, and the care that was put into the creation by the person who created it. And you'll quickly see that that list grows extremely large. For any amazing work, there will be an amazing amount of effort that went into it. And it will be intimidating. But if you love the final work enough, you might feel interested in it.

Now, you might start exploring that form. This is where the "How hard could it be?" applies. For anything that catches your eye, for anything that makes you stop and think that it would be neat to be able to do, ask, how hard could it be? And try it out. No commitments. No promises. Don't tell anyone that you're going to try it, and just try it out. Draw, cook, design, whatever. You've got no skills in it, so it'll suck, yeah, but you tried it. That's critical. But now you know. You know if this thing truly interests you, whether you see yourself investing hours learning this thing. Not quite sure of the answer? Just try it for a bit longer. How hard could it be? Go find out. Did you hate it? Forget about it, it never happened. Go try something else.

If you're doing it right, you're trying a lot of things. Maybe you tried something for 5 minutes, maybe you tried it for a week. Out of all the things you tried, I hope you'll find something worth pursuing. Something worth investing in. Now, commit. Commit for a specific time with a specific goal in mind. It doesn't matter if you actually reach that goal or not in the timeframe you allotted yourself, all that matters is that you set one. Last year, I was drawing with the goal that by day 100, I'd be able to draw a very simple anime-style character illustration. It took me until day 300 (darn you school), but eventually, I got to my small goal. But once you have a time and you have a goal, you can make a plan and whatever that plan looks like, stick to it. Put it in your calendar, set reminders, whatever it takes to stick to the plan. If something changes and you need to change the plan, change it, but never make excuses for exceptions to the plan.

What happens after you commit but before you master that thing will depend on what that is, and it is way out of my scope to tell you how to do. But I can tell you this. Go be amazed. Go explore the thing. Then, when you find the right one, go commit to the thing. That's how you master something. How hard could it be, anyway?