The Craft of the Deliberate Practice
In a recent edition of Fortune magazine, the focus was on excellence. How great performers in all fields rose to the top, and stayed there. Findings from prominent researchers concluded that excellence is not a result of innate gifts or advantages.
What the Fortune article succinctly puts forth is that, to succeed, individuals AND companies, must understand, focus on and practise again and again, the things that lead to excellence. Whether there is a “natural” advantage in the first place is immaterial. No matter what advantage nature and circumstances may have given you, you will not rise to the top of the pile without deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is not the same as doing things you like, or want to, over and over again. It is knowing what you have to do, then putting a plan together, and systematically, consistently and frequently tackling and improving skills over an extended period of time.
So, according to the deliberate- practice model, excellence requires:
- A clear and detailed understanding of the network of skills that are necessary for high-level achievement in a given field.
- A structured and very disciplined approach to practising and improving each and every skill-set in the network.
Even if it means pain. That, at Convertium, we dose out a fair bit to ourselves. People have a natural (there’s the word again) tendency to rebel against structure, processes and discipline. Especially in a creative field. But in our strive for excellence, it is indeed our daily, deliberate practice of our craft that keeps us on track. Not only do we love what we do (a given), we know what we have to do in order to be better. Sometimes it hurts, but the results are worth it.
Here’s a cheat list, courtesy of Fortune, on deliberate practice: