Deep Practice:

My perspective has changed quite drastically on the subject of practice. Even though I have always know the adage “Practice makes Perfect”, I guess I never took it seriously enough, or I did not understand how excellent perfect has to be or I didn’t understand how practicing is a constant on-going thing or maybe a bit of all three. As most people, I have many talents, but they have largely gone untapped because of my ignorance of the importance and concept of ‘deep practice’. As David so eloquently explains it, ‘deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted way – operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes – makes you smarter…. You have positioned yourself at a place of leverage where you can capture failure and turn it into skill. The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities, to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does.”

I first understood deep practice from Shin’ichi Suzuki’s books about teaching violin and Ed Sprunger’s book called ‘Helping Parents Practice’. Dr. Suzuki eureka moment was noticing deeply how children learn their mother-tongue with no formal training. Suzuki found this to be a miracle, while most people took it for granted. He went on to create the Talent Education philosophy that “Every child can” and his vision was to grow the children of the world with noble character through the violin as the means, to teach them discipline, hard work, persistence, how to overcome obstacles, etc. His thoughts were that just as elegantly and simply as the child learns the mother tongue, the child will learn the violin. The child has to listen to beautifully articulated recordings of the repertoire and build their ear. They learn their pieces by ear. They are also expected to do a lot of repetition with repertoire they have already learned. Practice is about repeating something over and over again to reach excellence. Another important reason for practicing known repertoire repeatedly is that one can reach for change, target a failure and turn it into a skill while playing pieces thoroughly known to the student.

Anyone curious as to how and why this style of practicing works? Why is it that Suzuki believed that ‘every child can’? Isn’t talent something you are simply born with? David traveled the world to talent hotbeds to gauge what the common factor is between them. He traveled to see talented soccer players in Brazil, violinists in New York, tennis players in Russia, etc. The commonalities were that they practiced differently (deeply) , and were passionate enough to put in the hard work, the struggle over the long haul. There were hardly any geniuses or prodigies to be found. Also, the missing link as David Coyle explains is a wonderful substance called myelin.

Myelin (the deep practice cell):

Myelin is the insulation that wraps the nerve fibers in our brains and increases signal strength, speed and accuracy. According to Dr. George Bartzokis, who spoke with David ‘Myelin is the key to talking, reading, learning skills, being human.’ We used to attribute these functions to neurons, but what has been evolving is this new understanding that as skill develops, it builds thicker and thicker myelin around the nerve fibers, which make the skill better and more efficient. All the talent hot beds practice deeply and therefore in turn myelinate at a higher level over the long term. This builds mastery. Building myelin takes time, and putting ourselves in a position to fail, fix our mistakes and fail better and continue this process until we accomplish the task is one of the quickest and most efficient way to build myelin. Skill can now be redefined as ‘myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals’, the two are married together.

What has this information taught me? I must do daily what I love to do and develop skill in those areas that matter to me. Deep practice can be applied to careers, learning a language, writing, playing an instrument, playing a sport, etc. I think it is critical to establish what it is I am passionate about, focus on those few things, not waste my time and energy on obligations rather than priorities, and be willing to work hard, struggle and attain mastery in my special talents. I think more importantly that I must teach my children to do the same. It is so easy to entertain ourselves to oblivion and waste what little time we have on this earth. I believe that there is no one right way to live, we have to each blaze our own trail, but it is vital we live our life with some purpose and poise. Myelin through deep practice gives us the opportunity to develop our own special uniqueness and share it with world. Are you willing to take this opportunity?

The bizarre thing was, when the cop pulled me over and asked for my license, I found in my purse next to my wallet a little kitchen knife. It was there from the day before because it was being transported back home from my parents’ house (my son had taken it to their house for some reason). The last thing I wanted was to have to explain that to a cop!! Anyway, I got my ticket and went on to my workout to be brutally worked by my fitness trainer for 2 hours. It was a good way to work off the feelings of getting the ticket.

This will remind me not to rush any where, to leave early, to drive serenely and be more aware of my speed.

So again … what is the price? Well, of course it depends on what you are trying to master, each idea/concept will have specific nuances to conquer. Here are the common threads however. It turns out that there is a 10 000 hour rule. According to the Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller ‘Outliers’, he demonstrates what masters like Bill Gates,
Mozart, Picasso, Michael Jordan have in common, despite the differences in the content of their mastery. They all put in the required minimum 10 000 hours of hard work, of diligent practice in their area and were prepared and shaped by those fires. This led to their ultimate mastery and success in their field. You can be the smartest person on earth and/or the most talented, but if you do not have those 10 000 hours of practice, you will not be prepared when your many BIG opportunities for success arise. You have to become what John Maxwell calls a ‘talent plus’ person. The talent is not enough and without some effort at mastery the opportunities will pass you by, unfruitful.

Success through mastery will only be possible when your talent meets opportunity after thorough preparedness. The other thing to remember is that whatever you are trying to do is going to be hard for a long time until it gets easier. Of course, then you will ascend another learning curve and you will go through the hard labor until it gets easier again. When you overcome obstacle after obstacle, growth spurt after growth spurt in your endeavor, whether it is playing an instrument or creating your business, you will eventually achieve the ability to create splendid masterpieces. At that time, others will look at your work in awe and talk about your overnight success. Only you and other masters like you will truly understand that growing any sort of talent takes a similar tough journey, in the body, mind and spirit. The actual journey of becoming a master is as important as the the technical skills necessary to become a master. This is because the journey shapes your habits, your ability to persevere and your belief in yourself as well as your actual love and passion for what you do.

Another important thing to remember if this… 10 000 hours works out to be about 3 hours/day, 365 days/year for 10 years or 6 hours/day, 365 days/year for 5 years. This is not trivial. Think about it, this explains how a baby becomes amazingly fluent in his/her mother-tongue. The baby is spoken to when awake which is more than 6 hours a day and the 10 000 hours adds up really easily and quickly. The baby becomes a mother-tongue master, intuiting complicated and simple grammar rules by him/herself and is able to articulate thoughts and feelings by the tender ages of 2, 3, 4, 5 years. This is truly amazing. What this non-trivial fact also tell us is this… we cannot become masters of too many things. The saying ‘Jack of all trades.. master of none!’ warns that if we spread ourselves too thin on what we want to focus on, we will end up mediocre in some and maybe good in others…. but alas we will never become great in a single one or two things. We only have so many sets of 10 000 hours, so we must choose wisely where to spend that time, our effort and money for growth.

The last angle I want to discuss is our children. For our children to gain mastery in something they love, they need three ingredients… yes you guessed it 1. 10 000 hours in the area to study, 2. love and encouragement to cheer them through those tough times… and .. what is the last of the three? Well, it is actually the hardest… we have to draw out what special talents were given to them, something they are interested in and help them cultivate it in the first place.

Good luck digging and unearthing yours and your children’s beautiful special talents.

I am still planning to put the interview with the two Florida coaches online, I just haven’t finished transcribing it. I hope really soon. I also want to start writing again soon, but the thoughts are still new and fresh and I am not ready to share yet.

I am thankful to Kyle and Amelia for suggesting this video from youtube called The Story of Stuff. Chuti watched it, I watched it and so did our 4 kids. In fact, we’ve watched it multiple times. It is well made, funny and full of insights. We have been living counter-consumption the way this video suggests for a while, in line with other things we have been learning. This video and its information will now drive us to high levels of simplifying and minimizing our consumption.

I urge all of you to watch it and contribute to the dismantling of our consumption-driven culture.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is a beautiful story written to evoke a truly questioning spirit in each one of us as to how we, by changing our thinking regarding philosophy and ecology can positively impact the earth. This book is for those who are interested in the daunting dilemmas that beset our planet. Truly, one person can make massive change. Here is a great review of the book.

I am on the journey to do my part to help our earth heal… will you join me?

1. I am thankful for the beautiful turquoise blue ocean I got to see every day. The color soothed me, the water and waves thrilled me. What can I say… I just love the ocean.

2. I am thankful for the great mentorship/coaching the kids received for Tennis from John and Ellis. I had the pleasure to sit down with them for a great interview today and they were as kind and charming as they are talented in tennis. A superb team. I am grateful that we found them (quite by accident). We will miss them, but will see them in about 6 months. The interview will be out this Sunday (March 28th) if all goes well (we will be on the journey home, so internet is unsure), otherwise the week after.

3. In line with #2, the kids have made some great progress. Not only that, but they got to rub shoulders with two Grand Slam winners, one almost daily and the other twice a week. I will post videos of their tennis in the interview with John and Ellis. Sorry, I am trying to get this out quickly and don’t have time to coordinate videos and pictures in a rush, but I promise to post lots of media within the interview.

4. Finally, I am thankful to be going home to Winnipeg. Ideally Chuti and I would stay another month, but the kids miss their grandparents, cousins, friends and of course the snow. So, homeward bound we go. As I leave one home to go to another, I cannot be too sad because I know we will be back soon enough. It is lovely to have two homes.

Where would I go? I would want to go somewhere by the water, where I could relish the quiet under beautiful shady trees overlooking the ocean or a river or lake. Every morning, I would want to ride one of the owners’ horses toward the sunrise. I would want to ride for at least an hour and a half, more would be better. I would want to learn to and help groom the horse every day as well. The only thing I should add is that I would want really great home-cooked healthy meals to keep me going.

I am looking for such a place. Ideally, it would be even better if the ranch was owned by people who spoke very little English, but communicated in French or Spanish.

What would your ideal personal retreat/holiday be?