The Impact of Thoughtful Practice

"By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart." - Confucius

Thoughtful practice has several characteristics that set it apart from what we might call ‘usual practice’; which is essentially just doing something repeatedly, and expecting that the repetition alone will improve your performance.

Thoughtful practice is, as the term implies, much more effective, purposeful, and focused than usual practice.

In particular, it has the following traits:

• Thoughtful practice has well-defined, specific goals
• Thoughtful practice is all about putting a bunch of baby steps together to reach a longer-term goal
• Thoughtful practice is focused
• Thoughtful practice involves feedback as we need to know whether we are doing something right and, if not, where we’re going wrong.

In general, regardless of what you’re trying to do, you need feedback to identify exactly where and how you are falling short. Without feedback, either from yourself or from observers, you can’t figure out what you need to improve on or how close you are to achieving your goals.

Thoughtful practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone. Because if we never push ourselves beyond your comfort zone, we will never improve. To get out of your comfort zone, we need to try something we couldn’t do before.

Usually, the goal isn’t to ‘try differently’; it’s to ‘try harder.’

Getting past the barriers

The best way to get past any barrier is to approach it from a different direction, which is one reason it is useful to work with a trainer or coach. Someone who is already familiar with the sorts of hurdles you’re likely to encounter and can suggest ways to overcome them.

Sometimes it turns out that a barrier is more psychological than anything else.

Whenever you’re trying to improve at something, you will run into such hurdles; points at which it seems impossible to progress, or at least where you have no idea what you should do in order to improve. This is normal. What is not normal is a true dead-stop hurdle, one that is impossible to get over.

While it is always possible to keep going and keep improving, it is not always easy. Maintaining the focus and the effort required by Thoughtful practice is hard work, and it is generally not fun.

Meaningful positive feedback is one of the crucial factors in maintaining motivation. It can be internal feedback, such as the satisfaction of seeing yourself improve at something, or external feedback provided by others, but it makes a huge difference in whether a person will be able to maintain the consistent effort necessary to improve through Thoughtful practice.

Practicing keeps you focused on what you want to do. It is a never-ending refining process. If you are persistent in practice, you will get it. And if you are consistent in practice, you will keep it.

Though it is generally possible to improve to a certain extent with focused practice and staying out of your comfort zone, but that’s not all. Trying hard isn’t enough. Pushing yourself to your limits isn’t enough. There are other, equally important aspects of practice and training that are often overlooked.

Thoughtful practice in short is getting outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Finally, figure out a way to maintain consistency.

Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.