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WotD: Second nature
The best way to become so proficient at a new activity that it becomes second nature to you is to practice, practice, practice because practice makes perfect.
Believe me; this is true whether you’re an amateur baker trying to bake a new type of pastry or a special commando training for a secret mission behind enemy lines.
When something is second nature to you, you’re so familiar with it that you can do it without thinking or at least without thinking very much.
For activities, a significant part of making something second nature is building up what is called muscle memory.
You want to react instantly without thinking about what you’re doing.
That’s why soldiers practice taking apart their weapons and putting them back together again while blindfolded.
Have you ever performed your morning routine of brushing your teeth, putting on makeup, etc. but couldn’t remember what you did five minutes later?
That’s because those activities have become second nature to you, allowing you to use very little of your mental capacity to accomplish them.
The same goes for actions required by your job.
Once you learn how to type on a computer, it becomes second nature to you.
Sure, learning how to type is a bit of a trial, but after much practice, you never want to go back to the hunt-and-peck way of typing again.
Humans are creatures of habit.
We prefer to have a pattern to everything we do than to go through life doing unique things every day.
Keep that in mind the next time you suffer decision fatigue.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 63.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.