Become an Expert with the Power of Deliberate Practice

Photo credit: "A-Rod taking a practice cut" by Dog Company

Recently, I was interviewed by Kellie Kass from Simply Communicate for an in-depth business profile called "How Did I Get Here." In the article, I share something I don't think I have ever talked about before: how I apply deliberate practice in my never-ending quest for insights into digital media, marketing and online culture. I decided to write about it now because I became more aware of my habits and because I believe it can help anyone become more successful.

Deliberate practice - at least as a concept - is relatively new to me. However, little did I know it's something I have been at for years. Perhaps the same is true for you. Regardless of your passion, it's something that - when applied - is surefire road to success.

The basic idea isn't rocket science. Basically, anyone with just even a little bit of natural talent in a given domain can master it in about 10 years by methodically practicing the essence of their craft two hours daily (including weekends) and measuring their progress from one day to the next.

The concept was developed by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University. It's becoming popular in sports and business. It's a big reason why Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez and Warren Buffet continually get better. They practice on building their strengths every day in a meticulous way. (The links on their names cite relevant stories. The best piece I have read on the subject is this one from Fortune.)

In my case, I've actually been applying deliberate practice in my work for at least five years now, perhaps longer. I have been an online junkie going back 20 years. However, I only started deliberately practicing my study of the web and online culture in 2003. It just didn't dawn on me until 2008.

Every day for five years I have spent at least two hours a day, seven days a week (usually early mornings and evenings) trolling through 500+ RSS feeds on business, marketing, culture and technology. I then parse these observations into insights that I share here but also through other venues you don't see - like content for clients and our staff. Here's my trend graph from Google Reader.

In the last few months I have become a lot better at focusing my attention and measuring my progress. For example, I often look back at my posts from the last four years to see where I was right or wrong so I can get better at what I do. Two emerging influentials who I believe take this approach are Louis Gray and Chris Brogan. I reference them both in my interview with Kellie.

The takeaway here for you is this: if you want to be an expert at something (anything really), you can! It just takes time. Here's the formula: a) follow your passion, b) practice the essence of your craft in a meticulous, measurable way for two hours daily (for years), c) learn from data and adjust as you need to.

Comments

[Eric Hansen]

"The rate of learning, may in fact be the only sustainable competitive advantage, over time."

HBR Podcast on "Learning Organizations" reminded me a lot of your post on Disciplined Practice.

There's also a book called "Effortless Mastery" by one of my favorite musicians, Kenny Werner, that has a similar theme.

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Effortless_Mastery

Liked how you use your Google Reader stats to measure performance. Are there any other metrics you use? Like number of pieces written/published, etc.?

[Steve Davis]

Steve, this is an intriguing post and it raises two questions for me. Firstly, how are you measuring your online habit? Is it through your own reflection on the quality of your parsed insights? Or the buzz about you among the technocrats? Or simply the number of posts you can process per session? Secondly, does this method assume the ladder you are climbing is against the right wall? (Tiger would certainly be applying this process narrowly within the field of golf). Or does the disciplined application help weed out false starts and passing fancies? Thank you for this post.

[Katybeth]

How true. How important for our kids to learn through example. Talent is a very small part of the equation--will the "gifted generation" grow up disappointed when they realize gifted is not a guarantee for success.

[Rubin]

Great post, Steve. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[Mari Smith]

Steve, really excellent blog post. I ♥ what you say here & totally agree.

Interestingly enough, I was just tweeting about the topic of expertise yesterday. It disturbs me to see brand newbies hanging out a shingle declaring expertise when -- in this world of what a friend of mine calls "intellectual voyeurism" -- one's actions (and non-actions!) are apparent for all to see!

The daily deliberate practice you describe reminds me of the excellent book "Mastery" by George Leonard. There's a certain martial arts aspect to this type of practice. And, in our fast-paced, get-results-overnight world, I really think many/most people don't have what it takes to implement two deliberate hours daily for ten years.

As I like to say, I’m an “overnight success ten years in the making.” :)

[mbjorn]

I had the same questions as Steve Davis. How do you measure progress, and how do you know if 'your ladder is against the right wall.'

I've heard the same idea expressed a bit differently: it takes 10,000 tries to master a subject or 'know' how to do a physical task like hit a golf ball. But how do you know if what you're trying to do is worthy of the task? Did you believe being an online junkie was worth-while when you started?

[Morena]

Very interesting post, which rises a couple of curiosities in me.
I mean, becoming an expert implies that you know all that's being said on a topic, all over the world... of course the web is a good starting point, but researches state that in the Web 2.0 environment, people still keep on searching without finding (that's why Web 3.0 is arriving that fast), so what do you suggest we should do to make sure we "experts on sthg" really know all that's being said around our favourite topics? I of course know about RSS, Feeds etc., but as a matter of fact, I can request these kinds of feeds once I've found a website giving me the chance to download its content. Is there a way you suggest to "find" new sources of information in the internet? A research I've read, also states that there are over 16 million recorded websites only in Italy (excluding blogs - well, I'm Italian, that's why I'm referring to this data), which means that only to open their homepages (say 3 mins each), it would take 16 years to see them all. But once you've opened them, how would you recognize a "reliable" web source?
thank you very much.
Morena

[Ben]

This is a common story for professional poker players.

At the small clubs many times a week, with meticulous tracking of wagers and circumstances, turning random happenings into deliberate outcomes.

Cheers.

[Steve Rubel]

@Eric and @Steve...

I measure my progress in a number of ways. For example, I want to be known as a trend spotter. So, I track what tags people use to upload my posts to del.icio.us. I am delighted to see when Trends is a big tag. For example, check this out.

In addition, I also benchmark links/post both from blogs and Twitter as well as Edelman references in conjunction with my name.

@Steve - You are right that this needs to be guided along goals. Otherwise, why bother?

@mbjorn - I didn't know when I started spending a ton of time online in the early 1990s that it would become my career. Nor do I know where it's going. However, I know it has value! That's what counts,

@Morena - The reliability of sources is a personal decision. The key is to focus it. For me, technology is important but it's even more essential to track what people do with it. I try to take a holistic view but at times I tend to be US-centric. Working on that and my time in Italy and Germany next week will help.

[srieder]

Steve, this post was very intriguing to me.

I am interested in how you went about evaluating your progress in order to become more proficient in digital media, marketing and online culture.

While there may be skeptics of the concept of deliberate practice, I am not one of them. I truly believe that in order to be an expert at something, a passionate and hard working attitude must be put forth. While innate abilities and talents in some individuals are present at the start, they can only take you so far.

Case in point---Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all-time got cut from his high school varsity basketball team as a sophomore. This event inspired him to work harder at basketball. As everyone now sees, his efforts and hard worth truly paid off.

A recent commercial for the Jordan brand, a sub-division of Nike, further illustrates Jordan's hard-working ethic. The script for the commercial, as voiced-over by Jordan himself, reads as follows:

"Maybe I led you to believe that it was easy, when it wasn't. Maybe I made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. Maybe I made you think every shot I took was a game winner. That my game was based on flash, and not fire. Maybe its my fault that you didn't see that failure gave me strength, that my pain was my motivation. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God given gift, and not something I worked for... every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game... or maybe, you're just making excuses."

Additionally, (I'm a big basketball fan) Washington Wizards franchise player Gilbert Arenas wears number "0" as a reminder of when he was told that he would get no playing time upon arriving to play college basketball at the University of Arizona. He didn't let this get him down, as he continued to work harder and harder and improve his game. Now, he is one of the top guards in the NBA.

Overall, a very good post and a reminder that practice and hard work pays off in the end.

[Randy Lawrence]

Deliberate practice is a well-known concept to anyone who has ever taken up the study of musical performance. The repetitive nature of practice leads to improved cognitive abilities, development of muscle memory and good-old-fashioned concentration skills. Applying this to other subjects/practices is all about having a goal in mind, and working toward meeting it.

Good for you for setting a goal, reaching it AND for continuously improving too!

[Stiennon]

Reminds me of the blogger's secret as revealed to me by Ed Vielmetti.

Write about your chosen topic twice a day for six months and you *will* be an expert.

[Darin]

I cry foul!

Deliberate practice is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to success. Your example of digital media includes research. Tiger Woods, A-Rod, or any professional anything get a totally different kind of research, coaching. Coaches, mentors, and experts in their own right guide and assist in the process. Someone who does not know can only get better by means of trial and error. Learning through error means learning what doesn't work. It is a touchstone of what to go away from, but necessarily what to go to. Granted, some of the tries will be better than others. It is orders of magnitude more efficient to practice deliberately and have coaching. So different, I was assert that coaching is also necessary, but not sufficient. Research doesn't cut it.

[Wayan]

Great post (and nice site redesign too). I've been practicing Deliberate Practice on an informal basis for the last two years around One Laptop Per Child, through OLPC News.

What started as a way for me to keep engaged with a technology program has led me to become a recognized expert on the topic and broaden my skill set to include accomplished blogger and press source.

[Reginald]

I enjoyed this post and agree with its fundamental bottom line.

Great read!

[Chris Brogan...]

I love when I remember to come through and read your post on the site instead of just read it via RSS. Our feed readers rob us of the great part of any thoughtful post: the comments and reactions.

Thanks for the kind words, too. I most certainly have built discipline and practice around what I do, both to listen to this space, and also to talk about it with passionate people. I'm happy it's being noticed. : )

Have a great trip, by the way, and thanks again for the great conversation starter.

[João Brito]

First of all, thanks, thanks a lot, thank you very much, I was in need of reading this. Second, congratulations for the post.

I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in syntony, and I was just wondering how and why and on what to focus my energy when I came across your post, via LifeHacker, and I just "syntonized" it. What's great about it is that you tell us the obvious, but which we (I) can't believe by ourselves: learning just takes time. I'm the kind of guy who likes just too many things: photo, computers, languages, design, writing (in Portuguese - English is something I'm still learning...) etc, and at the age of forty I couldn't yet focus on one thing at a time, so I'm just mediocre at lots of things. Which in turn feels frustrating! I hope your little big post can give me the push to focus more, better, and believe that, over the rainbow, five years from now, I'll enjoy the pleasure of mastering SOMETHING.
Thanks for sharing. Regards from Brazil.

[Kristian]

This idea reminds me of the popular phrase "you can be anything you want to be as long as you truly believe and work hard enough"

Hogwash!

I am a 6'3" slow white guy. I was good enough to play in a small high school but that is about it. No amount of "deliberate practice" would have gotten me to an elite level.

I am a fairly bright guy but no amount of daily dedication is going to make me a world class nuclear physicist. My mind just does not work that way.

While hard work is very important and can make one better at their pursuit it takes more than deliberate practice to be the best of the best.

If only hard work can turn you into an expert then we would see more Tiger Wood's, more Warren Buffet's, more Michael Jordon's. A lot of people work as hard as those guys at their craft yet they don't achieve the same level of greatness. Why? Because of the X factor. Talent.

[Kurt]

Hogwash to Kristian! I think the article is saying you can become an expert - not the best. You now how many experts there are in a given field? Thousands. And they make a lot of money. Pick a field in which you have a chance to do well. If you are 5'10" it's probably not going to be basketball but it could be software development or marketing analyst or pretty much anything else. Great advice - thanks!

[quirkyalone]

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, and to be really great, you need both the hard work and talent.

I remember that in my younger years I was very keen on chess. We were several guys in our city chess club who loved playing, training and studying the game, and everyone of us was working hard to be better. But it was clearly evident, that the inborn talent played rather significant role in all this - simply, some of us progressed quicker than others, and the less gifted just couldn't progress as quickly as others to be at the top. I think that you need to have certain capacity and inborn characteristics that contributes to your success, and the hard daily practice is just necessary to develop and cultivate them.

[Jason]

I was never interested in art before. One day I saw some MC Escher drawings and I wanted to draw like that. So I tried. My first picture came out alot better than I thought it would. So I kept at it. I ws drawing constantly for about 2 years. I got really good. I could use a pencil like a pro! I learned to draw in tripple perspective. My 3d techniques impress me. Again, I never wanted to be an artist. I was very horrible at artwork growing up. But one day I was like I am going to learn this.....

[Jon]

Great post, the 1st I've read from you (and I will be back for more).
Jason touches a point I think is important: the value of personal desire. That desire creates determination, and if strong enough, is the force that keeps us practicing day in and day out, whether we feel like it or not.

Jason states that he was "horrible at artwork" when he was younger, that he "never wanted to be an artist". His horrible artwork could have been predicted, caused by his lack of drive in that area at that time.

Look what happens when we decide we want something badly enough. We suddenly find "talent".

[Jon]

Great post, the 1st I've read from you (and I will be back for more).
Jason touches a point I think is important: the value of personal desire. That desire creates determination, and if strong enough, is the force that keeps us practicing day in and day out, whether we feel like it or not.

Jason states that he was "horrible at artwork" when he was younger, that he "never wanted to be an artist". His horrible artwork could have been predicted, caused by his lack of drive in that area at that time.

Look what happens when we decide we want something badly enough. We suddenly find "talent".

[Brian Darvell]

Great post. I am also thankful for the link to the fortune article.

I discussed a bit about deliberate practice and the belief of natural talent on my own blog.

Cheers!

[massimo carraro]

great post, which takes us straight to the motivation issue, imho the fundamental driving force inside everyone of us.

where in the world will we take the guts to dedicate ourselves 2 hrs a day everyday to something, if we have no motivation?

thankyou steve for your inspiring thoughts, which I've long lurked before writing this, for the first time on your blog.

[scott lewis]

My first reaction on reading this post was how great it would be if you could share the most interesting RSS items from all the feeds you read. I'm biased, however, as I've just finished developing some software which would enable you to do that easily. It's still in beta, buy you could take a look at it on my website, or there is a short screencast introduction here.

[Anthony]

Thankfully Steve, our talented friend Russel Beattie has found a new position...

http://dotmobi.typepad.com/dotmobi/2008/05/a-new-era-of-ea.html

I wish him well. They are a first class outfit!

[nolongermute]

DELIBERATE PRACTICE IS REALLY THE BYPRODUCT OF A MORE IMPORTANT ASPECT OF MASTERY WHICH TAKES PLACE IN THE BRAIN. IT IS OFTEN REFERRED TO AS FOCUS, OR EVEN PASSION, BUT HAS TO DO WITH CLARITY. EVERYTHING WE DO BEGINS AS A THOUGHT: THE QUESTION IS HOW THOSE THOUGHTS ARE TRANSFORMED INTO DRIVE.PEOPLE OFTEN REFER TO THE BRAIN AS A COMPUTER, BUT IN FACT THE BRAIN IS CONSIDERABLY MORE COMPLEX, MEANING IF THE ANSWER ISN'T THERE THE BRAIN WILL MAKE ONE UP. THE QUESTION IS WHAT DRIVES SOME OF US TO ASK BETTER QUESTIONS. RATHER THAN HOW MANY BUCKETS OF BALLS I NEED TO HIT IN ORDER TO GET BETTER; A BETTER QUESTION FOR THE BRAIN MIGHT BE: IN ORDER FOR ME TO BE THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT IT AND REALLY ENJOY WHAT I'M DOING HOW SHOULD I GO ABOUT HITTING MORE BALLS THAN ANYONE ELSE? THE POINT BEING,CLARITY IS POWER.

[mark]

THIS IS ACTUALLY A GREAT READ AND GREAT FEEDBACK TO HEAR.. AS MUCH TIME,ENERGY, PASSION, AND WILL POWER ONE CAN MUSTER SEEMS TO BE THE BASIS FOR THE DELIBERATE PRACTICE. BUT TO HAVE THE PATIENCE TO STICK WITH SOMETHING THAT INTERESTS YOU CAN BE QUITE EASY DEPENDING ON HOW "INTERESTED" YOU ARE IN YOUR FIELD. WITH THAT IN MIND YOU CAN EXPLORE SO MUCH AND LEARN OTHER AREAS TO PERFECT YOUR CRAFT. THE REPITITION ALWAYS LEAD TO NEW OUTCOMES WHICH CAN IN A WAY LEAD TO MASTERING OUR CRAFT WHATEVER IT MAY BE.. ANYWAY, GREAT READ AND FEEDBACK

[mark]

THIS IS ACTUALLY A GREAT READ AND GREAT FEEDBACK TO HEAR.. AS MUCH TIME,ENERGY, PASSION, AND WILL POWER ONE CAN MUSTER SEEMS TO BE THE BASIS FOR THE DELIBERATE PRACTICE. BUT TO HAVE THE PATIENCE TO STICK WITH SOMETHING THAT INTERESTS YOU CAN BE QUITE EASY DEPENDING ON HOW "INTERESTED" YOU ARE IN YOUR FIELD. WITH THAT IN MIND YOU CAN EXPLORE SO MUCH AND LEARN OTHER AREAS TO PERFECT YOUR CRAFT. THE REPITITION ALWAYS LEAD TO NEW OUTCOMES WHICH CAN IN A WAY LEAD TO MASTERING OUR CRAFT WHATEVER IT MAY BE.. ANYWAY, GREAT READ AND FEEDBACK

[Ed Klein]

Most people practice on their prospects, if selling, or, on the people they'd like to develop a relationship with. When you think about it, it's contrary to what we already know. One source I read said that the average Olympic athlete practices for 10,000 hours before they compete. Imagine an airline pilot or Doctor that never practiced before they performed in their public roles? Practice may make perfect but only if it's perfect practice?

[ravinder]

thank you