This is how you get better: deliberate practice.
We’ve talked about it before. I’ve dedicated an omnibus post to collecting links about it. Now Geoff Colvin, the Fortune writer whose 2006 article first introduced me to the concept has boiled down the idea of “deliberate practice” into this new article:
Why Talent Is Overrated
. . . 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 no one could distinguish the best from the rest.
The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be 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 . . .
Thanks to Thomas Hanson for pointing me to it. (I’ll be coming back to his writing on deliberate practice as well.)
For now, no further commentary on Colvin’s article but this: Go read it.
More soon.
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Photo by chelseagirl, used under a CC-No Derivative Works license.
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Practice sucks. Being so, how do you get through it? For myself, I concentrate on the happiness I will gain from the rewards of my practice. Ex: practicing hours of problems for a test. Yes, this is a very mundane task and sometimes it drives me crazy. If I reach that point, I take a break, but get back to it. What drives me is knowing how happy I’ll be from getting an A on a test.
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