in Productivity

Practice makes perfect.. NOT!

Practice Makes Perfect
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

There’s a common saying Practice makes perfect, well the saying is wrong. If you are practicing something in a wrong way, it won’t make you perfect. It will make you remember the wrong thing perfectly.

For example, if you started playing cricket, and you are holding the bat wrong. Or you started painting and you are holding the paintbrush wrong; the more you practice the worse it will get as you get used to that grip.

Whatever you practice doesn’t necessarily become perfect, but regular practice does make things go into your memory and become permanent. So, a better quote would be, “Practice makes Permanent”.

In order to really get better and move towards perfecting your craft, you need to look into Deliberate Practice. Deliberate Practice involves monitoring the aspect of your craft you need to improve and practice that specifically. This is also related to the idea of Continuous Improvement or Continuous Experimentation.

So instead of just practicing the same thing over and over again, think how you can make your practice more systematic, more deliberate, more mindful and that way you can actually improve your performance.