# Talented people don't do stupid shit This sounds pretty tautological, but it is probably the best advice you can get: to improve at any given skill, **==stop doing stupid shit==**. That is to say, **==work on eliminating the most basic mistakes==** you still catch yourself making. For instance, **stop double-taking a piano piece during practice**; you will inevitably catch the habit and become unable to play before an audience. Only perfect practice makes perfect, so switch your brain on for 25 minutes and get playing, consciously correcting mistakes as soon as you catch them. Reinforcement learning happens in the brain too: if you leave mistakes be, you will have a harder time getting rid of them next time. --- ## 📚 References - Infiest, Josh. [How to Seem Good at Everything: Stop Doing Stupid Shit - Josh’s Posterous](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113221226/http://jinfiesto.posterous.com/how-to-seem-good-at-everything-stop-doing-stu).