How I Improved My Cooking with Iterations
When working towards an ambitious goal, you need to acquire a few sub-skills to help you along the journey. The goal could be losing 50 pounds or learning Spanish. To lose weight, you might consider visiting the local park to walk for 20 minutes every other day. For learning Spanish, you might get a book or enrol on a Spanish course.
These sub-skills are the roadmap to help you reach your most ambitious goals.
The author Ayelet Fishbach in her book Get It Done explains this as "Everyone is enthusiastic about their goals in the beginning or the end, it is in the middle where the motivation dips."
To combat this, we need to make steady, consistent progress that compounds over time to get us to where we want.
This is the concept of Iterations.
I used this method to get better at cooking Indian dishes. One of my goals for 2024 was to learn how to cook more than 3 dishes.
But, with the long list of ingredients and the immense prep work required, it looked even more difficult.
This meant that more times than not, I would order takeout. To change this, I started following a few YouTube videos to cook simple dishes.
I tried making different dishes like Chicken Curry. In the beginning, I had to refer to the videos to see if I was getting everything right. This made all my meals feel lifeless and robotic.
I had a conversation with my mother about this. She told me that cooking has been and always will be experimental. Following a strict regimen is not the way to learn to cook new things. I took her suggestion and tried cooking my dishes without using YouTube videos. Sure, the first few dishes didn't win any Michelin awards. But, I felt good about making food that didn't feel forced.
Based on this experience, I tried different ingredients while making my meals. This made me curious about trying new things and also gave me the much-needed enthusiasm to stay true to my goals.
With time and effort, I am now able to cook meals that both me and my roommates enjoy. Currently, I am trying to cook even more elaborate meals using this concept.
To summarize, the incremental process works because you make continuous progress. In my case, it was learning to cook a single Indian dish and going from there. Iterating and improving consistently will put you on the fast track to achieve your long-term goals.