Deliberate Practice As A Creator
How do you improve in the most strategic way possible when starting a new creator habit? This week dives into finding the right creators to help guide your practice.
Hi Everyone!
Thanks to all of you who've signed up so far. It's been an exciting week to launch this writing habit and I hope to talk to more of you as this newsletter develops.
I wanted to kick things off with some foundational thoughts on the concept of deliberate practice as it relates to being a creator. I've been podcasting off and on for the last 3 years, but writing is a new medium for me, so what it means to start a new creator habit and actually improve in the most strategic way possible has been very top of mind.
10,000 hours and You're Still No Usain Bolt (AKA What is Deliberate Practice?)
We've all heard the saying that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at anything. But there are plenty of things we do for 10,000 hours without becoming masters at all. I'm sure I've put in at least 10,000 hours cooking myself, my family, & my friends meals, but I'm not even close to a world-renown chef at this point (though I believe I’ve done some tasty cooking)!
For the last few decades, psychologists who study expertise, mastery, and even so-called genius have been showing that to a large degree athletes, musicians, "geniuses" have succeeded more because of their ability to practice than because of innate talent ( though this is a topic that includes some caveats). Of course, it’s not just any kind of practice. The psychologist Anders Ericsson's work, in particular, has focused on HOW to practice to actually achieve mastery. Based on decades of research with experts in various fields, he’s named this kind of mastery-achieving practice "deliberate practice."
People who want to achieve mastery have to practice in a way where they are actively and deliberately improving their skills. Often, that means working on things where the challenge slightly outpaces their skills. It’s usually practicing in a way that’s deeply uncomfortable over and over again.
How Do You "Deliberately Practice"?
There are a few common features of approaching a skill with deliberate practice in mind:
Have a well-defined, specific goal that is a stretch (i.e. requires you to get out of your comfort zone over and over again) and that you can break into smaller steps
Focus on that goal
Implement a system of immediate feedback
Repeat & refine based on feedback
The key thing that differentiates deliberate practice from just purposeful practice, however, is that you have a clear understanding of what mastery looks like and the steps you can take to achieve it. These steps aren’t ones that you just come up with, they leverage the expertise of others. Deliberate practice develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and therefore uses training techniques that have been shown to be effective.
Using Experts To Overcome Roadblocks
Why is leveraging the techniques of others so important? Well, inevitably, when you're doing something just above your skill level, you'll run into roadblocks. These are times where it seems impossible to keep making progress or where you have no more ideas on what you should do to improve. Turning to people who have already established techniques for overcoming these roadblocks accelerates the process of learning. And that acceleration is what you need if you’re truly aiming for mastery.
So What Does Deliberate Practice Mean For Creators?
As someone who's been very focused on creating feedback loops (tracking and writing) for the last year, I've been thinking a lot about deliberate practice as it relates to being a creator. Most of the research on deliberate practice has been done in fields that are easy to quantify (eg. sports, music, chess, other competitive pursuits) and which have a longstanding history of established techniques and playbooks (think of the decades of literature around chess strategy). Being a creator is definitely not that.
Being a creator requires wearing many hats, from producing content to marketing it, from creating community to running a business. Techniques and strategies are constantly changing as new platforms emerge and there isn't really any objective criteria for what an expert creator would look like. The people we think are experts because they are the loudest or most visible may not be the ones who’ve thought deeply about effective strategies that could help others. But I’ve been starting to think that there is still room for a kind of deliberate practice.
Finding Your Personal Creator Expert
In the last few weeks, I've had a few conversations with some of my favorite emerging creators @jerinenicole & @iamjeremyenns about creators they personally admire. One of the themes of these conversations is the diversity of creator lanes within any one medium. For example, a platform (like Substack) and a medium (like writing), may include tactical writers and creative writers, short-form digests and long-form stories, writers who started 10 years ago and others who just joined.
Finding the creator expert is less about the person with the absolute biggest following (unless that’s how you’re defining mastery) and more about finding the kind of creator you want to be. From there you can break down their steps and strategies, not to create the same exact content (that would probably be impossible anyway), but to accelerate your own learning journey. Perhaps you even recruit a group of creators in your lane to act as a peer coach and help provide ongoing feedback.
Deliberately Practicing A Creator Weaknesses
Deliberate practice is also a useful concepts when it comes to practicing the parts of the work that make you most uncomfortable, that take you out of your comfort zone.
If I was a basketball player who was terrible at shooting 3-pointers, I’d be working on my 3-point shot every minute I got, learning strategies from expert shooters, listening to a coach to help my refine my technique.
As a creator, I’m aware that there are certain parts of the process that are deeply uncomfortable (for me, it happens to be promotion), and so leaning into activities that build those muscles are important first steps in practicing more deliberately.
Next week, I’ll share more about systems & techniques for feedback & reflection, but in the meantime, thanks for reading! I’d love to hear from you: how do you think about deliberate practice in your work, your content, your creator habits?
That’s a wrap!
Part of deliberate practice, of course is getting feedback. As a new newsletter writer, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Length? Topics? Format?
Heart this issue below, email me directly with feedback, or feel free to schedule some time to connect!
A Few Resources & Footnotes on Deliberate Practice
Anders Ericsson, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise - Breaks down much of his research on deliberate practice in digestible ways, though some concepts can also be found in his previously published studies
Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - Synthesizes some of the ideas around the difference between innate talent & learning & discusses myths of genius versus ongoing practice.
Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance - As a former champion chess player, and world champion tai chi practitioner, provides first hand stories for deliberate, strategic learning. Also introduces some great ideas about aligning your deliberate practice with your own unique disposition.