The first time my Mum took me to play football, I was terrified.

I was ~7 years old. We parked up, and I saw my football crazed friend Callum get out of his car next to us.

He was dressed head to toe in his favourite team’s kit, shin pads flapping around his ankles, studs clicking on the tarmac, with a massive grin on his face.

He waved at me.

I instantly started screaming.

Screaming to the point where my Mum had to take me home.

As kids (especially introverted ones) you go out of your way to avoid uncomfortable situations.

As adults, you do the same.

When you choose the ‘safe’ option - whether it’s life or business - you miss big opportunities.

But, as you’ll learn today, fear and fun don’t need to be separate things.

Last week, I started something I’d been putting off for months.

Pickleball.

(think of it like a cross between ping pong, badminton and tennis)

I kid you not, the court is a 30 second walk from my house.

So why don’t we just do these things?

You put things off because:

80% of your procrastination is down to points 1 and 3.

It’s MUCH easier to:

In short:

With Pickleball, the kick I needed was Grace (I walk her dog). Found out she plays where I’d been thinking about going (that covered point 2).

But, I still struggled with the concept of walking on court, with ZERO knowledge - Without screaming and asking for someone to take me home.

I needed an edge.

Recently, I built a Meta-Learning prompt inspired by Tim Ferriss.

His approach to Meta-Learning (learning how to learn) is as follows.

DSSS = Deconstruct, Select, Sequence, Stakes

I’ll include the prompt further down.

But, the key is to de-construct something complicated, select the elements that will produce the best / fastest results, decide on the order to learn in, and create a way to stay accountable (make sure you do it).

I’d given the prompt to a client, and they’d seen success.

I’d used it to identify opportunities to improve my newsletters.

But, for Pickleball, I just decided to use a super simple version of the prompt:

You can see the convo with ChatGPT here.

Key takeaways:

Walking on to the court.

I still had the fear, but I felt a lot more clued up.

(plus it would be fun to see whether I could put what I’d learnt into practise).

The first session, I wasn’t great, but still had an edge over the other beginners.

The second session, a lot more improvement. Started winning games!

During one of the sessions, I had this line stuck in my head:

“Try and observe what people are doing that they don’t know they’re doing”.

So, instead of playing game after game, I deliberately sat one out, so I could observe what the best players were doing.

The best player:

Hardly moved. He was resetting himself to a position in the court to make is easier to return every hit. Plus, he had this bizarre scooping technique. More like he was lifting the ball over the net vs hitting it.

The second best player:

A bit more bullish. most of his winning shots were across court. This really hit home when he volleyed a ball across the net that felt like it shot at 90 degrees off his paddle. All he said was “Angles” - This is the benefit of positioning at the net.

But here’s what’s key.

I would have NOT noticed what they did differently, had I not first played some games for myself.

This is because I would not have known what to look for (or the weaknesses in my game - i.e running around the court like a headless chicken).

Another example.

When I was selling Sage Intacct, I’d emphasise how implementations would average at 3.5 months instead of the 6-8 months that other competing software implementations would take.

This is because, everyone using Sage Intacct would go into ‘Fundamentals’ training straight away.

They’d learn AND use the system in a basic way in a sandbox environment, before working with us to configure and improve it.

Things always happen faster if you build basic knowledge by doing first.

So, to summarise.

Here’s the meta-prompt I promised you.

It will help you break down anything into most effective skills.

My client used it to improve their Nano Banana prompting:

I created a Claude project , with the DSSS framework uploaded as knowledge files.

But you could do the same with a ChatGPT GPT, or Gemini Gem

The below are the custom instructions.

You can find a link to the framework file to copy into your Claude project / GPT / Gem here.

So, now you know where to start. Now you need accountability…

I was lucky that with Pickleball, I ran into someone who could act as my accountability.

But, in business this is not always so easy.

When I think about finding people, I think in terms of the Dream 100 concept that Russel Brunson talks about in traffic secrets.

You can get his Dream 100 worksheet here.

In short, your Dream 100 is a list of people that you’d want to collaborate with to increase your own awareness and traffic, whether it be through social collab, podcasts, featuring on a newsletter etc.

For me, it’s also about learning and observing.

My Dream 100 is in Notion. I include links to all of their social profiles and newsletters, so that I can both interact with them, and also learn from what they’re doing.

You will get an element of accountability from just surrounding yourself with people doing good work.

But ideally you want to actually speak with them, and find a way of helping each other towards shared goals.

For me, my podcast was a great way of developing these relationships.

One guest ended up being an accountability partner as we were both building.

Two guests ended up turning into clients and mentors.

But remember:

People won’t come to you.

You will need to go to them.

Intention is everything.

As adults you lose the joy of learning, and instead resort to your comfort zone.

You get used to doing things alone, and settle for the status quo.

But, with the right tools (and the right people by your side) you’ll learn that fear and fun can work together.

So, the next time you’re thinking of taking a leap, and your instincts tell you to put things off (or go back home).

And most importantly, enjoy the process.

Life is a game.

Winning is important.

But so is the joy of playing.

Until next time.

Adam