While the best methods of development are constantly changing, they’re always built around a central principle: They’re meant to stretch the individual beyond his or her current abilities. They may sound obvious, but most of us don’t do it in the activities e think of as practice.
By contrast, deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improve, and then work intently on them.
Choosing these aspects of performance is itself and important skill.
Identifying the learning zone, which is not simple, and then forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes, which is even harder – these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.
It can be repeated a lot. High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real, when it counts. Tiger Woods may face that buried lie in the sand only two or three times in a season, and if those were his only opportunities to work on hitting that shot, he certainly wouldn’t be able to hit it very well.
Repeating a specific activity over and over is what most of us mean by practice, yet for most of us it isn’t especially effective. After all, I was repeating something – hitting golf ball – on the driving range. Two points distinguished deliberate practice from what most of us actually do. One is the choice of a properly demanding activity in the learning zone, as discussed.
The other is the amount of repetition. Top performers repeat their practice activities to stultifying extent. Ted Williams, baseball’s greatest hitter, would practice hitting until his hands bled. Pete Maravich, whose college basketball records still stand after more than thirty years, would go to the gym when it opened in the morning and shoot baskets until it closed at night.
More generally, the most effective deliberate practice activities are those that can be repeated at high volume.
Feedback on results is continuously available. Steve Kerr, former chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs and a highly respected researcher on leadership development, says that practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level. You can work on technique all you like, but if you can’t se the effects, two things will happen: You won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring.
Getting feedback on most practice activities is easy. Lift the curtain and a bowler knows immediately how he did; in sports generally, seeing the results of practice is no problem.
It’s highly demanding mentally. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. This is what makes it “deliberate,” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. Continually seeking exactly those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one’s hardest to make them better places enormous strains on anyone’s mental abilities.
The work is so great that it seems no one can sustain it for very long. A finding that is remarkably consistent across disciplines is that four or five hours a day seems to be the upper limit of deliberate practice, and this is frequently accomplished in sessions lasting no more than an hour to ninety minutes.
It isn’t much fun. This follows inescapably from the other characteristics of deliberate practice, which could be described as a recipe for not having fun. Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that’s exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we’re good at, we insistently seek out what we’re not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over. After each repetition, we force ourselves to see – or get others to tell us – exactly what sill isn’t right so we can repeat the most painful and difficult parts of what we’ve just done. We continue that process until we’re mentally exhausted.
Ericson and his colleagues stated it clearly in their article: Deliberate practice “is not inherently enjoyable.”
If it seems a bit depressing that the most important thing you can do to improve performance is no fun, take consolation in this fact; It must be so. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and they would not distinguish the best from the rest. The reality that deliberate practice is hard and even been seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.
