By Marquita Herald, Emotionally Resilent Living, May 18, 2015

If you want to get good at something you need to practice. Whether it’s learning to blog, improve your writing skills, play a musical instrument, picking up a sport or even becoming a better poker player, practice can mean the difference between good and great. No brainer, right?

Well, not exactly. The problem is that most of us have never learned the most effective and efficient ways to practice, so we often end up wasting a lot of time with little to show for the effort.

It’s not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts; it’s what you put into the practice. ~Author Unknown

All Practice is Not Created Equal

There really isn’t much debate over the value of practice, although in some areas we may not think of the learning and growing process as practice. For example the notion of practicing is natural when we think of playing a musical instrument or learning a sport, but not so much when it comes to something like writing, learning to blog or even how to become a better leader. But here’s why we should … each new blog post, story or initiative that you undertake is an exercise in “practicing” to grow from being a novice to expert.

Typically we use one of the following approaches to practicing.

1. We learn a method of doing something and then repeat the same thing over and over. Same PowerPoint presentation, same passage on the piano, same process of trying to slog your way through writer’s block.
2. We use the stumbling block method where we go along doing the same thing over and over until a problem pops up and only then do we figure out how to do ‘it’ better, make minor adjustments, and then go back to doing the same things over and over.

Repeating the same actions over and over will only result in the same results over and over. If you want to master a particular skill you need to progressively change the way you practice to improve the outcome.

It’s worth noting that this approach can go a long way toward improving your performance even when you are already a professional. When I worked in the hotel industry a couple of times a year I traveled to our major wholesale accounts around the world and conducted training sessions for their reservation agents so they would know how to promote our hotel to their customers. It was not unusual for me to conduct 5 to 6 training sessions a day and when I first began doing this I thought I’d lose my mind giving the same lecture over and over, and I had no doubt that came across in my delivery. So I dumped the script and challenged myself to get creative, include some stories and generally come up with a different presentation for each group I met with. At first it was terrifying, then it was incredibly empowering. The best part was the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the agents.

Introducing Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice is a structured approach to learning a skill with the specific intention of improving performance that was first introduced by Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson in 1993. The basic concept is that it is the method of practice rather than the number of repetitions that leads to becoming an expert. In fact research has shown that even for those who are considered to have a “natural talent” more often than not the critical difference is not how much, but the way in which they practice to build their skills.

Before I continue let me acknowledge that this process is not for everyone or even for every goal you undertake.  Regardless of what approach you use, it takes a lot of work, willpower and dedication to become an expert at anything. The truth is most people are content to learn something just good enough to get along which is why I led into this topic in my last post by discussing the difference between making a commitment and being truly committed. Anyone can learn a new skill whether it’s to write, play the guitar, improve marketing skills or play tennis; however if you desire to truly master that skill, you must intentionally set out to do so.

Steps to Accelerate Your Growth Process

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Take some time to do a self-assessment on your strengths and weaknesses relating to the particular skill you desire to master. Since it’s natural to have some biases in this regard, you might want to seek feedback from your employer, mentor or a trusted friend. Most of us are already pretty good at picking out our weaknesses and short changing our strengths so this exercise can be invaluable.

How You Practice Matters Most

To benefit from practice and reach your potential, you have to constantly challenge yourself. This doesn’t mean repeatedly doing what you already know how to do. This is where understanding your weaknesses will help you to invent specific tasks in your practice to address those deficiencies.

Regularly Seek Feedback

Feedback is important because it helps to keep you on track. If you’re working to strengthen your skills in a situation where you have a coach or teacher this will be easy, but in many other situations it may be helpful to reach out to peers or join a group of like-minded individuals also working to improve their skills.

Find Your Motivation

Practice isn’t always fun and it’s extraordinarily easy to drift into mindless mode. You’ll need to keep reminding yourself this is an investment into improving yourself, your skills and your future. In order to practice with intention for long enough to become an expert or gain useful skills, you have to find the motivation to make the investment.

Where will you find that motivation?

It’s great if you have people who will cheer you on, but others can’t always be there to provide motivation just when you need it most, which is why it’s so important to develop self-motivational strategies. There are many ways to motivate yourself, for example vision boards are popular as are affirmations. For a couple of years now my ‘go to’ motivation song has been, “How Bad Do You Want It?” by Tim McGraw and whenever I am up to my eyeballs in a particularly challenging project I play if often because the words just say it all to me …

There’s always a price you pay for anything you want to do. It always comes down to how bad do you want it? Is it a fire that burns you up inside? Are you eating, sleeping, dreaming with that one thing on your mind? How bad do you want it? How bad do you need it? Cause if you want it all … you’ve got to lay it all out on the line.

Becoming an expert is a marathon, not a sprint

Becoming an expert in any area doesn’t happen in just a few weeks or months, sometimes it takes years, and it’s likely that there will be more than a few stumbling blocks or unexpected detours along the way. But with a strong enough purpose and the right attitude you can turn even the biggest road block into an opportunity for growth.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. it freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. ~Steve Jobs

A lot has been written about deliberate practice, and if you’d like to learn more I’ve added the best books I know of on this subject to my Amazon slideshow in the sidebar. The bottom line is whether you want to gain skills rapidly or to approach expert-level status at something, how you go about achieving that must be intentional and reflect your unwavering commitment. With that mindset as your foundation, and then incorporating deliberate practice into your daily life you will surely achieve your goal.

Celebrate the day on which you choose to embrace the power you have to create your own life experience. It is an amazing journey and you alone will be responsible for the quality of it.

About Marquita Herald

I am an author and the Chief Evangelist and Founder of Emotionally Resilient Living. The mission behind ERL is to provide the tools, resources and inspiration to help you cultivate emotional resilience so that you can confidentially embrace ALL of life’s experiences, knowing that no matter what happens, you will be okay.