You can’t expect to become great at something without practicing it over and over.
But, practice in the same way you always have and you’ll get the same results you always have.
Excellence requires more than just a lot of practice. It requires the right kind of practice.
Anders Ericsson, the psychologist behind the 10,000 Hour Rule, explained this important caveat by saying, “You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal. You have to tweak the system by pushing, allowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits.”
It doesn’t matter what skill you are trying to perfect, finding the areas where your particular skill set provides the greatest leverage and focusing on those areas will reap enormous benefits.
If we want to execute in real life and master the skills that are important to us, then we need to:
- Put in a volume of work.
- Focus on the areas of greatest leverage for your skill.
- Find ways to continually improve and move the needle forward rather than falling into routines and patterns once we develop adequate skill levels.
* Source: James Clear – Masters of Habit: The Deliberate Practice and Training of Jerry Rice
* Related Post: Meaning Ring – Book#0014 – So Good They Can’t Ignore You