To achieve almost any goals you'll need practice. As you'll see from the second book, there has to be a lot of it — it will become your daily routine and an integral part of your schedule. Here it's crucial that this practice be deliberate. Deliberate practice is an approach to work aimed at developing mindfulness and awareness in the process of performing various actions. It includes conscious attention to the present moment, which helps improve concentration.
I think you'll agree that this term sounds too dry and unclear. I'll try to replace it with a phrase that better conveys the meaning and which we'll unpack in detail below. As you may have guessed from the chapter title, I'll call deliberate practice sincere and unfamiliar.
Why sincere? The key to success here is that you must not just "tick off" a task for the day but do it with maximum engagement and immersion. To make it clearer, here's my example. Say my goal is to complete X lessons per year in an English-learning app. So, knowing the number of months, weeks and days in the year, I can break this goal into equal parts so that on average I get N lessons per day. That's a good, concrete goal. But it can be pursued in different ways. If on some days I go through lessons just because they need to be done for the stats, and I don't engage with the material, I can't call that performance sincere or deliberate. The effectiveness of such lessons will be much lower than if I engaged with each task. Do I have days when my English practice isn't sincere? Unfortunately, yes. Not many, but they happen. In principle I'm not saying that absolutely every task requires sincerity and awareness. Perhaps some things can indeed be automated and turned into routine without deep immersion. But experience shows there aren't that many such tasks.
For a goal to be achievable it's important that it be measurable. That means we must be able to tell clearly whether we've achieved it or not. The only exception may be goals that don't involve intermediate steps. With measurable goals it's sometimes hard to resist the temptation to do tasks for the sake of statistics rather than for the goal itself. Chasing 100% plan completion we can "cut corners" in various tasks and stages, especially where we're short on time or don't want or can't go deep enough. In such cases the daily (or even weekly) quota is met, but met very inefficiently.
Why should practice be unfamiliar? From the start of this book I've been urging you to build habits: make tasks habitual so you do them automatically with minimal effort. That's good advice, but it doesn't always apply. Besides habits, I also recommend stepping out of your comfort zone and learning, then practicing something new. Suppose you're an athlete training in run-up jumps. You've perfected one element, say the landing. Of course you can keep refining it, turning it into a micro-habit. But is there much point working on the landing if the run-up and jump are perhaps still your weak spots? A professional athlete who approaches training deliberately always knows their weaknesses. After improving one, they switch to other aspects that become their bottleneck. That often requires stepping out of your comfort zone and doing exercises that are unfamiliar to you.
I first came across the term "deliberate practice" in Jeff Colvin's book "Talent Is Overrated! What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else?". His version has specific points, and more of them than my sincerity and unfamiliarity. Colvin characterises it as follows:
- Deliberate practice is designed to improve the quality of work.
- It is characterised by many repetitions.
- Feedback on results is important.
- Deliberate practice involves mental effort.
- No romance. If you want to learn more, I recommend his book or at least individual chapters.
Deliberate practice should be as focused and effective as possible. You must not chase statistics when doing tasks. Deliberate practice is almost always stepping out of your comfort zone, even if only a little.
