Purposeful Practice II

Purposeful practice is first defined by specific goals. Intense focus is the second quality. How often during so called ‘naive practice’ are we going through the motions without being fully engaged, either because we lack a specific goal or we’re just not bringing our full attention to the moment?

Growth is difficult, and that brings us to the next quality of purposeful practice: getting out of our comfort zone. And we don’t like that. We have a basic need to feel competent, and pushing ourselves to do things we don’t know how to do goes against that—but it is required to push the limits of our abilities and progress.

We push into an uncomfortable place and adapt until it becomes comfortable, and then we push again, until it gets comfortable, and then push again, over and over, in a faithful, persistent way. This is how we learn and develop. This is the only way we improve, in anything.

Deliberate practice involves developing a more efficient mental approach to tempo, harmony, phrasing or anything else that you wish to improve.

Deliberate practice means our ability to detect—and then correct—mistakes is enhanced. And then we get a positive cycle of improvement, with refined and more challenging deliberate practice further developing mental representations, better informing practice, and so on.

This is the process of improvement. What determines who gets to a good level, gets better, or becomes the best is the amount of time you spend in deliberate practice.

Is 10, 000 hours the golden number? I will discuss that in my blog '10, 000 Hours to Greatness?'