Deliberate practice. That term gets thrown around a lot by music teachers, but what exactly does it mean? The term has appeared in many books as well and gets discussed quite a bit in academic settings as well. Let me tell you what helped make the concept click for me and why I think it is a useful term.
Deliberate practice was a term invented by K. Anders Ericsson and his research team to describe what they uncovered as the essential difference between experts and non-experts. Rather than being a matter of inborn talent or skill, expert performance at complex tasks often boils down to aspects of training and practice using the right strategies over a period of years. This can sometimes turn into a nature-nurture debate about whether we can really control our abilities or if they are actually pretty fixed and limited by our genetics or upbringing. While this debate may be of academic interest, I love the concept of deliberate practice because it puts the ball in my court. It tells me what I need to do to make my own skills better, so I don’t have to waste my time wondering how my level of talent is going to limit my progress.
The difference between deliberate practice and not-so-deliberate practice is that deliberate practice is fundamentally goal oriented. It isn’t necessarily about enjoying what you are doing right now. It isn’t about trying to fill a certain amount of time or reviewing what you already know. Instead, it is about using and testing strategies that are going to improve performance. Those strategies will often be used under the feedback of an expert teacher. Deliberate practice requires focusing on things that you are currently NOT able to do well. In the research of K. Anders Ericsson, he has consistently found that this approach is what distinguishes people who are extremely good at what they do vs. people who remain average through a lack of deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is a great concept because it means that anyone can start to dramatically improve their skills if they approach their improvement in the right way. It means that you need to find a great teacher, start working on your weak areas, practice consistently, and test strategies that are going to give you the most yield for your effort. Deliberate practice puts the ball in your court.