The Power Of Practice
Remember the 10,000-hour rule? It essentially says the key to becoming an expert in any field is to spend 10,000 hours practicing it. The rule was made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. But opinion was divided. There were those who quoted it often to their kids and colleagues, reinforcing the importance of practice and hard work. And there were those who pointed to the flaws and the exceptions to say there was more to becoming an expert – like talent, and opportunity – than just practicing for a magical number of hours.
No matter how you view the rule, the fact remains that practice makes a difference. It paves the way for greatness. Here then are three thoughts on practice. Why it matters. What to practice. And how.
1. Practice reduces pressure. Nervous about the presentation you need to make at the meeting next month? Well, worry not. There’s an easy fix. Practice. If you’ve seen a great TED talk and marvelled at the speaker’s eloquence, and how relaxed they appeared, you should hear this. Many of those speakers were nervous wrecks like you. But the folks at TED get you to practice, practice, practice. That emphatic pause, the off-the-cuff remark, the repetition of that catch phrase ‒ they are all rehearsed. Rehearsed so well in fact that it looks extempore. Don’t let pressure impact your performance on the big day. Just practice.
2. Play to your strengths, practice for your weaknesses. You’ve probably been told this before. Play to your strength, don’t worry about your weaknesses. Turns out the advice is only partially right. Paul Assaiante, the celebrated squash coach at Trinity College in Connecticut tells his students this: “When it’s game time, play to your strengths. And outside of that, practice for your weaknesses.” If you have a strong forehand, your best chance of winning a match is to get as many of those forehand smashes into play. But if you want to improve, get better as a squash player, good idea to spend time practicing and strengthening that backhand. Our preoccupation with playing to our strengths can mean we get reduced to becoming one-trick ponies. We stop growing. We confine ourselves to the comfort zone of our limited expertise. Don’t let that happen to you. Your best chance of sustained success is to “Play to your strengths, practice for your weaknesses”.
3. Don’t practice till you get it right. Practice till you can’t get it wrong. Ever wondered what separates the champions from the rest of us? It’s this one habit. Most of us practice, make mistakes, struggle a bit, and then when we get it right, we celebrate. And we stop practicing, because, after all, we have finally got it right. Champions do it differently. They practice till they can’t get it wrong. Champion golfers for instance set themselves a target of sinking ten consecutive putts from say four feet. If eight putts go in and they miss the ninth, the counter gets reset – and they will start again at one and aim to put ten putts into the hole. It’s boring, sure. Tiring too. But that’s what goes into the making of a champion.
That’s it then. Now that you know the secret to unleashing your greatness, you only need to do one more thing. Yup, you guessed it right. Practice!
The writer is an author, speaker and leadership coach and former MD of Kimberly Clark Lever
