practice.
According to Daniel Coyle, author of a book called The
Talent Code, the right kind of practice is a process of
repeated tasks that end in failure. You fail and fail and fail
again until you finally succeed and learn not only the right
way to do something, but the best way.^11 This is what he
calls “deep practice,” and it’s the reason why putting in just
enough time will only get you so far. To master any skill,
you must first choose a task; then do it over and over again
until the activity becomes second nature; and finally, push
through the times when you fail, exhibiting even greater
focus as you repeat the action until you’ve done it right.^12
Most of us have believed that all it takes to get good at
something is time. If you put enough hours in, eventually
you will be great. But this isn’t always true. In Ericsson’s
research, ten thousand hours of practice was a common
characteristic amongst world-class performers, but it was not
the only characteristic. If anything, ten thousand hours is
more a description of expert performance than a prescription
for how anyone can achieve expertise. Every performer in
the study embodied a certain kind of practice. It wasn’t just
the quantity of hours they accumulated but the quality of
practice they did.
This kind of practice is a deep work that brings world-
class athletes and musicians to the edge of their abilities and
then takes them one step further.^13 Understanding the
distinction between ordinary and extraordinary practice will