best Self Improvement
Perhaps the biggest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of mindfulness practice—whether they're an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin—has developed ways to receive constant feedback about their performance. There are many ways to get feedback. Let's discuss two. The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This applies to the number of pages we read, the number of push-ups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and every other task that is important to us. Only by measuring do we have evidence of whether we are getting better or worse. A second effective feedback system is coaching. A consistent finding across disciplines is that coaching is often critical to sustaining mindful practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to perform tasks and measure progress at the same time.
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Martial Arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist and multi-US national medalist and 2004 World Championship winner. In the final of a match, he discovered a weakness: Wizkin became enraged when his opponent illegally headbutted him on the nose. His emotions made him lose control and forget about strategy. After that, he specially recruited fighting partners to practice keeping calm and principled in troubled times. "You have given me an invaluable opportunity to raise my bar for unrest," Waitzkin wrote. "Dirty players are my best teachers."
Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging parts of songs until you master them. Concert violinist Nathan Milstein said: "Concentrate on practicing as much as you can. Once, when I was worried that people around me were practicing all day, I asked [my professor] how much I should practice. Hours, he said: "It really doesn't matter how long. When practicing with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is enough. "
