the Practical Skateboarder

I’ve started to notice now how often new skateboarders want to jump right to a more technical trick.

Barely getting the basics, someone quickly decides to move on to the more complicated thing, usually before they can understand what it is they’re trying to do. And it’s a waste.

They’ll land a boardslide once or twice, and then decide to try adding a shuv-it out at the end—before they’ve truly gotten the hang of the boardslide. If they’d simply stick with the boardslide for a while, until it feels intuitive, then they’d be better positioned to try something more complicated. In the end though, they waste hours trying a trick they simply weren’t ready to do yet.

If you’re just getting started—at skateboarding, another sport, a new job, a craft, a new business—don’t skip the basics and don’t rush through them.

A professional skateboarder and an amateur skateboarder can do the same fundamental tricks. It’s simply that the professional has spent significantly more time practicing the basic tricks than the amateur.

And, since most people aren’t professionals in whatever it is you’re trying to do, spending an uncommon amount of time mastering the basics will be a huge advantage.