Deliberate Practice and the Art of Getting Better
Source: Tulane Public Relations at flickr
I am currently listening to an audio book (from audible.com) called “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. I started off disagreeing with the author on some of his key points, but giving the book a chance and listening to it all the way through has changed my mind somewhat. How does it relate to sabbaticals? It does, and I’ll address that at the end. (Without purchasing the book, you can get a good understanding of the topic by reading this Fortune Magazine article “Secrets of Greatness” by the same author.)
First the premise: there is no such thing as natural born talent. You are not born to be a great golfer, artist, singer, actor, or computer programmer. All 1-day old babies have equal abilities in this regard.
But somewhere along the way, Picasso picked up a brush, Tiger Woods picked up a golf club (or more specifically was given one), and Mozart started composing music.
This might sound outrageous at first. Tiger Woods is naturally talented right? If I had a baby tomorrow, I could not hope to turn him into as good a golfer as Tiger Woods, no matter what I did, except if I got extremely lucky right? It turns out, anyone can craft their child to be the next Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods was born with nothing special that you and I were not born with.
I happened to believe, before I started listening to this book, that there is a combination of factors that make any athlete or artist (or anyone else) great. You have some natural ability, you have opportunity to develop it, you are dedicated to developing it, throw in some luck, and then you become great.
But it turns out, there may be no such thing as natural ability. Tiger was watching his dad swing the golf club in his high chair, his dad had him swinging his first club at 18 months, from before he could walk he could hit a ball, and magically 17 years later (which is a LONG time to practice), he becomes the youngest winner of the Junior Championship. But Tiger Woods probably played more golf before he was 4 years old than I have in my entire life. What if my father made me practice golf many hours a day? Would I be pretty good by now? Geoff Colvin thinks I would, and I now agree.
Its more than working hard though. After all the PGA tour is made up of many golfers, but most of them will never win The Masters, yet Tiger does it year after year. It is not just the number of hours or number of years spent practicing apparently. Colvin suggests that what the high performers in any profession have in common is deliberate practice. It’s not 1 million swings of the golf club that make you great. You have to work on specific things, with a specific purpose.
You have to work the 3-iron specifically for hours, in real tall grass, aiming at a target, correcting your swing if you miss, adjusting it slightly, trying to get it perfect. Video tape yourself, have a teacher examine your swing. After every bad shot, go over it in your mind and deconstruct what happened. When the ball leaves the tee, you should instinctively know how the shot is going to go, since you know if you executed your swing perfectly. Did your hips rotate? Hitting balls blindly is not helpful in and of itself. Deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice should not be fun. Think about the violinist that spends days practicing moving their hand (transitioning) from low on the violin neck to high. Working on the smoothness. Trying to do it quickly and smoothly without any interruption in play. They do this over and over and over. It’s no fun. They’re not playing any specific piece of music. Not part of an orchestra at that moment. They’re practicing alone. And they’re working on their transitions today. Or this week. Or this month.
How does that apply to me and my goal?
Well, what this means is that any level of performance in anything is attainable by anyone. So let’s say I want to travel, and need some income coming in to do that. There are people out there who do quite well with their online web sites. Is that out of reach for me? No. Given time, and practicing in the right way, I can achieve that too.
The people currently doing what I want to be doing have no God-given talents that I cannot acquire. I simply need to identify the skills, and work on them deliberately. Things need to be measured. When I publish an article, does it get commented on? What articles do and do not? Are my tweets being retweeted? What if I change the headline slightly, does that change my success? What if I tweaked this? I need to be able to predict in advance the outcome before I hit the publish key.
I think in one month I should be able to get some type of online income coming in. Even $3 a month. In 3 months, that should be high enough so that checks reach my mail box every month. In six, it should be a reasonable amount. And in 12 months of intentional, deliberate practice, there’s no reason why I can’t reach my goal. Anything is possible.
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