“Like what?”

“Don’t lead me where you want me to go. That’s just advice in the form of a question. Ask a question that makes me figure it out.”

“Gotcha…”

—

This is a conversation I had last week with our head coach Chris, at IMPACT. I was doing a roleplay to get better at sales calls.

We do practice every week to become better communicators.

Are we talking about practice??!

Many people think of practice as something you do when you are new. It’s a set of activities to help you “learn the craft”.

Occasionally you will do some more practice to improve and area you want to add to your work or personal habits.

But practice is not just for getting acquainted with a circumstance.

It’s WAY more important than that. According to Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work,

“Instead, we argue that the difference between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specic domain.”

The new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons in your brain. This allows the corresponding circuits to fire with less effort more often.

So practice makes your brain “well myelinated”.

You might be saying “Jake, I am already well myelinated.”

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

That’s GREAT!

However…

Every new skill and habit you want to obtain requires deliberate practice. And the ones you already have require repetition to keep them.

Here are 3 reasons you want to add deliberate practice to your week:

It’s how your brain builds – we’ve just discussed this. Doing extended repetitions around a very specific skill set programs that circuit in your brain to perform. Whatever you give attention to is what you will develop.

It gets rid of bad habits – bad habits stay bad habits until you give yourself good habits. SO practice is necessary to improve. Reading a book (or newsletter 🙂 and agreeing with the concepts doesn’t help your life.

It creates new habits – just because you get rid of bad habits doesn’t mean they won’t come back. That leaves a blank space that your brain will fill. Practice is how you make sure you replace it with something great.

At the beginning of the article I was practicing better questions. If I continued to ask average questions, then that’s where I would stay. I HAVE TO replace the average with better stuff, in practice.

It’s not rocket science.

Practice makes better things possible. Find something you want to be better at and focus on only that thing all week long.

What do you need to practice?