Talent is over-rated. Try Deliberate Practice Instead!

Joanne Rowling, also known as J.K. Rowling, is a British author, who is best known as the creator of the Harry Potter series. She today stands as a beacon of inspiration to aspiring writers and individuals facing challenges. Her journey to become a writer is remarkable, starting with struggles to make ends meet, to become one of the world’s most successful authors is a testament to the power of consistency, creativity, and strong belief in oneself.

Rowling’s early life was full of financial difficulties and personal hardships. She faced a series of challenges as a single mother, living on government benefits while fighting depression and the loss of her mother. However, breaking through these struggles, she found her passion in writing everyday. However, 1995 was the year that defined Rowling’s life in so many ways. Not one or two, or five, around 12 major publications rejected the Harry Potter script. She was shattered but not defeated. She kept approaching other publications and kept fine turning her pitch. And her efforts bore fruit. A small publishing house accepted to publish the book and only 1000 copies were published.

14 years later, J.K. Rowling became the first billionaire author, ever!

In J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement speech, she attributes deliberate practice to much of her success.

The path of Deliberate Practice

K. Anders Ericsson was a Swedish psychologist who was internationally recognized as a researcher in the psychological nature of human performance. In a highly cited 1993 paper, Ericsson and colleagues conducted studies in which they concluded that expert violinists derived their talent not from innate abilities but rather from large amounts of deliberate practice, amounting to 10,000 hours over a decade or more. Malcolm Gladwell later popularized Ericsson's so-called 10,000 hour rule in the book Outliers. Ericsson pioneered the idea that it is not innate talent that propels the greatest performers to the top of their field but practice — thousands of hours of a very focused and strategic kind that he calls "deliberate practice.

So what is deliberate practice?

Deliberate practice is what turns amateurs into professionals. Across every field, deliberate practice is what creates top performers and what they use to stay at the top of their game. It’s absolutely essential for expert performance.

At this point it’s crucial to distinguish between doing something and practicing it, because they’re not always synonymous.

The key distinction between doing and practicing is that we’re only practicing something when we do it in a way that makes us better at it—or at least with that intention.

Regardless of where we choose to apply deliberate practice, it can help us maximize our potential. It turns potential into performance. While engaging in deliberate practice, we are always looking for ways to improve. If one approach doesn’t work, we keep trying new ones until something does. Deliberate practice is a universal technique, and you can employ it for whatever you’re trying to be the best (or just get a little bit better) at.

It invaluable for improving performance in fields such as teaching, nursing, surgery, therapy, programming, trading, and investing. It can accelerate your progress in widely applicable skills such as writing, decision-making, leadership, studying, and spoken communication.

The top and most successful leaders engaging in Deliberate Practice

I write frequently about how successful careers are nurtured and never a fluke. They requires consistency. It includes improving your skill and knowledge, literally falling in love with what you do, and obsessing over ways to improve your act. These thoughts are good to know, by the concept of Deliberate Practice helps to clarify and distinguish some important details that often get overlooked.

Consider an average manager. They have likely spent more than 10 years working in one or more organizations, managing people and budgets. Beyond doubt they have spent 100s of hours every month making decisions, accumulating to 10,000 hour or even more of decision making. Are they the best in decision making? Can they be called an expert at what they do? They could be well versed, and even comfortable in what they do, but they may not be A players in decision making. Not surprising!

The key feature of deliberate practice is practicing with a clear awareness of the specific components of a skill we’re aiming to improve and exactly how to improve them.

It is not just about doing. It is about doing something over and over again. It is also importantly about remaining aware of what is going well and what is not in what we are doing.

Average employees approach work as a task. The A players would approach work as passion, as a piece of art. The best leaders would always come into work every day thinking what can they do to better themselves. They will figure out the gaps and proactively look at newer learning resources. They would connect with mentors and seek out advice. They would practice a presentation 50 times before finally delivering to their client. They would spend 30 minutes before each meeting to prepare their minds to be able to connect best and ask the right questions. They will be deliberate.

Muhammad Ali has been quoted saying – “I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit.” Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”

Mozart studied his craft with a fanatical drive. Attending concerts nightly, he listened to other composers, wrote, and rewrote his own. Mozart’s discipline practice was adhered to with such intensity he often only got 5 hours of sleep.

Of course, deliberate practice is key to success but not the only thing. It has to be layered with awareness of what your natural abilities are. Sadly, we stretch our natural abilities alone taking them for granted, without hardly putting in the efforts, and the deliberate practice. Result is that our abilities soon get rusted, get blunted, and finally we give up to be an average performer.

If I could advise my 25 years old one thing, it would be that growth lies in deliberate practice, and not in getting things done via a check-list of To-Dos alone. What would you advise your 25 years old self?