Deliberate Practice

19 Dec 2014

I want to commit to writing every day of the work week. So, here I am, publicly committing to write around 250 words a day. I don’t really know if that’ll be enough but if feels like a good place to start. I’m not gonna stress about every post being perfect, this is gonna be like doing pushups everyday. Brace yourselves.

Today, I’ll discuss this article about deliberate practice that really struck a chord with me, and is partially the impetus for this dedication to a writing word count. The article basically says that the people at the top of their game

1. have been working on their craft for about 10 yrs before they get recognized for it (oy!)
2. practice in a goal based manner, not a time based one
3. are consistent

I like these ideas because they go along really well with my experience. Setting clear daily goals is a way to ensure incremental progress without being able to slack off or get too discouraged by the lack of immediate mastery. It also promotes execution. This can be especially helpful for people just starting out, that could be easily discouraged by their apparent lack of skill (more on this in a follow up post).

So this idea of deliberate and goal based practice is perfect for actually convincing beginners, and everyone else, that they are making progress. And can help them judge themselves against their performance the previous day, not some external and potentially skewed third party.

250 words seems about right for a goal, for now, for me. I’m bumping around at about 250 for this post, and this seems appropriate and sustainable for a morning write session.

Lets see where this goes!