The Art of Practice

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th of January,: 2024

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Maybe you looked at the title of this book and wondered, “How to practice? How to practice what?" Therein lies the whole problem. When it comes to learning anything new—whether that’s an instrument, a sport, a new academic subject, a language, or some new technical skill—many of us start with what seems like an obvious first step: the material itself. We dive in, follow any pre-made curriculums set before us, and hope that whatever talent and intelligence we have is enough to see us through. In other words, we have absolutely zero strategy. In one word, this book is about just that: strategy.

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It’s about learning about learning and making sure that when it comes to growth and development, we are not leaving things to chance, but consciously, deliberately creating an experience that will carry us from where we are to where we want to be. If you picked up this book, chances are there is something you are currently trying to learn. Whatever it is, however, your path to mastery will tend to take some predictable twists and turns. That’s because human beings tend to learn in predictable ways. Understand these ways, and you understand how to structure your efforts in learning. The good news is that, ultimately, intelligence, talent, and even passion only take you so far. And you definitely don’t need “ten thousand hours” either.

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A solid plan of attack, the right mindset, and plenty of contingency planning will carry you a lot further than any raw aptitude. And these are all things that you can learn. The Deliberate Practice Roadmap Let’s meet Ellie, who wants to learn to paint better. She has loads of natural talent and has been arty all her life, but she works as an estate agent, and combined with parenting two kids, there’s not a lot of time to devote to the painting dream. People have always praised her work, but if she’s honest, Ellie is afraid that she doesn’t have “what it takes." Sometimes, late at night she’ll steal an hour or two to herself to sit with a sketchbook and some watercolors. This is pretty relaxing, but she’s more or less doing the same thing she always does and knows deep down that this time isn’t really making her a better artist.

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One day she takes a leap and signs up with a local class and commits to a course that will force her to enter a professional portfolio for her final assessment. With a real goal on the horizon, she feels suddenly fired up to really push herself. She starts to realize she’ll have to up the ante and get serious about all the skills she hasn’t yet mastered, and exactly how she can work toward them step by step. The evenings spent doodling won’t cut it anymore! Soon, she hits a wall again, though. She’s following her course curriculum and learning day by day, but she needs more help seeing around her blind spots—in other words, she needs a mentor. Another painter who is doing the kind of work she wants to do; someone who can work with her and give her guidance, support, and professional feedback she can really work with.

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Ellie finds a painting coach and, within a year, is astonished at how far she’s come. Not only has she completed her course and submitted a portfolio, but her technique and range have gone further than she ever imagined, and she is soon in the process of organizing her first exhibit at a local gallery. Looking back, she sees that the problem wasn’t a lack of talent or passion for the craft. It wasn’t even a lack of practice because, after all, Ellie had spent an hour or two every day for years on her painting. Rather, the problem was simply a poor approach and a lack of an organized, intentional method for learning. Practice is important, but not all practice is created equal. There are three different types of practice: naive practice, purposeful practice, and deliberate practice, each representing varying levels of effectiveness in skill improvement.

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1. Naive Practice: This is the most common type of practice where individuals go through the motions but without specific goals or challenges. They perform tasks in the same way repeatedly without pushing themselves to improve. This was Ellie in the evenings after the kids had gone to bed and she had some time to doodle and paint. This kind of practice does not typically lead to significant progress beyond a certain acceptable level of performance. In Ellie’s case, her innate talent had taken her to a particular level, and her daily practice was more or less maintaining her there. 2. Purposeful Practice: Purposeful practice is an improvement over naive practice. It involves setting specific and measurable goals, focusing intently on the task at hand, seeking feedback, and pushing oneself beyond one’s comfort zone.

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This was Ellie realizing she needed to give herself a push and sign up for a challenge—the art course. Purposeful practice allows for small, incremental improvements that lead to more significant advancements over time. For hobbyists, this level may be sufficient. But you certainly don’t have to stop here. 3. Deliberate Practice: Deliberate practice is the most effective form of practice, and it’s primarily applied in well-established and competitive fields. It involves purposeful practice but adds two essential elements: a well-defined and rigorous field with clear distinctions between experts and novices, and a skilled coach who can provide tailored practice strategies and feedback. Deliberate practice is informed and guided by the accomplishments of expert performers and has a clear roadmap for improvement.

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For Ellie, this meant getting a painting coach to work directly with her in a way she could never achieve on her own. Deliberate practice is a highly effective method for rapid skill improvement. It entails intense and structured practice focusing on essential aspects of the skill being mastered. The goal is to extend one's capabilities and push beyond current limits. You’ll see this kind of endeavor whenever you see professional athletes, musicians, performers, or creatives of all kinds aiming for the very highest levels of output. But deliberate practice is not just for celebrities and superstars—it can help you, too. Deliberate practice is not really a what, but a how.

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It’s like having a clear roadmap for your own development. Learning of this intensity happens outside your comfort zone—because that’s the point. Expanding yourself beyond your current abilities takes a willingness to constantly stretch and challenge yourself to something bigger than your current reality. It involves clear and specific goals aimed at improving particular aspects of performance. Complete focus and conscious actions are required, not just passive adherence to instructions, and certainly not just waiting for inspiration or doing what feels easy or comfortable. Feedback is essential, with learners progressively learning to self-assess and adjust their efforts. Deliberate practice often involves refining previously acquired skills by honing specific aspects of those skills.

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Ultimately, it leads to transformation and significant personal growth through deep engagement in the training process. Well, first things first: perhaps this roadmap metaphor needs a little further explanation. The “road” to mastery is not straight. It’s more like one of those roads you find leading into airport parking lots—it spirals up and up, covering the same ground over and over again, but each time at a higher level. An important part of this process is your teacher (or something/someone who acts like a teacher) who can initiate you properly into that “virtuous cycle." This is what that looks like: 1. Find a Teacher or Substitute Teacher: To engage in deliberate practice effectively, having a teacher or coach is essential. The right person can provide guidance, help you set specific goals, and offer useful feedback you can act on.

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If a direct coach is unavailable, that’s no problem. Instead find an expert in your field to study and emulate. Use them to help you set small, concrete goals and establish your own feedback mechanism. Let’s say you want to study piano: Seek guidance from a piano teacher who can assess your current level, provide tailored instruction, and set specific goals for improvement. If access to a teacher is limited, consider learning from online resources or studying the performances of skilled pianists to emulate their techniques. You can guess that a big part of getting this step right is making sure that the people you identify truly are masters, not just in their work, but with the teaching process itself. An experienced piano teacher, for example, may be a better bet than a distinguished concert pianist who doesn’t know the first thing about teaching.

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2. Assess Your Limits: Using the help of your teacher, identify the boundaries of your current skill level by recognizing your weaknesses or areas for improvement. If you can, do this without judgment or negativity—just get really neutral and factual about it. (We’ll cover mindset in the next chapter.) For example, evaluate your piano playing to identify areas that need improvement, such as finger dexterity, rhythm, sight-reading, or playing complex musical pieces. Ask your teacher to assess you and identify areas you most need to focus on right now. They may see something you don’t—for example, the fact that a big obstacle is not your technique, but your confidence with performing. 3. Set a Reaching SMART Goal: Inspired by these identified limits, choose a specific skill to develop and set a goal just beyond your current capabilities, so you challenge yourself without feeling overwhelmed.

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For example,choose a specific aspect of piano playing that you want to enhance, like improving finger coordination or working on breathing so you’re less nervous during a performance. Set a SMART goal (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-limited), but choose something that stretches your abilities while remaining achievable within a reasonable time frame. In other words, don’t aim too small. 4. Practice with Focus: Armed with this insight, your practice can actually mean something. Engage in focused practice, giving your complete attention to the task you’ve identified. Pour all your energy and attention into it until you’ve achieved the goal. In our piano example, this might mean daily practice sessions where you focus intently on proper hand positioning, dynamics, and accuracy while playing.Or perhaps you gradually expose yourself to playing in front of others until you feel comfortable and confident doing so.

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Whatever it is, your practice is focused—you apply yourself to whatever brings you closer to your goal, and only on that. 5. Get Feedback: Use a feedback mechanism, ideally from a skilled teacher or coach, to assess your performance relative to your goals and to identify areas for improvement. For example, you seek feedback from your piano teacher (or hey, if they’re like the piano teachers I know, they’ll let you know!). You could alternatively use recordings to self-evaluate your progress and pinpoint areas that require further attention. And then, because we’re on a spiral road that never really ends, we feed straight back into the next step: identifying limits and gaps in knowledge or mastery. How well did you do? Let’s say you achieved nine out of ten goals.

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Have a little celebration and then—you guessed it—get to work on making that final unachieved goal the sole focus of your practice from that point on. That is, unless you get frustrated/overwhelmed/depressed/bored and decide to drive off the spiral road and put yourself out of your misery. That may be an exaggeration, but you get the point: One of the biggest problems with learning is maintaining motivation. It’s essential to push against the tendency to become complacent and lose the drive to progress. People often stop pushing themselves when they feel they are "good enough" (Nine out of ten? That’s great, isn’t it?) and opt for relaxation over further improvement. To stay motivated, weakening reasons to quit and reinforcing reasons to continue is crucial.

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That’s going to change with each loop on the road. Strategies for maintaining motivation include staying physically active and getting enough sleep, eliminating distractions, forming a habit around practice, setting time limits to avoid burnout, celebrating achievements, committing to overcoming plateaus, and forming a supportive group of like-minded individuals to provide mutual motivation.We’ll explore these strategies and more in subsequent chapters. Slow Practice Slow practice is a fundamental technique used in learning and development—often in music. The main principle involves playing passages of music at a slower tempo than intended and gradually increasing the speed with each repetition until the correct tempo is achieved. This method helps in several aspects of musicianship, such as fingering, technique, articulation, and understanding the melodic and harmonic structure of the music. The only snag is that most students tend to hate slow practice! It can get boring, and the tendency to want to rush and get to the end is strong.

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This usually comes down to focusing too much on the outcome (how awesome you’re going to look shredding that violin) and not on the process of plodding slowly through a sequence again and again. The unavoidable fact is, however, that learning takes place in the process, not the outcome. To use slow practice effectively, discipline is essential. The process requires commitment and patience. By consistently practicing at a slower pace, the piece becomes ingrained in both the fingers and the mind, leading to better performance. American bassoonist William Short is someone who has embraced the slow practice as a valuable learning tool. He starts at a slow pace and gradually increases it in subsequent repetitions.

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While this is happening, he is focused mentally on precision and deep comprehension of the music. Every time he speeds up a tiny bit, he drills that sequence and cements it into his body and mind a little further. You don’t have to be a musician to benefit from this method, though. Take a look: How to Apply Slow Practice Step 1. Uh, go slowly Whether it’s a golf swing, your elevator pitch, a dance move, or an athletic maneuver, run through the task as a sequence, doing it very slowly to start. Your pace should allow you to remain relaxed and alert, and you should perform at the level you are able to maintain perfect form. You don’t want to make even a teeny tiny mistake here. If you do, slow it down even further—the right speed is often way slower than you think.

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Repeat a few times. Step 2. Try it full speed Once you’re comfortable doing it slowly, dial up the speed to the ordinary performance level. Do a natural golf swing, try that deadlift, or attempt a triple pirouette. Now, as a warning: this might go spectacularly well, and it might ... not. It doesn’t matter. Your goal is not to deliver perfection but just expose yourself to what the goal speed is. If it’s a disaster, stop.

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There’s no point doing it again and inadvertently training that disaster. If you do well, give it a few more attempts. Step 3. Stop and assess Finally, you want to actually evaluate what happened. Go beyond whether it worked or didn’t, and ask exactly what worked and, more importantly, why did it work? What was a little weak? The point of narrowing in on these things is that you can then repeat the process, starting again with slow practice, but this time focus on that one little tricky bit (yup, we’re on the spiral road again!). The next time you try it at full speed, it will be different.

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Ask how it’s different, make adjustments, and repeat. Once again, today's episode was the first from the book, The Art of Practice, by Peter Hollins. Remember, small deliberate steps, consistently taken, are mightier than a million aimless sleeps. If you're hungry for more, head over to bit.ly slash Peter Hollins, or check the show notes for links to the audiobook on Audible.