Delibrate Practice!

While waiting for my vintage qi-paos to be re-adjusted at my regular alteration shop, I sat at the shop and read what confirmed my long suspicion of why my `hard work' doesn't `work'...

What makes some people extremely good at what they do?

A lot of hard work over a long period of time (approx 10 years or more)?
Yes and no. This is a a study of a huge contradiction...

We all know of many people in our fields who has been working or doing the same thing for many years, you would have expect them, to be an expert and really excel at what they do, with their experience and exposure of the craft - and yet they are not an expert nor they are the top people in their game.

And then there are those who are recognized by all their peers and other professionals & experts, and fans, to be extremely amazing at they do and they too, have spent years, hard at work, to get to where they are.

What separates these groups of people? Apparently "Practice does not makes perfect" :)

What does then? For a start, I would like to summarize what I have read in this chapter, to drum this into my own head, before I get off FB and drown myself further in the next chapter.

What makes `perfect' seems to base on the concept of "deliberate practice".

What deliberate practice is and isn’t – it isn’t what most of us do when we’re “practicing”. To many of my friends, I seem like the girl who works hard, is diligent, and practices a lot. To me, I know I still under practice and I have long suspected the way I practice is not getting me to a higher place. Reading this just now affirmed my suspicion. So I want to share with you, of what you may have already knew long before, or you may not.

The elements of deliberate practice:

- It is designed specifically to improve performance. Key word here is DESIGNED. In my case I definitely do not qualified to design my own practice and it explains why I really need my qualified teacher to coach me in structuring an efficient practice for myself.

- It can be repeated a lot.

- Feedback on results is continuously available. I quote the book, “You can work on technique all you like but if you can’t see the effects, two things will happen: You won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring.”

- It’s highly demanding mentally. The `deliberate’ part of this kind of practice makes it demanding…practicing mindlessly you won’t need much effort and could probably do it all day but doing with high concentration and focus will tire you in one or two hours.

- It isn’t much fun. When am performing a song that I know really well, I have a lot of fun...that should really be a self reminder that I need to put in efficient deliberate practice into my newer songs, once the not-fun-at-all hard work is done, the fun on stage begins, the show kicks off. Deliberate practice is not fun because we are working on things we are not good at yet, identifying the difficult and painful things we don’t yet know how to do. Depressing yes? The consolation is that it has to be so, because if the syllabus of work that lead to greatness is fun and easy – then everyone would do them and there won’t be a way to distinguish the best from the rest. “The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won’t do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.”

Now, after all that, in case you're wondering what am reading:
[Talent Is Overrated - What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else] - Geoff Colvin, senior editor at Large, FORTUNE

If you are interested to know more about deliberate practice, I urge you to read the book itself to get the full explanation of the researches and findings, and stories.

- Credits: This was taken off Janet Lee's Facebook.