Practicing What You Have Learned

Now that you have achieved your goal and acquired a new skill through careful practice, it is important to keep practicing! Today, we will look at the maintenance of skills through practicing in the final post of this series.

Use it or lose it! Even though you have acquired the new skill, regular maintenance practice is necessary. A skill developed will quickly decline in its ease of access if we fail to use it often. I spent the last three months away from the gym after working out on a fairly regularly basis for nearly nine months. Now that I have returned to the gym, I'm recovering lost ground. Since I wasn't consistently exercising my muscles, they are not at my disposal automatically in some of the ways that I had trained them to be. Fortunately, recovering a mastered task is not nearly as difficult as it was the first time around.

Fight complacency! Once we have achieved a new skill, it is easy to be satisfied and settle into an easy rhythm. I encourage you to continue striving for new levels of mastery. The more command we have over the skill, the more beneficial it is to us and the more easily we can call it up when needed. Whether or not you decide to further your skills in this area, recognize the value that has been added to your life and continue practicing -- furthering your current skill or pursuing a new dream. Never stop growing!

Perfection or Excellence? There is a huge difference between perfection and excellence. Perfection is an impossibility in our human condition; excellence can be achieved in every endeavor. Pursuing excellence encourages us to do the best job we can with our abilities. When our focus shifts to the pursuit of perfection, we begin to focus exclusively on what we cannot do. This negative focus can often lead to self-esteem issues, discouragement, and feelings of failure. Do the best you can in everything and reap the rewards of your efforts.

Celebrate success! Celebrations may be personal and private or they may be enormous parties with guests! Either option is valid; the important thing is that you honor yourself for your achievement. You worked hard through disciplined practice to achieve your goal. Celebrating encourages our spirits to pursue new things and achieve new heights.

Making Practice a Success

As we explored on Monday, practicing can be used by everyone to obtain skills that ultimately become second nature. Today, I'll draw from my experience practicing piano to give you some tips to help your own practice lead to success.

Goal setting is crucial! If the destination is not clearly defined, we'll never know that we've reached it. Avoid being too general though. If I am learning a new piece at the piano, it's not enough to say I want to learn to play the song; instead, I have to specify that I want to play the piece accurately with a tempo of no less than 172 beats per minute. If I don't play the notes accurately, I am not playing the song. At the same time, I can't play the song at whatever speed I choose. There needs to be a standard of expectation.

Similarly, I can't simply state that I want to be more patient without providing a measurement that qualifies as reaching my goal. Perhaps I am going to exhibit patience by not tapping my fingers on my desk in irritation for 5 consecutive days. The point is that you must identify what you are trying to modify or develop through your practicing.

Include short term goals along the way. Once you identify your ultimate goal, it is helpful to break it up into smaller steps. In the example of learning a new piece of music, one goal may be to correctly play all of the notes at a slow steady tempo. Then I may begin to increase the metronome speed gradually. These short term goals allow me to see progress in my journey without the frustration that I may never achieve the ultimate goal. We all need small victories to celebrate along the way to give us the encouragement to persevere.

Map your journey's path. In order to know where we are and where we're going, sometimes it is important to take note of where we've been. This is where a practice log can be helpful. A practice log is simply a diary devoted to your pursuit of your goal. If you are training for a 5K, it may simply be a record of the date, distance, and time for your run. There is obvious value in this method to help you see your progress, but I strongly encourage you to include brief notes about the run as well.

Notes in your practice log give signs of improvement when numbers seem to be stagnant. If you're running at approximately the same speed for several weeks, it might become discouraging. Notes may tell that you were feeling under the weather or that the conditions were challenging. Not only do notes present explanations, often they provide insight into new short term goals that need to be achieved on the way to your ultimate goal. When patterns begin to reveal themselves in the log, we may realize there is an obstacle inhibiting our progress that must be addressed.

You will make mistakes! Accept it from the beginning. There will be days you don't practice. Other days will see an unintentional error in your efforts to reach the goal. Don't get frustrated. Making mistakes is an important part of the learning process. The trick is making sure that errors don't go undiagnosed, which brings us to our final point of the day.

Don't underestimate the importance of evaluation. Whatever you are attempting to add to your skill set, you simply must have self-evaluation as well as the evaluation of a trusted person who has more skill in the discipline than you do. Assume that I am learning to make chocolate pie. While I can identify errors in measurements, some of the subtleties of technique also need to be addressed. I can't determine if I'm doing things correctly because I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THEM AT ALL! I have to allow someone with authority to critique my efforts.

Evaluation is uncomfortable. We present our best effort and listen to an explanation of what we did wrong. We have to publicly admit that we are fallible and ignorant of the topic at hand. Because this is such an awkward situation for many adults, it is crucial that you feel empowered to select the mentor/teacher who is the best fit for you. Make sure to find a trusted individual who feels like a friend. The best mentor will easily identify your mistake and then patiently explain (and hopefully demonstrate) how to correct the problem. Ask for suggestions of things to do to overcome the obstacle and ask if you can check back in with them in a few weeks.

On Friday, I'll look at maintaining your skills once you have achieved them as we learn together how important it is to continue practicing what you have already learned.

Practice Makes Perfect

I have been practicing for 36 years. As a pianist, most days find me spending quality time at my instrument perfecting my craft and learning more about music, myself, and life. Sadly, I think that the concept of "practicing" has been stolen from the general population by the performing arts and sports teams. Each individual daily practices something -- whether intentionally or not.

The Oxford dictionary defines the verb practice as "performing an activity or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency." (oxforddictionaries.com) In other words, a person chooses to practice something in which they hope to achieve improved abilities. By separating the concept of practicing from music, theater, and sports, the potential power of practice becomes apparent.

• Do you want to be more patient? Practice patience!
• Do you want to learn to knit? Practice knitting!
• Have you wished you were a better writer? Practice writing!
• Want to improve your skills in the kitchen? Pull out a recipe and practice cooking!

Practicing can be applied to any area of life. The goal of practice is to gain new skills to a desired level of mastery in such a way that the new activity becomes a naturally occurring habit in the way you do things. Since we can all benefit from practicing, this week's blog posts will be devoted to the topic. 

Every journey begins with a single step. When you decide exactly what it is that you are pursuing and choosing to practice, the first step is often the most difficult. We're not certain how to achieve our target, so we put off practicing until we know how things are supposed to work. We aren't certain we can acquire the new skill, so we decide to do nothing rather than risk failure. Here's the good news..... YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE EVERYTHING FIGURED OUT BEFORE STARTING TO PRACTICE! Part of the value of practicing is pointing out areas that need attention as you move forward in your journey to mastering this new skill. Simply get started the best way that you know how!

K.I.S.S. For the uninitiated, K.I.S.S. is an acronym meaning "Keep it simple, Stupid." We've all heard it said that "Rome wasn't built in a day" and our goal will not be achieved overnight. So whatever you are practicing, remember to begin simply. Someone practicing cooking will be better served boiling water or scrambling eggs instead of cooking a seven-course gourmet meal! If you are hoping to become a voracious reader, it's probably not wise to pick up Gone with the Wind or The Brothers Karamazov as your first novel. In the earliest stages of practicing, it is important to set yourself up for regular success as you build the habit of devoting some time daily to the art of practicing.

Additionally, it is important that we avoid the temptation to begin practicing multiple things at the same time. I want to be more patient, read a novel a week, write an intriguing daily blog, and learn to speak Italian. I have the ability to do all of these things, but I need to prioritize. If I begin practicing each of these things immediately, my focus is stretched so thin that I will accomplish very little in any of the processes.....and will have little time to manage the regular parts of my life. I need to determine what is truly my passion and what is simply a fleeting obsession. If you're not sure whether it's a passion or temporary fancy, I recommend putting it on the back burner for a while; those things that are important to us will continue to burn deep within despite our lack of immediate attention.

Intentionally schedule your practice time. How much time do I need to devote to practicing? Honestly, it depends upon your age and your current ability in relation to the skill you are developing. I ask my beginning piano students to try to play at least 10 minutes each day. An adult who is trying to develop the habit of daily reading sessions might begin with 15 minutes of reading for 5 days of the week. 

Once you establish how much time you will be investing, determine how you will add it to your daily routine. One of my colleagues meticulously schedules her day and includes practice time, then protects that time from interruption. On the other hand, I work better with a to-do list. Practice activities are listed along with the day's other responsibilities and I complete the tasks when I'm in the best frame of mind to handle each one. The to-do list works for me since it allows me to experiment and find what times of my day are best suited for which activities. 

Once you schedule your practice time and its duration, give yourself permission to modify the plan as needed. It is more important that you DO the thing you are practicing than avoiding it because you don't have the amount of time allotted. Practice should not be a chore every day; if it feels that way, you may be attempting to devote too much time to the task for your current skill level. Evaluate and adjust as needed. Regular repetition is what we're after. As with other things, quality of practice supersedes quantity of time spent practicing.

On Wednesday, we'll explore some tips that have proven effective in my own practice and explain how you can adapt them to any activity that you are seeking improvement in. For now, determine what it is that you want to practice in your life and take the first step. Then repeat it again tomorrow and the day after. Before you know it, you'll be on your way to having the ability that you desperately want to add to your life!