Brainhack

13 Practice With Purpose

“Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong.”

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I'm sure you're aware of the 10,000-hour theory made famous by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he argues that to become truly great at anything you need to spend at least 10,000 hours doing it.

But it doesn't mean that just because you spend 10,000 hours doing something, you're going to become great at it. Obviously you do need to spend time working at it, but it's how you spend that time that really counts.

It shouldn't be practice makes perfect, it should be the right practice makes perfect.

If you do the same thing over and over again, once you get past a certain level you're not going to be learning anything new.

Do you want to learn to ride a bike, or do you want to learn how to do a wheelie?

In The Karate Kid (I'm really showing the depth of my cultural knowledge here), a bullied boy (Daniel) is rescued from a beating by Mr Miyagi, an elderly gardener. He asks Mr Miyagi to teach him karate. But what does Mr Miyagi have him do first? See how high he can kick? No, wax cars.

Daniel thinks he's wasting his time, but later realizes that what he thought were pointless skills have taught him about movement of his arms and balance. Both of which are vital to him later on.

“It shouldn't be practice makes perfect, it should be the right practice makes perfect.”

“Deliberate practice” is about pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone, but it's also about learning from ...