Deliberate Practice: Part 1
Keys to Mastering Your Performance
Welcome to a captivating journey of self-discovery of your work performances. How and what you do to improve your performance is the key to mastering your best. “Repetition is the mother of learning.” This highlights the importance of repetition in the learning process which you need in order to master the success you want to be the best in the skills you have.
Just as in sports, to get better at what you do, you have to focus on practicing to improve. By just playing the game with friends instead of lots of baskets of balls by yourself and repeating the same things, you don’t improve. Playing a musical instrument is the same. You need to focus on your scales instead of just playing your favorite songs in order to get better at what you do.
“Mastery comes to those who immerse themselves fully in the process.” ~ Robert Greene
What is mastery and what does it mean to pursue mastery? You may hear stories of someone nearly winning a race. With this in mind, to go from the near win to success of winning, you need to master what it takes to master what you need to win. In doing so, you need to require yourself to be deliberate in practicing your skills and talent.
“Consistent effort is a consistent challenge.” ~ Bill Walsh
The Power of Deliberate Practice through Mastery
“Practice is the price of mastery. Whatever you practice over and over again becomes a new habit of thought and performance.” ~ Brian Tracy
Repetition is a key component of deliberate practice. As you challenge deliberate practice for yourself, you need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. Master experts engage in tasks slightly beyond their current abilities, creating a challenge that encourages growth.
Deliberate practice is a structured activity with the explicit goal of improving current level of performance. As you begin to improve your skills performance, you need feedback on how you are doing. Without expert feedback, without someone looking over your shoulder to see what's working in your practice and what's not, you simply won't improve. Find someone you trust who will give you honest feedback.
Mastery is the Result of Consistent Effort and Deliberate Practice
“The first step towards mastery is always self-discipline.” ~ Robert Greene
It’s not enough to be good at what you do. You always have to go beyond this and keep working to improve. Knowing your ultimate performance goal, you need to strive to achieve this goal in your performance. The more you master your skills, the more valuable you become.
“The key to mastery is learning from your mistakes and failure.” ~ Unknown Author
Deliberate practice goes beyond mere repetition. The cornerstone of success is the mastery of your achievements. As you go beyond learning by doing, you need to put more effort into focusing on completing the task or goal. With this, you need to challenge yourself to do better than you have before. The more you work on the task or goal in front of you, the more you need to put your attention into what you are doing to demonstrate your best.
Using Deliberate Practice to Master Your Performance
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell
Deliberate practice is the gold standard for mastering anything. It is the most effective way to get to the very top in a particular skill. When you engage in deliberate practice, you’re working to take a skill from good to great!
Deliberate practice involves pushing beyond your comfort zone. Master experts engage in tasks slightly beyond their current abilities, creating and repeating incremental challenges to move forward and grow. According to Karl Anders Ericsson, “The key to deliberate practice is to constantly challenge oneself by pushing beyond one’s current abilities.”
Deliberate practice to master the task or goal you are working toward requires patience, consistency, persistence, focus, and the effort to challenge yourself to go beyond where you are currently. In order to stay on the top of your game, you must have the discipline to make these practices daily habits.
Going Beyond Being Good at What You Do
“Mastery requires patience. The mastery of the art of patience ensures success.” ~ Robert Greene
A proactive person is always looking for ways to make things better and get things done more efficiently. In order to go from good to great, you need to set specific targets for improvement. Then, challenge yourself to complete the tasks or the goals in question. With feedback from others as to what you are doing and how well you are doing, you should be able to see what’s working and what isn’t. This does require you to get out of your comfort zone to strengthen and go beyond your current abilities and capabilities.
Your Pathway to Mastery and Success
“Mastery is the result of deliberate practice and relentless pursuit of improvement.” ~ Robert Greene
As you work on mastering your skills and talents, remember to be consistent, persistent, unceasing, and then make these habits a daily discipline. The more you challenge yourself to improve, the better your results.
Be sure to watch for part 2 for more on mastering your Deliberate Practice.