The art of deliberate practice: How to become exceptional at almost anything
When I was at school, I was known for having a photographic memory. I could remember anything with vivid recall. I aced German vocabulary tests and spelling exams. The truth is, though, I didn’t have a photographic memory and I never did. I just got really, really good at remembering things – through practice.
Today, I struggle to remember people’s names – even people I’ve met more than once. It’s embarrassing, frankly. So, what happened over those 20-odd years? And could it be trained back?
The work of Anders Ericsson offers an interesting clue.
In one of his famous memory-training studies, researchers would read out digits at a rate of one per second, and the participant would attempt to recall them. Through extensive training, one participant, Dario Donatelli, eventually learned to recall more than 100 random digits in a row.
The record as of today stands at an extraordinary 547 digits, set by Ryu Song of North Korea.
Try doing that with 10 digits, let alone 547.
Interestingly, after roughly 30 years, researchers went back to Donatelli to retest his memory. In that time, he had done essentially no digit recall training. His ability on his first day back had fallen to around 10 digits.
The extraordinary ability that allowed Dario to recall over 100 hundred random digits in sequence had been built through practice. And when it was no longer used or practised, much of it faded.
Perhaps the same thing happened to me.
Rather than losing some innate gift for remembering things, maybe I simply stopped training the skill that I had spent years developing.
The concept extends well beyond memory. Many abilities can be broken down into smaller skills that can be practised and refined.
Swimming is a good example of this, and one that’s close to home for me. Watch an Olympic swimmer alongside an amateur and the difference is glaring. Even the untrained eye can see it. Olympic level swimmers seem to slip through the water like their skin is repelling it. There’s an efficiency and economy to the movement that can make it look almost effortless. But underneath that complete swimming stroke are dozens of smaller movements that have been practised thousands upon thousands of times.
I’ve had some experience with this myself as an ultra-endurance swimmer. High volume training is part of the game, but volume without efficiency is simply stupidity. In training, we isolate the smallest repeatable part of the stroke, drill it until it becomes second nature, then rebuild it into the complete stroke – all in the search for the highest levels of efficiency.
Take the catch for example – the point at which the hand and forearm “catch” the water before the pull begins. The movement starts slowly, focusing on correct positioning – the right bend of the elbow, the optimal position of the hand, the ideal spread of the fingers. The coach provides feedback if any part of it is slightly out. The position is adjusted, the movement repeated, and more feedback follows. Eventually, it becomes automatic. Then it’s slowly reintegrated into the stroke.
Every part of the stroke can be broken down in this same way.
The same principle can apply to areas that are perhaps less technically defined. Take public speaking. “Becoming a better speaker” is difficult to practise. But improving your pacing is trainable. So is eliminating filler words, or pausing deliberately, or holding eye contact for two seconds longer.
Negotiation can be similarly broken down. You might practise asking open-ended questions, being a better active listener, or controlling your emotions.
Rather than trying to improve the ability as a whole, you can deliberately work on parts of it.
But there's an important distinction here. Simply practising is not enough. Ericsson called the gold standard “deliberate practice”.
Among other things, deliberate practice:
Targets a specific aspect of performance rather than vague overall improvement.
A goal which states to “become a better speaker” is vague. “Slow your pacing by 10%” is trainable.
Operates at the edge of your current ability. If you can already perform the task comfortably, endlessly repeating it is unlikely to produce significant adaptation.
Gives you clear feedback so you can identify and correct mistakes. There needs to be some mechanism for recognising the gap between what you intended to do and what actually happened, so that you can adjust on the next attempt.
Builds on existing skills, progressively increasing the level of difficulty. The challenge is upgraded once a goal is reached.
Ideally involves an expert coach or teacher. An expert can see errors you don’t recognise yourself. Just as importantly, they understand what excellent performance actually looks like and how to move you towards it.
It’s true that not every skill can be broken down in the same way that swimming can. Deliberate practice works most cleanly where excellent performance is well understood, the task can be repeated, and an immediate feedback loop can be created.
A swimmer has a stopwatch, video analysis, and a coach. Leadership is considerably messier. The consequences of a decision might not become apparent for months. What works brilliantly for one person may fail completely with another. The application of deliberate practice is more straightforward in swimming than it is in leadership.
But the broader principle remains useful across many contexts. Many of us spend an enormous amount of time doing things without necessarily practising them. We speak, negotiate and lead, but rarely stop to isolate the individual skills involved and deliberately work on improving them. In doing so, we may be leaving a significant amount of untapped potential on the table.
We’re often quick to look at someone who is exceptionally good at something and assume they’re naturally gifted. Sometimes, what we’re looking at is thousands of small, deliberate improvements stacked on top of one another.
Which makes me think that perhaps the more useful question isn’t:
What am I talented at?
But rather:
What am I willing to become exceptionally good at?
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