Practice.

Whatever it is you’re trying to be talented at, you know you have to practice. This is especially true if you hope to be talented in multiple areas. Fortunately, you may not need to practice quite as much as you think, and can likely make the time to practice multiple skills every day. In order to get the most out of the time you put in, you have to focus on what you’re hoping to learn.

Practice two different skills 40-45 minutes each, every day for a month.

Practice priority stacking. While you may have multiple interests, use priority stacking to organize your time and resources around the hobbies you are most passionate about.[1]

Check in with yourself once a week and make sure what you're pursuing is truly what you want and enjoy doing.

Don’t worry if you miss a day of practicing one of your talents once in a while. If you practice each skill almost every day for a month, you’ll have put in about 20 hours of focused practice on improving each of the talents you hope to develop!

Deconstruct the talents you hope to acquire. In order to practice deliberately and efficiently, you need to make sure you are absolutely focused during practice. One way to help maximize the efficiency of your practice time is to deconstruct the talents you hope to improve upon into specific skills.

Ask yourself; What, specifically, do you need to be good at in order to be more talented at whatever ability you’re developing?

Choose specific objectives to achieve each time you sit down to practice something. Repeat a small task or process many, many times until you’ve mastered it.For instance, if you’re trying to improve your ability to play a sport, choose an extremely basic aspect of playing that sport and spend 45 minutes straight on just that specific aspect.

For example, if you’re hoping to become a better soccer player, dribble a soccer ball back and forth on the field with just one foot.

If you’re hoping to improve your talent as a basketball player, shoot only lay-ups.

Deconstructing your effort to improve one talent will help you improve other talents as well. Following the sports example, doing anything physically active will get you in better shape and improve your coordination, both of which will increase your physical abilities generally.

Practice until you can self-correct. Practice enough so that you are able to both notice and correct errors in your execution of a particular ability. (Once you’ve completed a disciplined practice routine, during which you practice almost daily for a month, you will likely reach this point.)

Moving forward, your practice will become more efficient. This is because you have gained a solid base of knowledge from which your talent will more naturally progress.

For instance, if you’re hoping to improve your ability to play an instrument, practice playing the same single notes or chord so frequently than you automatically know exactly what you did wrong when the sound is even a little bit off.

Be consistent and persistent. Dabbling and practicing are different things. Jogging or painting twice a week are fun and healthy things to do, but in order to acquire talent, you need to be more disciplined in your pursuit of improvement. Something that may help you be persistent is choosing two very different talents to practice and improve upon during the same time period.

Get in the groove of practicing at the same time of day each day.

Try practicing skills related to two talents you’re hoping to improve upon back-to-back. Get in the habit of practicing one talent then immediately practicing the other.

For example, right when you get home from a daily run, sit down to paint. Grouping your practice sessions together will encourage you to do both consistently.

Work on two widely different talents to increase the variety of your daily activities. Following the example used in this step, doing something active like running pairs well with something creative and contemplative, like painting.

Remove distractions during practice. Do not rely entirely on willpower to focus adequately during practice time. Here are a few tips to ensure your practice time is free of interruption:

Set aside a block of time devoted exclusively to practice and commit to practicing for that full length of time. Set a timer if you’d like.

Turn your phone on silent.

Make sure there are no screens running in your vicinity (unless you’re using them to help you practice).

If you have music playing, consider choosing something without lyrics.