Master Your Craft Using Deliberate Practice

When I finished the first draft of my first blog post, I showed it to my wife. I was nervous. It was the first time in years that I was showing her anything of substance. Lenja is my biggest fan and also my biggest critic. I asked her to be brutally honest, and she held no punches. She said:

Your writing is lazy.

Ouch.

My ego geared up for battle. Lazy? Me? I paused. Took a deep breath in. She was right, as usual. Lenja has been drafting and editing for over a decade. She has a lot of practical experience. Until that moment, most of my writing had been in my head. She was a master. I was a wannabe. If she told me my writing was lazy, then it was.

To master any craft, we all start at the bottom and must put in the work. Great athletes don't win awards by wishing they were athletes. Neither do great artists, scientists, or politicians. Research has shown that deliberate practice - focused, purposeful repetition - significantly improves performance across various fields. Innate talent provides a small advantage, but deliberate practice is where the magic occurs.

If we want to use deliberate practice to improve our lives, we need to follow four simple steps:

1. Set clear, specific and measurable goals. We won't know if we're making progress if we have no idea where we're going.
2. Focus on quality over quantity. Mindlessly repeating ourselves will get us nowhere. We should hone in on specific aspects of our craft and work on improvement over time.
3. Get feedback.  We can only know that we're improving through honest, critical feedback. We should seek mentors and peers (or partners) willing to be brutally honest with us and tell us when we're being lazy.
4. Reflect and iterate. We should reflect on the feedback and our work, adjusting our practice routine where necessary.

This blog is my deliberate practice. I cannot keep telling myself that I am a writer without doing any actual writing. Every day, I take inspiration from one of my favourite Stoic philosophers, Epictetus:

If you wish to be a writer, write.

So here I am, embracing the deliberate practice that is a prerequisite for mastery, and here you are, reading article 19.

What about you, dear reader? What area of your life are you improving with deliberate practice? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments below. Let's learn from each other and grow together.

Until next week,

Ric.

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