“This focus on stretching your ability and receiving immediate feedback provides the core of a more universal principle— [deliberate practice] – one that I increasingly came to believe provides the key to successfully acquiring career capital in almost any field” writes Cal Newport’s in his book ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’.
We have already mentioned this concept of deliberate practice in the post where we reviewed the book ‘Talent is overrated’. Practice is not sufficient. It needs to be accompanied by pertinent and frequent feedback and challenge.
The psychologist who came with the concept, Ericsson, is quoted as writing “Most individuals who start as active professionals… change their behavior and increase their performance for a limited time until they reach an acceptable level. Beyond this point, however, further improvements appear to be unpredictable and the number of years of work… is a poor predictor of attained performance“.
Practice that is not deliberate will soon lead to a performance plateau. Get frequent feedback and stretch yourself constantly to reach mastery instead.
Now… how can you develop more deliberate practice in the activities you’d like to become great at?
