Deliberate practice is the key to developing skills.
It is easy to get out there and practice an area where you already have competence. But to be great, you need to deliberately pracitce your weaknesses.
A good tennis player with a great forehand needs to intentionally practice, with 100% focus, their backhand to become a great tennis player.
Note this is different than a great tennis player practicing something unrelated (like math) to make themselves a more well-rounded person. Deliberate practice is focused on deepening skills in an area where you already have some competence in an attempt to go from good to great.
"Deliberate practice is an approach to work where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you’re comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance. Musicians, athletes, and chess players know all about deliberate practice. Knowledge workers, however, do not. This is great news for knowledge workers: If you can introduce this strategy into your working life you can vault past your peers in your acquisition of career capital." - Cal Newport (So Good They Can’t Ignore You)
I’ve struggled to apply this to my life as a “knowledge worker”, as this type of work is less about explicit “skills” and more about being thoughtful & diligent in your area of expertise.
Ideas for how to apply this “deliberate practice” theory to knowledge work:
Intentionally focus on improving my MS Excel skills to make it easier (or more efficient) to use an important tool.
Intentionally reading targeted business books to deepen your understanding of a specific organizational topic.
Being intentionally well-read on the history of your industry & thoughtful about current events, so you can apply past learnings.
You also need to create a method of feedback to be sure you are accelerating your ability to make an impact in your “knowledge work” area of expertise.
