Deliberate practice: work on what you're bad at, with feedback
Deliberate practice means effortful work on a specific weakness, with fast feedback, rather than repeating what you can already do.
The evidence
Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993), The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance, Psychological Review 100, 363–406 studied musicians and found that the best had accumulated far more deliberate practice: solitary, effortful practice designed to improve specific aspects of performance.
Later work qualified how much it explains. Macnamara, Hambrick & Oswald (2014), Deliberate Practice and Performance, Psychological Science 25, 1608–1618 found deliberate practice accounted for a substantial share of differences in games, music and sports, but only a small share in education and professions. Practice matters; it isn't the whole story.
How to do it
- Find the specific sub-skill that limits you, not the whole skill.
- Design a drill that isolates it and is slightly beyond your current level.
- Get feedback fast: an answer key, a reviewer, a measurable result.
- Go back to the real task to check the drill transferred.