No one produces incredible work without a decade of practice first

jamesclear.com

I want to know what deliberate practice means - Is it going through a prescribed set of exercises towards a goal? Wonder how that helps with creativity. I somehow get the feeling this is not the whole picture - practice with some innate talent is required. Simply drumming up hard work makes people just tired and dazed. We all heard variations of this - passion, not working for money, loving what you work etc., Somehow all this didn't add up in my case ;), considering I have put more than 10 years into things I like.

Practice becomes deliberate when you are doing most of these things:

1. Measuring performance to figure out where improvement is needed

2. Breaking down the activity into discrete sub-skills and focusing on improving in specific areas

3. Finding outside guidance to figure out what you don't know you don't know

4. Resisting frustration that inevitably comes from not being skilled at first

I'm sure there are more aspects to it, but in general deliberate practice means optimizing your practice for ROI on time.

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