What makes you better at doing the activities you want to improve? If you take a second to think about it, what actually makes you better is probably different than what you’re actively doing.
It’s no secret that we become better by doing, but, though it’s better to do something rather than nothing, that advice is not fine-grained enough. If it were the case, then people who write every day would improve incrementally through time; such a view predicts that older writers would be better than younger writers, but that’s not how things work out in the real world. Some people grind and grind and grind but don’t improve much through time, while others seem to improve very quickly with very little work.
And the view that some people are innately more talented doesn’t account for why some people improve faster than others. Time and time again, research shows that what makes some people better than others isn’t some ingrained specific or general talent but, instead, the fact that the best people in any given field spend a lot of time in deliberate practice. (For a human-readable discussion of this, check out the article “Why Talent is Overrated” or the book by the same author; if you’d like the rigorous academic analysis, read “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”)
Deliberate practice has four distinct elements. It is:
- Designed specifically to improve performance
- Repeatable
- Capable of being assessed externally
- Highly demanding mentally
Looking at the list above, it should be fairly clear that most of us are not involved in deliberate practice nearly as much as we think we are. What I’m finding, in fact, is that many of us are having a hard enough time doing the actual things we want to be doing in the first place, let alone improving at those things. But the point stands.
Identifying What Makes You Better
If merely doing the activity isn’t enough, then what does count? It’s obviously impossible for me to get down to a lot of specifics, but I’ll work through it by way of examples.
Let’s return to writing. Opening the word processor is an important part of improving, but it’s not enough. However, focusing on a particular element of your writing – say, for instance, brevity – could do the trick. The difficulty is in pulling this off; if you’re too focused on getting a concise statement out, you may in fact kill the creative process.
One way to work on brevity, then, would be to focus on something you’ve already created and edit that to make it more concise. Were you to repeat this every day for a few weeks, you’d no doubt be getting better at writing. (Whether brevity is a positive feature of your writing may depend on the audience you’re addressing, so keep that in mind.)
You’ll probably also find that it’s possible to improve your writing by doing things that don’t involve writing. For instance, it’s not unusual for us to take on the writing style of other authors we’re reading; reading the works of great writers, then, can have the secondary effect of improving your own writing. That, and great literature is an amazing source of great ideas.
But it’s not as if you get the easy pass of “just read great literature,” because many people do and their writing doesn’t improve. You have to think about what you’re reading and why the author wrote the way she did. How, exactly, does Conrad set up the tone in Heart of Darkness? How does Virginia Woolf express her ideas? How is Shakespeare addressing multiple audiences with the same words and images?
That’s hard. But it’s also what will help make you a better writer.
Of course, these same techniques apply to other creative acts. Scraping the HTML and CSS code of a website you like and analyzing how the designers created the design is going through the same process. So is breaking down the lyrical structure of a song or story to see how and why it works. As is finding your business hero and charting how she became successful and why she made certain decisions at certain times.
You probably already know what makes you better. You probably also don’t want to do it because deliberate practice isn’t inherently enjoyable. Take a while and reflect on what makes you better, and don’t forget that other people are a critical component of your improvement. Make a list – yes, I know, another list! – and incorporate those activities into your projects for the week. If you don’t plan to practice, it’s not going to happen.
At the end of the day, though, don’t forgot that it’s the practice component of deliberate practice that makes you better. Having a great practice and/or improvement plan is worthless if it’s yet another thing that you’re not going to do. Start in the smallest way possible – i.e., work on a section of a piece for 30 minutes rather than on the whole thing for four hours – but start nonetheless.
You’d be surprised at how small bursts of deliberate practice, carried out routinely and consistently, make you a lot better in time.
You are on a roll! This is an excellent post. So much to think about.
Charlie,
Couldn’t agree more. I try to do this on my blog, by having recurring features that help me improve my writing (comparing features vs. benefits, learning the word of the day). I also do this in my fiction writing exactly as you describe. Being clear and concise is always a struggle, so I find myself rewriting with that very goal in mind — your example could not be more spot on, and I think that goes beyond just me.
There are so many examples — athletes who spend their summers working on specific skills improve more than those who play pickup games; great writers have often said they’ve typed verbatim a work from an author they admired in order to understand what they were doing when they wrote it.
In my personal life, I read books through a book club with friends, and I’m always the last to finish because I’m the only writer — I pore over the words, reread sections, consult the dictionary, etc. It can be aggravating to be behind, but I learn so much I wouldn’t change a thing.
Thank you so much for this article, Charlie; it managed to re-inspire me after a long day of writing.
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Excellent post! I especially liked the instruction about *how* to read other authors’ (artists’, coders’, etc.) work and truly learn from it. I’ll definitely keep this advice in mind.
Catherine Cantieri, Sorteds last blog post..When was the last time you backed up your data?
constant feedback must play an essential role, no use practicing badly…
Execellent post.
Thankyou.
guys last blog post..All fun and games until someone loses an eye
Charlie, my key takeaway from this post came from the small aside about not allowing practice to kill the muse. I see a big challenge in both calibrating the difficulty level, i.e. how hard you are stretching your capability beyond your current ability, and in balancing focus on the act of practice versus focus on your muse.
I noted that you hint at structuring your practice objectives prior to actually producing, and then using the practice as a refining/editing activity after the initial creation. I like where you are going with this latest series of posts, and I hope that you have further inspiration to share.
Oh this is genius! Damn.
I’ve often wondered about this – I could never understand why I was better than artists who were much older than me and liked to tell me that they’d been painting for 45 years. Great, I’d think, so why do you still suck? (Wow, I sound incredibly vain. I’m not. I’m just honest.) I’m not a brilliant painter yet, but I’m good for my age. I do this on a regular basis, but just never realized it. It wasn’t conscious.
Now that I know what it is, I can consciously recreate it to push myself and my art further. Awesome.
@JoVE: A roll?! Awesome – I love when the content is building momentum, especially when I intend for things to be linked in certain ways. I really appreciate your feedback on this one.
@David: I always thought I was a slow learner, because it took me a while to read through things. I couldn’t just skim. Turns out that I was just going through the rounds of deliberate practice.
As you mention, every profession has its own deliberate practice techniques. I think that too many people defer to a standard technique, though, not realizing that it has to be tailored to them. It’s hard to make a Top Ten list of things to do to that fits everybody for this reason. It’s also for this reason that coaches are invaluable.
Glad you caught some inspiration – that makes my day!
@Catherine: Thanks – and I should mention that I really liked your post “It’s not how you think….” I’ve been thinking about something similar that I hope to post within the next couple of days, but SXSW is looming near. LOOMING!
@Guy: Right on! I should’ve made that point more explicit than linking to the post before it, but I’m glad you added this to the discussion.
@Mike: Ah, the challenge you bring up is difficult. I hope I can eek out the post that talks more about that. I always love your feedback and insightful nudges.
@Sarah: I’m lovin’ the new you, FWIW. And I wish I’d thought of this, but I’m merely the messenger on this one. The fact that you were doing it unconsciously is a bit on the awesome side because you weren’t cognizant of the fact that you were practicing. Sometimes just knowing we’re pushing ourselves can, strangely, make us resistant to pushing ourselves. Keep at it!
I’ve definitely thought about this a lot. It’s more than just going through the motions. It’s getting mad scientist and modern magician on it.
Deliberate practice isn’t exactly fun and it is time consuming, but it does work. I have to apply this technique with music, blogging and so on. I have to focus and dissect, not just “do”.
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