Decades ago, Malcolm Gladwell, the curious fellow who writes bestsellers, impacted the world with the insight that becoming an expert takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
This post is about how deliberate practice has been misunderstood, the fantasy that it does not matter, what it is, its costs, whether it guarantees success, and the consequences of mastering it.
Misunderstanding
Many people misunderstood or declined to learn what Gladwell meant. They assumed that five years of routine work, 2,000 annually, could make them masters at their craft. After all, “practice makes perfect,” doesn’t it?
The math was correct, but their conclusion was wrong. Deliberate practice is qualitatively different from routine work. There is no special benefit for routine performance. You need something more if you want to achieve excellence.
What Deliberate Practice Is
Deliberate practice’s specific meaning is the key to insight. Deliberate practice is deliberate because you consciously work to master a skill that is just beyond your current capacity. For example, an ice skater could seek a higher jump with an additional turn. A businessperson might want to master public speaking. In either case, they practice individual component skills until they master them, moving on to other skills until they can make the jump or deliver the speech.
The Cost of Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is the commitment to learn, almost regardless of the effort. Watch the ice skaters. He and she are almost alone on the ice rink. Few people are in the stands watching. The pair made an opening move; he lifted her and then threw her. She did two turns and then came down. OUCH! She landed on her behind. He rushed to check on her. She was embarrassed but not severely injured. They tried again. Her landing was a mess. The third time, she fell in the opposite direction. The fourth failure… well, so it went for over an hour.
On the 14th try, she landed, shaky but standing! After several days and a huge number of failed attempts, they succeeded once. Was it worth it? To master the routine, they must repeat the learning process again and again and again. Is it worth the cost to try to perfect it for competition?
The Risks and Uncertainties of Chasing Excellence
Deliberate practice is hard because complex skills are difficult to master. No one is born an expert figure skater, public speaker, or investor.
Obstacles come in many forms: doubt, embarrassment, frustration of what is not yet good enough, pain, strangers who see the failures but don’t understand that they’re the price of excellence, tolerating the uncertainty, wondering what else is needed… so many obstacles! When you move past one, there is another one, and then another one. Perhaps you will encounter an obstacle you can’t conquer yet, or maybe ever. You only learn your limits by testing them.
Some dear people love you. They wish you the best and hope you win big. They will love you regardless of your outcome. They may not understand the drive or endurance needed for the next challenge.
Does Deliberate Practice Guarantee Success?
No, yet the lack of it is the path to mediocrity or worse.
Every venture has risks. The student might master one skill. Yet a competitor might bring more or better skills. Plus, one never knows if the objective is achievable or if some fluke accident might eliminate this move from your repertoire, or maybe an injury could end your career. Injury might come from trying something beyond one’s current capacity.
What if Deliberate Practice Seems Too Hard?
People who don’t pay the time, money, emotional, and experiential cost of learning difficult material exclude themselves from many of life’s most rewarding options. No one will ever know what might have been possible for such people. Millions drudge or drift through a mediocre life because it’s easier that way.
The Long-Term Benefit of Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is an important skill to embed in your kids, patients, teammates, or mentees. It will enable them to advance beyond your skills, knowledge, health, and even life. Some say that a parent, therapist, team leader, or mentor who does not foster deliberate practice and cast a vision about its power is handicapping those in their charge.
“Sure, it is hard, very hard, but it is worth so much more than you can even imagine. You have no concept of how much you’ll lose if you don’t master this task.” In our time of teams, coaching, and expanding expectations, people who do not engage in deliberate practice will fall behind those who are fluent in it.
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What are you glad you learned despite the difficulty?
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Terry Moore, CCIM, is the author of Building Legacy Wealth: How to Build Wealth and Live a Life Worth Imitating. Read his “Welcome to My Blog.”