Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways-operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes-makes you smarter. Or to put it in a slightly different way, experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them-as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go-end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it.
Skill is a cellular insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows in response to certain signals.
I fall in love with certain stories. Those stories tend to be connected to my life some way - for instance, with my first book I was writing about the experience of coaching Little League in the Chicago inner city. But the common thread tends to be exploring some kind of mystery. Simple questions that spiral deeper.
The staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.
Skills are really just circuits in your brain
There is no substitute for attentive repetition.
The solution is to ignore the bad habit and put your energy toward building a new habit that will override the old one.
A true leader is someone who maximizes the potential of their people; who ignites their passions and gives them the opportunity to make the most of their gifts in the service of a larger goal. The leaders I met at the talent hotbeds embodied those values.
Baby steps are the royal road to skill.
Failure is not a verdict; making mistakes is the price of the ticket.
The sweet spot: that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp. Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.
I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.
To sum up: it's time to rewrite the maxim that practice makes perfect. The truth is, practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.
Deep practice feels a bit like exploring a dark and unfamiliar room. You start slowly, you bump into furniture, stop, think, and start again. Slowly, and a little painfully, you explore the space over and over, attending to errors, extending your reach into the room a bit farther each time, building a mental map until you can move through it quickly and intuitively.
You have to be willing to stop and fix. Deep practice requires a willingness to do what many of us find uncomfortable: to admit to our errors, and focus on them.
Although talent feels and looks predestined, in fact we have a good deal of control over what skills we develop, and we have more potential than we might ever presume to guess.
Practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.