Deliberate Practice of High Performance Skills
Using the concepts of deliberate practice, common to physical skills, we can intentionally arrange our lives to be at our best in all areas of life.
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In the context of physical skills, we are familiar with the importance of practice to improve our skills to the point of expertise and mastery. In this respect, Anders Ericcson described what he referred to as ‘deliberate practice’. Through his extensive work with high performers in different domains, he elaborated that the commonality amongst these experts was the requirement for deliberate practice, including use of an expert coach; practice outside of one’s ‘comfort zone’; integration of specific goals; full focus; timely feedback on performance; improving upon previous skills; and incorporation of ‘mental representations’ of the skill being developed.
These concepts of deliberate practice can and should be largely followed in the setting of developing technical skills within healthcare. For the most part, this is widely understood through the process of medical education and training. For example, surgical residents repeatedly perform procedures under supervision before being given the autonomy to perform the procedure independently.
Less widely acknowledged is that the concept of deliberate practice applies equally to the skills necessary to optimize human performance and allow us to be at our best. Regardless of whether we are developing mind based or body based habits and skills, such as meditation and awareness; mindset training; recovery; breath work; nutrition; or sleep we need to apply the principles of deliberate practice to maximize our abilities. These skills do not become proficient by chance or accident. Using meditation as an example, it is necessary to practice the skills of awareness and non-judgement while being mindful of thoughts and experiences in the present moment. The same paradigm applies to all the skills of high performance.
Not only is deliberate practice needed to develop high performance skills, it is also essential to intentionally arrange our routines and, in many respects, our lives to optimize our minds and bodies for sustainable high performance in all areas of life. This can be readily applied to the development of new habits. In order to create alignment across all areas of life, we need to apply these concepts to all parts of our life. If we do not follow these principles in certain areas of life, then there can be a resulting negative impact in other areas of our life. As an example, consider someone who wants to optimize athletic endeavors and then in certain circumstances engages in unhealthy activities, such as smoking.
Deliberate practice is necessary to develop proficiency in the skills of high performance, allowing us to access these skills in times of high stress and demand. These times are when we are most in need of these skills, however due to the elevated stress associated with these situations, we have less cognitive resources, less prefrontal cortical activation, elevated sympathetic nervous system tone, reduced recall from long-term memory, and decreased working memory. These physiologic responses to elevated stress are not within our voluntary control and collectively lead to a decreased ability to ‘think’ our way through the situation and intentionally utilize these skills. If we have adequately developed these skills in advance, then we may still be able to initiate these skills. Through deliberate practice we can, conceptually, automate these skills for use during periods of elevated stress.
In essence, the pursuit of high performance as it relates to both the physical skills and the internal skills necessary to be at our best in all areas of life can only be made possible through the application of the principles of deliberate practice. This includes developing proficiency with these skills and intentionally scheduling our routines in all aspects of our daily life. This ultimately allows a degree of automaticity in the activation of these skills when they are needed most.
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Darin - great piece - thanks for sharing! People need to realize that ANY change takes some planning and work - we don't just wake up one day and decide to be a high performer - in any area. Your training in medicine followed a plan - a plan you altered as necessary - and a plan built around deliberate practice.
This analogy hit me the other day...
If you want to improve your physical health, your emotional health, your connection to the world, your ability to be curious, and grow and, certainly, to do any real self-inquiry work…..you need a plan and some help.
Otherwise, it’s like me waking up tomorrow and deciding that I want to learn to play the piano -and my only plan is to BUY a PIANO…….no reading, no online research, no teacher, no plan to practice, no outline of the steps to learn to play the piano, etc…..just start banging away on the keys - and hoping to “figure it out”!!!!!