Deliberate practice is powerful
Posted: October 18, 2021 Filed under: Wisdom Comments Off on Deliberate practice is powerful
For anyone who aspires to learn something new, deliberate practice is essential. It is also a key component of success in life. Most people think of deliberate practice as being synonymous with hard work. In fact, there is much more to it than that. Deliberate practice is a way of thinking. It is a mindset. It is a method of learning.
Why am I telling you this? It means that if you want to become better at anything, you need to put in the hours. If you want to become a better writer, you need to write every day. If you want to get better at playing the guitar, you need to practice every day.
According to Gladwell, you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class in any field. It takes 417 days’ worth of hours, or 3 hours a day, for 3,333 days. That is equivalent to over 5 years of a full-time job! If that’s the case, no one has the time to invest in learning, isn’t it?
But there’s a problem. Most people don’t have the time to dedicate to practising. They’re too busy working, spending time with friends, watching TV, etc. However, they achieved greatness by doing less than they are capable of achieving. You can’t be mediocre and expect to achieve great things.
So how do you fit in the necessary hours of practice into your life? Allow me to break down the benefit of deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice does not feel like work. It feels like play. Some say it is a state of the Flow. You might even say it is self-imposed fun. Michael Jordan said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Deliberate practice is more about quality than quantity. It is about strengthening your weaknesses rather than improving what you are already good at. It is about constantly pushing yourself to do better. It means that you are constantly facing challenges that are just out of your reach.
Deliberate practice is more about repetition than it is about hard work. I have heard that one should practise a little bit every day, rather than spending hours at a time once a week. The key here is to not overdo it but to do just enough to build up your skill.
In all the research I have done on deliberate practice, I have been led to a few conclusions;
- Go small — Break down large tasks into small ones that you can accomplish easily.
- Don’t procrastinate — Do it now instead of later.
- Avoid distractions — Turn off the TV, disable the Internet, silence the phone, etc.
- Get feedback — Know what you’re doing right and wrong.
- Keep it simple — Don’t complicate the above.
- Set achievable goals — You can’t accomplish everything at once.
- Keep a daily practice routine — Go through the whole process every day to see your progress and improve it further.
Josh Kaufman mentioned that it only takes 20 hours for rapid skill acquisition and pick up new skills as fast as humanly possible. You can go from knowing absolutely nothing to becoming proficient in 20 hours. It won’t make you an expert, but surely it can help you to improve specific things that you want to be better at.
What about reading? You can read more if you have dedicated time for it, say 20 minutes every day. Or during your lunch hour. Deliberate practice can also be applied to many other things like exercise, writing, drawing, playing the guitar, lifting weights, speaking in public or anything that you want to learn or become better at.
Is it possible to learn anything in 20 hours? While the learning curve for different skills differs tremendously, Kauffman found that most skills can be acquired, at least at a basic level, within just 20 hours. In order to develop basic proficiency in any new skill, only 20 hours of deliberate, focused practise are necessary.
The author of the 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss, has developed a system to learn any skill in the shortest amount of time possible. He has successfully used it to master cooking, language acquisition, tango dancing, martial arts, and a wide variety of other skills. The DSSS method works for nearly any subject. Almost anything can be learned with it, from language to math to coding. The key is determining which 20% of the skill will deliver the greatest bang for your buck.
In essence, deliberate practice is about staying focused. It is about doing one thing at a time and getting it done. It is not about avoiding distractions and unpleasantness. Plenty of tips and tricks exist that will help you do this.
One thing to remember about learning new skills is that you will change and grow as a person. When you work hard to learn anything, including a new skill, you will find yourself changing and growing as a person. You’ll become more confident and self-aware as well as more capable in general.