Transcript

0:00

Let's talk about deliberate practice. And the fact that you're here in this live session, those of you who are here or that you're watching this, I think you are a special kind of person because, I think a lot of people are a little bit intimidated or a lot intimidated by this idea of deliberate practice because it's to me, it's really the, core of skill development or or or even habit creation. And so the fact that you're here, I think, means to me, it means that you are you are more, dedicated than than the average person, to to understanding the mechanics of skill development and habit creation. So, what is deliberate practice? What is deliberate practice?

0:56

I would be happy to see your initial thoughts, before we get into the, you know, the the different things about it. What do you think deliberate practice means? What does it sound like to you? You don't, obviously, you don't have to have the right answer, because I think that answer is still developing. But there's a framework which I'll I'll share with you in in this in this module.

1:19

But I'm just really curious before we before we get going. Have you heard of it? What does it sound like to you? Anything you wanna say? What feelings do you have about it?

1:31

Anything you wanna say below, I I truly welcome that. So feel free to pause the recording and add a comment below called initial thoughts, you know, if you like. Also, part of the initial question is, do you have any experience with deliberate practice? Feel free to add that in the comment below as well. Alright.

1:51

Thank you for those who are commenting, chatting below. I will be adding the live comments, to the to the comment section of the recorded, lesson. So feel free to go below and then, engage with those if you would like. Alright. So it's great.

2:08

I mean, I love what's coming through because it already brings more, nuance or more holism, to deliver practice. Because, ultimately, I think we need to we each need to define it for ourselves and then therefore have it be really truly usable. So I'll tell you real quick about my own sort of experience with it, and that might also give you jock some ideas from from from your own personal experience. So I grew up, be being forced to learn piano and violin. I kinda laugh at it because pretty much every kid in Taiwan, was forced to learn either piano or violin or both, as a as a rite of passage for being being simply a child and living growing up in, I should say, middle class, you know, middle even middle upper middle class Taiwan, Taipei, and lots of East Asian countries.

3:02

You probably you know, there's a surprising, right, surprising number of, you know, piano violin virtuosos who are East Asian. I mean, it's it's because it's kind of required growing up. And, of course, I didn't appreciate it until I got to be an adult. It was true. You know, my parents always said, when you when you grow up, you'll finally appreciate everything we're doing for you.

3:23

I'm like, yeah. Right, mom. Dad. Let me go play my damn video game. Okay?

3:28

Stopped. And, of course, now I I'm like, wow. Of course, they probably could've they probably could've taught me emotional regulation and did their own emotional regulation and and and been more, graceful. Ironically, my mom's name is Grace in in in how they how they forced us to do certain things. But, thankfully, now the the discipline, that I avoided most of my childhood, is starting to some of that muscle memory is still there or that some of that, as long as I'm not rebelling against it all the time.

4:00

Anyway, so, piano, violin, tennis were three things that I was kind of forced to learn, and all three have to do with deliberate practice. So, for example, when I was learning piano, some of you may may may resonate with this, and any musical instrument or, particularly classical musical, you know, classical music. Right? Like, if you're just learning, like, how to just play a song on the radio, it's maybe a little different. But if you're learning classical music, this comes in this is required, or or or learning a sport like tennis or whatever.

4:40

So let me talk about piano as an example. Like, to learn a concerto or whatever, it's like a freaking 3 to 5 minute, like, like, it's a lot of work. It's it's really hard. I mean, you don't you're not born playing like this. Right?

4:57

So what do you have to do? Well, first of all, you can't even you can't even do both hands together. You look you look at a musical piece and you go so the teacher goes, alright. Listen. This is what we're gonna do.

5:07

We're gonna break up this 5 minute piece into, like, 5 second segments. I'm like, really? This is why kids hate it because it's so much damn work. Right? So it's like, no.

5:17

It's not even 5 seconds. Like, this particular 5 second segment is pretty hard. So we're gonna first break it down to 2 seconds. Yeah. A 2 second.

5:27

Like that. And we're not gonna do both hands together. We're gonna do one hand at a time. So first, you go. Okay.

5:35

Alright. I couldn't do it. It was too fast. Fine. Slow it down.

5:41

Okay. Okay. Okay. You got you got it right in a slow format this time. Do it again 10 times.

5:48

Okay. You got it? Okay. Speed it up a little bit. Hey.

5:52

How come it's now working? That's called deliberate practice. It's called muscle memory, actually. Right? Like like, at first, you did it slowly with one hand, 10 times, and now you could do that thing.

6:04

Now you could do it faster. Can you do it faster now? Ten times without mistake? Do it. Oh, you you made a mistake.

6:11

You see what happened here? Your pinky, right, your pinky didn't wasn't bent enough or whatever to press that note in a fast enough way. So try it again now with a more bent ping you know what I mean? Whatever the skill was, I kinda forgot. But you you you keep on adjusting your hands when playing piano and and adjusting, making sure that you can hit this key and then that key in a particular rhythm, in a particular speed.

6:37

And once that's capable, now you have to practice the left hand. Right? Or left and right, whichever one first. But the same thing with the left hand. You gotta do this one slowly and then gradually faster.

6:47

And then eventually, you could put the 2 together, and we're still trying to play this 5 second segment. Do you see how why most people run away from deliberate practice? Why is why most kids have to be forced to do it? Because it's not play. Like, play is just, oh, do whatever you want.

7:05

But if you if you just play now, unless you have natural inborn talent, you probably can't just play and then be able to play a classical concerto. It it's not likely. I I certainly could. I had to do deliberate practice to be able to play that concerto, and I I shocked myself because you, you know, when you go to recital, you just you know, your your parents are filming me filming me playing. I'm like, how now when I look back, I'm like, I can't even do that anymore because I've lost I haven't been doing deliberate practice for, you know, 30 years or whatever.

7:37

So same thing with tennis. Right? Like, learning to serve was the hardest thing for me. Any any of you've learned tennis or any sport know that. Like like, you have to it's a really awkward movement.

7:48

You have to, like, you know, it's not something you were born to do, but you have to, like, learn to stand properly and practice it and then practice holding the racket properly and practice a certain movement even without the racket first. Without the racket, you have to practice certain movement, and then you have to make sure your body is twisting in the right way not to hurt yourself. Right? All these little things, you have to keep practicing, like, 10, 20, 30 times 30 times until you then hold the racket and then practice that, you know, a bunch of dozens of times. And then the ball comes in, And then you and then you're gonna keep making the mistake because you're gonna hit it over here, hit it over there.

8:25

All of this is deliberate practice. You could do it in segments until it becomes muscle memory, and now it's like. Beat my my tennis serve was so powerful. There's so much muscle memory there. My my earphones got got served.

8:44

So so I'm really, again, asking you, have you had the experience of deliberate practice? Because, actually, I would say, probably the average person hasn't had the well, maybe they've had in maybe in their work setting or whatever. Maybe maybe they don't even realize they were deliberate practicing something. But most of us haven't had the the the experience growing up at least of being forced to do deliberate practice. So now as an adult, most of you watching this are, how might you use deliberate practice to develop a a difficult skill, skill that doesn't come naturally for you just by playing or or just by doing your work?

9:26

Because to be honest, I think most of us do our work in probably not very optimal ways. Do you agree? There's probably a more optimal way for you to do whatever work you're doing. So, for example, the work I do a lot in my in my business is, for example, writing or or speaking, like I'm doing right now. How might deliberate practice improve my speaking?

9:51

For example, not saying umms and ahs, that takes deliberate practice too. Right? How might I break down a segment to be able to say Bremen practice 30 seconds of speaking on something without saying 's and ahs or maybe even 10 seconds if I said it a lot in the past? How do I practice the deliberate, deliberate skill of using my hands when I speak? Yeah.

10:13

Whatever it is that we're doing in our work, deliberate practice can probably come in to optimize that behavior, to be more what we want. If we're particularly when we're modeling an expert to say, you know, I really would like to speak like that. I really like to write like that. I would really like to coach my clients like the way my coach or mentor does it. How are they doing it?

10:38

Let me notice, is there a particular behavior that they're doing? Asking a question at the right time, whatever it might be. How might I practice this? Right? Three times, 10 times until it becomes second nature.

10:51

Be until it becomes muscle memory. Right? So, essentially, and by the way, I'll I'll I'll apply deliberate practice to one more thing. Easing addictions. So here's an example.

11:07

I was naturally walking into the kitchen cupboard and grabbing junk food snack. Now the the real problem is I probably should stop buying this. Right? But I was like, okay. How can deliberate practice be used here?

11:19

Well, the behavior is I walk into the kitchen and very naturally my muscle memory says grab that potato chip bag. It's muscle memory. My muscle memory doesn't say go and get an apple from the kitchen. That's not my muscle memory. So I I literally said, okay.

11:36

Good. I'm going to walk it. I'm gonna deliver practice. I'm gonna walk into the kitchen, touch the apple. That was the that was the little tiny skill behavior.

11:48

K. Walk out of the kitchen. Walk back into the kitchen. Hold the apple. Okay.

11:56

Walk out. Walk back out. Walk back into the kitchen. Hold the apple again. And, actually, what I needed to do was actually practice washing the apple because I'm not just gonna hold the meat because I don't wanna wash it with it.

12:06

But but that what what happened next time? Next time I walked into the kitchen, I'm like, why am I suddenly wanting to go hold the apple? Because of the liberal practice. Like, muscle memory can can be used to ease addictions, can be used to, create a new habit. Like, now I have a habit of doing, like, 2 minutes of exercise before a meeting and after a meeting.

12:29

How did that happen? Deliberate practice. It became just like, well, before actually, it was just became repetition in this case. Just repetition, like, reminding myself. Okay.

12:39

Do it. Get up. Do the exercise. Get to you know, do do the meeting, which I literally did the exercise before the meeting. So let's let's now let me see here.

12:49

Let me let me now, pause for a second. And, yes, we are gonna talk about the fact that we are fallible human beings, and it's not like suddenly you practice 3 times and you're being perfect forever. Right? No. You're gonna fail.

13:06

You're going to make mistakes. Well, remember, just like playing piano. Even after I practice that even after I practice those 5 seconds and we're able to get it just fine with both hands, now I have to add another 5 seconds of of that concerto. And and that means doing another probably several, you know, at least an hour or 2 of practicing those 5 seconds. And then I don't know how long it took.

13:28

Maybe it didn't take an hour, but whatever. I have to. And then after I put together, then I started making mistake in the in the first five seconds again. Right? Like like, you're gonna keep failing and you gotta get okay.

13:39

I have to go back to that practice again of getting that 5 seconds. But this time, after I put together a bunch of this time, the whole thing is more in context, and I'm much more able to get it faster with deliberate practice the second time I have to come back to it. So, yes, we're gonna we're we're we'll talk about, failure and ADHD and overwhelm in the next, segment. But for now, I wanna just give you end this segment with, what is the framework for deliberate practice? So it's purposeful practice, with these 4 elements.

14:12

Focusing on a specific subscale or action within the larger skill actually, there's 5 action. Let me let's let's do 5 actions. Thing number 1 is to decide on what it is you want to get better at, want to improve, want to develop. Okay? Skill or habit.

14:30

That's step 1. Is what what is it? Is it is it not eating junk food? Is it, you know, exercising before my meeting? Is it this particular piano piece I'm trying to learn?

14:40

Is it how to write better? Is it how to speak better? Later in this module, we're gonna pick 1 and you can actually start applying this. Alright? So step 1 is pick pick 1 pick something.

14:50

Pick a larger skill. And step 2 is to then find a particular subscale or action or behavior within that larger skill that you need to that's like a like an important little leverage point that if I got better at this little section, for example, with the piano piece well, the piano piece is very simple. You gotta gotta start in the beginning. I gotta get this 5 seconds right before the next 5 seconds second. With, with with with writing, for example, I wanna improve my writing.

15:20

What does that mean? What's a subscale within writing that I need to improve? Well, maybe I'll practice the the subscale of starting my paragraphs better. Like, that's what I'm gonna practice this half hour is how do I start my paragraphs better. Right?

15:33

That might be a subscale for for writing. Right? So so it's kinda fun actually if you think about it to, like, look at the larger scale and then to look at the components of that larger scale that you can actually practice. Okay. Step 3 is to design the practice.

15:50

So using the writing example, if I'm saying or I'm gonna I'm gonna practice writing a better start to to each paragraph, that's the that's gonna be well, what does that mean to practice that? Okay. What I will do I'm I'm making this up right now. This might not be thoughtfully, thought through, but it it might be like, okay. I'm going to take the next, 10 minutes to write several write several paragraphs, but every time I write it, I'm going to pay attention to how I'm starting the paragraph.

16:21

Okay? That's what I'm gonna pay attention to for the next 10 minutes, 15 minutes, half an hour, however long it takes. I have to decide what the practice is. I'm going to start each paragraph with more with more awareness. And as I write several paragraphs, I might go back and edit the front part of the first paragraph again because now it's in context of several paragraphs.

16:40

Right? Whatever the practice might be. Okay. You design the practice that makes sense to you. And sometimes the the practices need to be designed with a mentor or with a course that you're taking.

16:51

This is what I actually try to do in my courses. I try to help you design practices for particular business skills. Right? So how do you design a practice? Sometimes you do it by your own self reflection.

17:02

Sometimes you have to do it with a mentor, coach, a friend who's in the field. Help you design particular practice if you are having a hard time figuring out how do you practice that subscale. And then next, I think we're point number 4 now, is to get feedback, about how you're practicing. So that might be like again, you might get feedback before you practice. That's fine.

17:25

But you you you should get feedback as you're practicing to see if you're in the right directions. For example, if I'm writing if I'm trying to write better starting of a paragraph, I might be totally deluding myself to think that I'm doing better unless I run it by a a a writer friend or a a coach or, or or run it through AI. With writing, you could actually run it through AI for some, for some feedback. But you you have to get a a another you have to get some feedback, ideally, not just from yourself, but, like, a third party saying or second party maybe saying, well, I noticed you keep starting the paragraph in this way. Can you can you vary that, or can you can you try this tone instead?

18:09

The tone is not, you know, whatever it would be. So seek feedback is 0.4. And then 0.5 is repetition with refinement for building muscle memory. So once you kinda design a practice, you you try to practice, you seek feedback to say, no. No.

18:23

No. You're practicing wrong or your practice could be better by doing this, then you keep practicing it the right way. Like, I always had I had my tendency here always said, practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Meaning, if you're gonna practice your swing wrong, you're you're gonna have bad habits.

18:41

You gotta practice it this way. If you quit practicing it this way, then you're actually gonna swing right. You know, you're gonna serve right. So that's the that's the 5th part is practicing better practicing better so that your muscle memory goes, okay. Next time I swing, I'm gonna go like this.

18:57

Or next time I start a paragraph, it's now is my muscle memory that I start with this tone or I start with this question in mind or whatever. Okay? So that's the that's the overview of deliberate practice. Let's now move on talking about overwhelm and ADHD.