Deliberate Practice — The Fastest Way to Improve Your Skills
Design your practice deliberately, to improve faster.
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You can become good at anything you want in life. You can learn any skill.
But you have to practice. And you have to practice well.
You may have heard that it takes 10 000 hours to master a skill. But you can try any new skill in 1 hour. You can learn some of the basics in 10 hours. You can become very good in 100 hours.
And you can become amazing in most skills, if you spend 1000 hours of quality practice. How far you want to develop your skill, depends on your commitment to put in quality practice.
What is quality practice then? There is no exact way to measure the quality of practice, but the gold standard for optimal practice is often referred to as deliberate practice.
What is deliberate practice?
Deliberate practice is the most effective method to rapidly improve any skill, and consists of intense, structured practice on essential aspects of the task being mastered.
The activities are designed for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual’s performance.
Your goal is to extend your body and mind, and push yourself beyond the current limits of your capacity.
And to engage so deeply in a task that you leave the training session a changed person.
Characteristics of deliberate practice
Deliberate practice is characterised by the following traits:
- The practice takes place outside one’s comfort zone and requires a learner to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her current abilities.
- The practice involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some specific aspect of the target performance. It is not aimed at some vague overall…
