Deliberate Practice: Achieve Mastery in Anything

Deliberate practice is a mindful and highly structured form of learning by doing. It’s a process of continuous experimentation to first achieve mastery and eventually full automaticity of a specific skill. A 2014 study published in Psychological Science argues that it can increase our performance by 26% in games, 21% in music and 18% in sports. Here are some tips on how to do it well.

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Full Script

Deliberate practice is a mindful and highly structured form of learning by doing. It’s a process of continuous experimentation to first achieve mastery and eventually full automaticity of a specific skill. A 2014 study published in Psychological Science argues that it can increase our performance by 26% in games, 21% in music and 18% in sports. Here are some tips on how to do it well.

Define Success and Drill Deliberately

Define all the elements you need to practice to become successful. Then drill each element deliberately, one after the other. In Tennis, that could be first your serves and then later your leg work. If you want to become a professional barista, first perfect your moves to make the espresso, then your skills to serve the ideal coffee.

Plan, Reflect and Take Notes

Plan out your practice routine, for example in a notebook. After each session, reflect and write down what you've discovered: what worked? What didn’t? The idea is to get a clear sense of how a particular session improves your skills and then to experiment to find a new and even better way to achieve your goals.

Go Slow

To build a good foundation of muscle memory, practice slow and correctly. If we move too fast, we risk learning and internalizing the wrong skills, which can bring terrible consequences. To achieve mastery, our brain needs time to develop. So start slow and then gradually increase the speed until you give all you've got.

Limit Your Sessions to Focus

Deliberate practice is hard mental work. Limit the sessions to a reasonable duration that allows you to stay focused. This may be 15 minutes if you are younger and 60 minutes if you are older. A Cristiano Ronaldo trains around 3-4 hours of football a day. Young Shaolin Monks practice 2 hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, To keep their attention high, they switch the style of practice every 10 minutes.

Maximize Practice Time

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden used to let each of his players practice putting on socks and shoes so that they learn to do it really fast. By doing this, he maximized the time to practice throwing the ball and discussing game strategy with his team.

Track Small Intervals of Improvement

If you practice running 800 meters, count the milliseconds, not the minutes. If you are working out or practice controlling your diet, measure milligrams and millimeters. The smaller the data points you measure, the faster you see progress and the more you feel motivated to continue.

[jimcarroll]

Three short phrases relevant to this video that I've embraced over the years:
- Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
- Practice makes permanent, perfect practice makes perfect.
- Mindful repetition, not mindless repetition.

[soraaoixxthebluesky]

Believe me I’m terrible at singing but after freaking 7 years non-stop training now I got a response by a few persons like “wow that’s actually good” “why don’t you go and join a competition” “please sing this song for me please”. Now after almost 7 years of training its all worth it but believe me Im far cry from being a professional singer but I’m so happy that the progression is there.

[MuhammadAshraf-igqd]

"It's funny, the more I practice, the more I get lucky."

[aceeeee]

SUMMARY:
Elements I need to be successful. What do i need to learn?
Plan, reflect and take notes, after your practice, learn what worked and what didn’t
GO SLOW. Too fast can make our brain lesrn the wrong skills
Limit sessions to a reasonable time so that I don’t lose focus.
Maximise practice time
Track small intervals of improvement
Emulate practice, not performance. Learn how they practice.
Repetition makes practice.
Rutine. Have a day and schedule planned for your practice.
Get a coach.

[manas_singh]

Your videos can easily motivate any person who is willing to change himself.

[appdev]

"i m not afraid of person who knows 1000 different types of kicks but i m afraid of person who practiced 1 kick for 1000 times."

[bizmonkey]

"If you want to become a professional barista" -- whoa, whoa let's not put the bar too high.

[stuarthys]

Very true. I believe the only difference between “talented” people and the rest is that they have an intuition for what to practice and the motivation to do it

[daveduffy]

You forgot the most important point, which is to enjoy the journey.

[Mindwipe]

You absolutely can use deliberate practice to improve your thinking skills. I know this is true because I had to learn how to do this to learn Japanese. 今、ちょっと日本語ができます。 To learn and get good at anything whether that's becoming a competitive gamer, learning a language, a martial art, drawing, animating, lucid dreaming, playing an instrument etc. I've notice one main consistent thing that applies to all of them. That is breaking down the thing you want into smaller simpler skills. Most of the time you need to learn how to get good doing even a basic task most people might not even think of as a skill before you can actually start learning the main thing you want to learn. I've been learning Japanese, and Bass Guitar. And before I could even start learning Japanese I had to learn how to learn a language. Before I could even play one part of one song on the bass, I had to learn and get used to how to properly hold the bass and how to smoothly switch between the the different notes and different strings on the fret. Now I feel like I can learn literally any skill out there if get interested in one. And I believe everyone has the potential to learn anything if their determination and conviction is strong enough to never give up.

[ffionroberts]

Am I the only one that watches these videos mainly for the art, I respect you guys a lot though, helped me through school definitely

[Adam-jotr]

When performing almost any action, what's happening behind the scenes is that interneurons in some part of your brain (such as the cerebellum for mechanical actions like playing the piano or soccer) send signals down your spine and over to the motor neurons your arms and legs to perform desired actions. Over time, if you keep repeating a certain action (especially mindfully), the connections will become stronger, and you'll be able to perform an action with more ease, grace, and speed. The reason for this is the myelin sheath (which is found on the pathway of the connection and is responsible for helping the transmission "jump" and get from the interneurons to the motor neurons faster) grows thicker and thus allows the transmission to get to the motor neurons faster and faster. Doing this many, many times over will make you a master at anything :)

[temperedwell]

Practice does not make perfect!
``Practice makes permanent" -- Bobby Robson
``Perfection itself is imperfection'' --Vladimir Horowitz

[CarlosOrtiz-htrn]

The most informative video on youtube. should have 1 billion views at the very least.

[bydefinition]

Summary for: "Mastery" by Robert Greene.
Except he gives you so many historical figures and more techniques.
But this video is so rich on information.

[TokyoXtreme]

The 10, 000 hour rule is bogus; it might take that long if you practice mindlessly and without direction; you can master a skill much, much faster with an intelligent practice routine.

[CarbageMan]

With steel clubs and kettlebells, I've learned the value of micro-loading, breaking up movements into several steps and analyzing how my body is accomplishing the movements, down to the the body part. Due to my age, I've learned to give myself ample time between sessions so my body can recover. Slow and deliberate motions is always good advice. I practice with and without a mirror, which trades off between seeing and feeling what I'm doing, and both have value.

[craigcarroll]

Deliberate practice is definitely a big part of becoming exceptional at a particular task. I have used this to achieve things in my life that blow the minds of people who meet me

[cjsamtab]

I'm a musician and I play three types of saxophones, all three common versions of bass guitars, and the keyboard. I stopped playing for three decades over personal reasons, but the Pandemic made me return to music. I restarted playing in 2020 November - today at 2021 November I'm playing them all even better than 30 years ago. Practice is key, but, PASSION is the indispensable fuel behind dedicated pursuit.

[holo]

Me: Ok, time to practice
My brain: **blacks out**
Me: **wakes up after a few hours and goes to bed because I'm tired af**