Enough, Effective, Efficient -- In That Order

I’m taking Part-Time Youtuber Academy course by Ali Abdaal and he has this catchy phrase to explain 3 stages of learning he has observed in his students. He designates them as :

1. get going

2. get good

3. get smart

He developed these 3 stages as a reaction to how most beginners over-index on optimization tactics (which are more suited for the get-good and get-smart stages) and under-index on completing enough reps to get a foundation before (more appropriate for get-going stage).

Over-indexing on optimization tactics is a typical rookie mistake. I’ve done this many times. And directly telling beginners not to do it doesn’t seem effective at preventing this.

Ali’s method is to develop the 3 stages as an indirect way to tell the beginners: not all stages are the same, so the tactics will not be equally effective in all the stages. Ali even went so far as to give a benchmark number for the get-going stage: make 50 videos.

Personally, I map each stage to a different focus with a different E-word bolded:

1. get going → meet just good enough quality per piece, aim to generate enough pieces to hit benchmark number. Ignore tactics and KPIs. Get your reps in is usually the metaphor used to describe this.

2. get good → start to focus on KPIs to find an effective way to consistently generate effective pieces. Another way to think of this is: get really good at each piece and then get consistent at producing such really good pieces.

3. get smart → now you know how to generate a good piece consistently, focus on optimization tactics and systems to be efficient at producing good pieces.

In other words, do enough reps, then turn effective, finally become efficient. In that order.