Get Radically Better at Anything

Have you ever wonder why some one was better in soccer than you in school despite the same age, coach and practice time? We have heard the phrase "Practice makes you perfect. What if I tell you that this is a LIE? Yes, it is correct only practice can not make you perfect at something. Dr. Anders Ericsson spent 20 years to study world's best performers. The 10k rule of practice was also inspired by the work of Dr. Anders Ericsson. But Dr. Ericsson is not just interested in the quantity of practice hours, but the quality of practice hours. Dr. Ericsson coined the term that there are two types of practices:

1. Good Enough Practice
2. Deliberate Practice

When we approach the practice in general, we approach to the Good Enough type of practice. In good enough practice, soon after you first learn, you reach an acceptable level of expertise and never move beyond that. For example, even if you spent more than 10,000 hours on driving, at one point you began simply experiencing the motions and stopped improving.

On the other hand, Dr. Ericsson stated that Deliberate Practice is your key to the become the best among the best in any particular field. Deliberate Practice has four main building blocks:

1. Goals
2. Focus
3. Feedback
4. Discomfort

Let's learn more about each of them.

1. Goals

If we are going on a journey, we must know where it ends, where we have to reach in order to finish it. Same with the Deliberate Practice, we must set well-defined and specific goals. For example, if you are a driver, you might set a series of goals for fewer speed violations and more focused driving.

2. Focus

In Deliberate Practice, all of your focus is required without any distractions. You are fully concentrated on what you are doing.Your basketball game will not improve if you are stopping frequently to chat with your friends. It requires 100% from you.

3. Feedback

Sometimes we thought we are doing it 100% right while we are doing it wrong because we do not have proper knowledge. In order to know our mistakes, we need someone in the form of a coach, who has the required knowledge and can correct our mistakes.

4. Discomfort

Deliberate Practice requires you to come out of your comfort zone. You can only push your limits after reaching your current limits.If you are running 2 kilometers in a day, you have to set your target 4 km and try to reach achieve it by pushing yourself a little bit each day.

Deliberate practice takes advantage of the natural adaptability of the human brain and body to create new abilities. Neuroscientists believe that Deliberate Practice increases the speed and strength of nerve impulses. The study shows that with training specific regions of the brain can grow and become denser.

Role Of Natural Talent

It is one of the most undergoing belief about human nature that natural talents play a major role in developing abilities and skills. But the truth is that natural talent can only give people advantage only in the beginning while they are learning a new skill or ability. But at last, it is the intense training and practice which will determine who is going to be the best among the best.

So at the end, it is your determination towards your goal, your focus on your practice, the feedback from the expert and breaking the lines of your comfort that will make you expert in anything you want. You have to look inside yourself how you can manage to do the above things. Some might need to save an extra buck to hire a coach, some needs to come out of laziness.

Start today. Think what you want to be. List your long term and short term goals. Learn how to focus and avoid distractions. Get someone expert in it. And most importantly, get out of your comfort zone to say that you can enjoy a greater comfort later.