How Practice Makes Perfect

October 2, 2012

Interview with Doug Lemov, author of the book Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better

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Mike Carruthers:
You would think that just by doing your job every day you would get better and better at it, right?

Doug Lemov:
But the data on this is really incontrovertible mammographers  for example who read radiological studies all day every day you would think get better and better at it over the course of their lives. But in fact they actually start getting worse.
 

Doug Lemov, author of the book Practice Perfect, says that’s because doing doesn’t make you better practice does and practice is different than doing.

Intentional focus reflective practice and the process of actually isolating specific skills; rehearsing, going back and redoing it if you’ve missed something that level of intentionality is what drives success.

So isolating parts of a job and practicing them over and over again is what makes you better.

If you look at the people who are the best at anything in the world what makes them great is not a lack of weaknesses it’s incredible strength. Sometimes when we suggest to people that they practice they say, “Oh I already know how to do that”. And I would say that that’s an argument for practicing it more because your goal is to be great.

Great athletes, artists, musicians they already understand this they don’t say oh I’m already good at it they practice and they practice a lot.

We start our workshops with a picture of Lionel Messi the best soccer player in the world and he’s practicing. So we don’t find it surprising that the best soccer player in the world still practices but people think in their professional lives that they grow out of practice and they don’t need to practice anymore.