Deliberate practice

Lessons on Success and Deliberate Practice from Mozart, Picasso, and Kobe Bryant

by James Clear — http://jamesclear.com

How long does it take to become elite at your craft? And what do the people who master their goals do differently than the rest of us?
That’s what John Hayes, a cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wanted to know.
For decades, Hayes has been investigating the role of effort, practice, and knowledge in top performers. He has studied the most talented creators in history — people like Mozart and Picasso — to determine how long it took them to become world class at their craft. Furthermore, he has investigated the choices and experiences that have led to their success.
Let’s talk about what Hayes has discovered about world class performers. And more importantly, let’s discuss how you can use these insights to achieve your goals and become your best.

“10 Years of Silence”

Hayes started his research by examining successful composers. He analyzed thousands of musical pieces produced between the years of 1685 to 1900. The central question that drove his work was, “How long after one becomes interested in music is it that one becomes world class?”
Eventually, Hayes developed a list of 500 pieces that were played frequently by symphonies around the world and were considered to be the “masterworks” in the field. These 500 popular pieces were created by a total of 76 composers.
Next, Hayes mapped out the timeline of each composer’s career and calculated how long they had been working before they created their popular works. What he discovered was that virtually every single “masterwork” was written after year ten of the composer’s career. (Out of 500 pieces there were only three exceptions, which were written in years eight and nine.)
Not a single person produced incredible work without putting in a decade of practice first. Even a genius like Mozart had to work for at least ten years before he produced something that became popular. Professor Hayes began to refer to this period, which was filled with hard work and little recognition, as the “ten years of silence.”
In followup studies, Hayes found similar patterns among famous painters and popular poets. These findings have been further confirmed by research from professors like K. Anders Ericsson, who produced research that revealed that you needed to put in “10,000 hours” to become an expert in your field. (This idea was later popularized by Malcolm Gladwell.)
However, as Hayes, Ericsson, and other researchers started digging deeper, they discovered that time was merely one part of the equation. Success wasn’t simply a product of 10 years of practice or 10,000 hours of work. To understand exactly what was required to maximize your potential and master your craft, you had to look at how the best performers practiced.
The practice habits of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant provide a perfect example…

How Kobe Bryant Made it to the Top

Kobe Bryant is one of the most successful basketball players of all–time. The winner of 5 NBA championships and 2 Olympic Gold Medals, Bryant has amassed a net worth of more than $200 million during his playing career.
In 2012, Bryant was selected as a member of Team USA. During this time, one of the athletic trainer’s for Team USA, a man named Robert, was working with Kobe to prepare for the Olympics. In the story below, which was previously published on Reddit, Robert describes his first experience with Kobe and reveals one of the reasons the superstar has become so successful.

From Robert, trainer for Team USA:
I was invited to Las Vegas to help Team USA with their conditioning before they headed off to London. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade in the past, but this would be my first interaction with Kobe.
The night before the first scrimmage, I had just watched “Casablanca” for the first time and it was about 3:30 AM.
A few minutes later, I was in bed, slowly fading away, when I heard my cell ring. It was Kobe. I nervously picked up.
“Hey, uhh, Rob, I hope I’m not disturbing anything right?”
“Uhh, no. What’s up Kob?”
“Just wondering if you could help me out with some conditioning work, that’s all.”
I checked my clock. 4:15 AM.
“Yeah sure, I’ll see you in the facility in a bit.”
It took me about twenty minutes to get my gear and get out of the hotel. When I arrived and opened the room to the main practice floor, I saw Kobe. Alone. He was drenched in sweat as if he had just taken a swim. It wasn’t even 5:00 AM.
We did some conditioning work for the next hour and fifteen minutes. Then, we entered the weight room, where he would do a multitude of strength training exercises for the next 45 minutes. After that, we parted ways. He went back to the practice floor to shoot. I went back to the hotel and crashed. Wow.
I was expected to be at the floor again at about 11:00 AM.
I woke up feeling sleepy, drowsy, and pretty much every side effect of sleep deprivation. (Thanks, Kobe.) I had a bagel and headed to the practice facility.
This next part I remember very vividly. All of the Team USA players were there. LeBron was talking to Carmelo and Coach Krzyzewski was trying to explain something to Kevin Durant. On the right side of the practice facility Kobe was by himself shooting jumpers.
I went over to him, patted him on the back and said, “Good work this morning.”
“Huh?”
“Like, the conditioning. Good work.”
“Oh. Yeah, thanks Rob. I really appreciate it.”
“So when did you finish?”
“Finish what?”
“Getting your shots up. What time did you leave the facility?”
“Oh, just now. I wanted 800 makes. So yeah, just now.”

For those of you keeping track at home, Kobe Bryant started his conditioning work around 4:30am, continued to run and sprint until 6am, lifted weights from 6am to 7am, and finally proceeded to make 800 jump shots between 7am and 11am.
Oh yeah, and then Team USA had practice.
It’s obvious that Kobe is getting his 10,000 hours in, but there is another part of his story that is even more important.

The Importance of Deliberate Practice

Kobe isn’t merely showing up and practicing a lot. He is practicing with purpose.
Kobe had a very clear goal at practice: 800 made jump shots. He was deliberately focused on developing the skill of making baskets. The time he spent doing it was almost an after thought. That sounds simple, but it’s very different from how most of us approach our work each day.
When most people talk about working hard, they use the amount of time they worked as an indicator of how hard they worked. (i.e. “I worked 60 hours this week!”)
Putting in a lot of time might make you tired, but simply working a lot (even if it’s 10,000 hours over the course of your career) isn’t enough to make you a top performer. It’s not the same thing as practicing deliberately. Most people who think they are working hard are merely developing the skill of being in the gym, not the skill of making baskets.
To keep this basketball analogy going, consider this quote about deliberate practice…

Consider the activity of two basketball players practicing free throws for one hour. Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?
—Aubrey Daniels

Each player in the example above could brag about practicing for one hour, but only one of them is practicing deliberately.
Researchers have noted that top performers in every industry are committed to deliberate practice. The best artists, musicians, athletes, CEOs, and entrepreneurs don’t merely work a lot, they work a lot on developing specific skills. For example, Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” strategy is all about deliberately practicing the skill of writing jokes.

Applying This to Your Life

Mozart has been called the “genius of geniuses” and even he toiled away for 10 years before producing popular work. I don’t know about you, but I find this inspiring.
I don’t have the natural talent of Kobe Bryant or the sheer brilliance of Mozart, but I’m willing to put in my “10 years of silence.” I’ve only been writing on this site for 9 months, but I see this as the beginning of a 30–year project for me. And because I’m in this for good, I can win with commitment, grit, and unwavering consistency.
You can take the same approach to your work, to your goals, and to your legacy. By combining these two ideas — the consistency of “10 years of silence” and the focus of “deliberate practice” — you can blow past most people.
On a daily basis, this doesn’t have to look big or impressive. And that’s good, because it will often feel like you’re failing. What feels like struggle and frustration is often skill development and growth. What looks like little pay and no recognition is often the price you have to pay to discover your best work. In other words, what looks like failure is often the foundation of success.
Thankfully, just one hour of focus and deliberate practice each day can deliver incredible results over the long–run. And that brings us to the most important questions of all:
Are you working toward your 10 years of silence today? Are you deliberately focused on developing your skills? Or are you simply “putting in your time” and hoping for the best?

The old and new person

It is very evident now. The existence of 2 structures within me. The old, sad, wimpy, victim kind of soft person and the new assertive, bit aggressive, non adjusting kind of person.
So, when the new structures are enforced I can see the old me screaming and shouting and saying "No, what you're doing is wrong. You need to be more polite".

So, there is conflict between the old structure and the new. It will happen for sometime. Till then interaction with people is getting painful.. especially people who are not in my inner circle. I don't feel like being among people whom I do not trust, w ho do not care for me, who see me as weak. I am no mood to compromise. I feel irritated in such company.

It's fascinating.. When you deeply introspect and see these things, you're amazed. Reminds me again of Eckhart. When the old structures no longer serve the purpose a huge transformation happens.

The security guard at The Oberoi and other socio-politico-economico-technologico musings

Past few days I have been subjected to many torturous thoughts - mostly about the class divide and widening gap between the section that earns well and drives prices high, and the section that struggles to make ends meet and is terribly affected by the non-stop price hikes.

I was passing by The Oberoi hotel. The security guard was saluting to someone in some grand car. I was thinking "this person works in a star hotel. Everyday he's subjected to people with luxury. What effect does it have on him?". I don't know how things worked in previous generations in such cases, but I want to analyse the current situation. I am 99% sure that it causes some turmoil within him. Everytime he sees an Audi or a Benz, he must look at it and wonder, what it would be like to own such a car and have a mansion. Everytime he sees the lavish buffet tables, he would definitely wonder what it would be like to have such meals. There would be times when he wonders, how he can get there. I think there was a scene in "The pursuit of happyness" where Will Smith looks at a guy with a sports car and wishes that he owned one. He worked hard to get up there.

Not everyone can do that act. You need the mental stability, resources and conviction and perseverance. In a country like India, where my maid is uncomfortable going to a big shop to buy a product which she can afford, this is a tough task. We don't give people a fair chance at many things. We put a thousand barriers - caste, looks, etc and dispel many people. It's the rarest of the rare, bravest of the brave who will stand and fight. Others just cave in.

So, I believe that this security guard, unless he is extremely religious/ spiritual and content with what he is, goes through some amount of restlessness solely because he works for a place like The Oberoi.
There would be millions of people in such situations - where luxury is in the face.. while poverty remains the truth. What do they go through?

I was also reading a long analysis of the mentality of the Delhi rapists. These people, who have a hand to mouth existence, are brazenly bold. Since they are not brought up in an environment of love, they are deserts themselves. They probably care for nothing. Since all of us have shown that money is everything, they'd do anything for money. It's such a shame that they looted and abandoned a labourer just before the dastardly act of rape. What kind of person would do that? Someone who is ok to loot a beggar! I'd have to have absolutely no conscience to perform that act.

What is making such hard core criminals and crooks? The petty thieves who steal vessels and food, can still be pardoned. As long as they are afraid to harm any human being and have that much conscience, you can still let them go (not the ones who plot elaborately and rob women and elders, etc - the petty thieves who steal to fill their stomachs). How easy it is to get jobs today?

What is the population of the country? What is the government doing to curb ever hiking prices of commodities? There has to be a bottom. Somewhere we need to hit rock bottom before we gather ourselves and rebuild the nation with values and morality and spirituality. We're a nation of spiritual people. In such times, the work of people like Baba Ramdev, Sadhguru, Mata Amritanandamayi, Sri Sri Ravishankar - are all commendable despite they running their enterprises with extreme efficiency and booking crores in revenues. They are uniting people. They are forming communities in millions. They are teaching yoga, meditation and spirituality to a generation which has forgotten all this. They are reviving the greatness of our land. I laud them for this effort. They are actually uniting people under one umbrella, showing them a healthy way to lead life.

Anna Hazare also tried to unify us. Some people had a deja vu like feeling of participating in the freedom movement led by Gandhiji. But even that fizzled out. To persevere and take such a huge crowd with you, is a mammoth task. So, we should not analyse failures here. But, it was a good effort.

So, back to the point of the security guard at the Oberoi. Why did that case hit me so hard? When we were ruled by kings, there were poets and poor people too. How did they survive? How did the kings manage a sense of equality and balance? How did artists survive then? The kings took great pride in art and culture. So, arts, culture and education were given utmost importance. The teachers and artists were recognized and honoroured and it was a noble profession. They were adequately funded by the government and the government had vested interests in promoting arts. The kings loved to display their progress in art. They built grand palaces and temples and other monuments. Everyone took pride and felt a part of the grandeur.

In today's world, artists have it tough. Those who choose rare paths like storytelling, arts and crafts, even acting or singing, have it tough. There are very few sponsors. They have to do many things to stay afloat. The shift has happened from arts and culture and education to just money markets. It may seem like a calculated move by those who were left out by our kings, but that's not true. It's a group of capitalists and capitalistic countries which drive the show for their own profits. We started following their path without forethought and now we cannot exit. It's like the lyrics of Hotel California.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

There is no exit. I feel the same about the sudden burst of technology too. We were totally unprepared for this kind of attack and we're feeling the effect of that move now. We, as a nation, were not prepared for such an onslaught of technology. The US wanted some backhand helpers and we provided cheap labour. They entered and created a huge difference in wages. I remember, during our parents's times, very few could own cars. They were the richie rich! Today. everyone owns cars and houses (multiple in fact). We started earning like crazy. But the traditional jobs - government jobs, school teachers, shopkeepers, etc  were left out. So many classes were left out in this race which was started by someone. The pushcart vendor, the kirana owner, the shoe mender, the roadside peddlar, the guy who polishes your knives - so many of them are kind of left out. We go to malls and big grocery stores. We buy new shoes when old ones are little old. We never mend shoes anymore. Same with knives. We buy new knives. Repair is a term lost from the dictionary - so the repair guys are also obsolete now. Things are made to fail nowadays. Earlier a washing machine would work for 20years. A furniture would be passed to 4 generations. Today, my dining table has committed suicide after 5 years. The changing markets, changing tastes, changing affluency make it difficult for us and the manufacturers to keep up. We have chased and strangled each other and now we both are close to collapse. The manufacturer thinks we get bored soon. We think, we'll be out of race unless we upgrade to the latest gizmos. We're all at war.

Look at the side effects of technology. If we allow a company to setup a facility for 10,000 people, we need to have the infrastructure first. Roads, livable areas with electricity, power and water. Do we have those resources? Without that we should not have allowed so many companies to prop up. Today, we are occuping space in the sky as there is no horizontal space left. Cites are choked. We let people buy cars before we fixed the roads. So, the common man with his affluence buys cars. He doesn;t think whether the roads are there to support his car. He can buy a car and he can drive it, so he buys one. So, all of us collectively, in our ignorance, have choked the cities. We have choked the water resources. We are always short of power.

Even within the jobs, we have taken up jobs which are not right for us. Jobs for which we are not qualified. So, we end up stressed. Our jobs are pretty complex. Also, we do not know the art of management. Just to satisfy our customer and stay in the race and not lose out to our competitor we accept unreasonable deadlines. We slog. In the name of competition we have killed ourselves. Look at Samsung Vs Apple. I have no idea how many people in Samsung are forever stressed. Their motto is, everyday we're at war. Unless we move fast, we perish. They should have robots for those jobs. Not humans. I was once watching the warehouses of McDonalds and I was terrified. To think that the food that we eat, goes through so many steps, and gets stored in such huge factories.. and cold storages and is shipped millions of miles away and thawed and heated and served.. looks like going to Mars and being back. It doesn't look right. That's not how our food should come. It should come from nearby farms.. fresh and unwilted. In their natural form. Within a few days of harvest.
When we did things locally we didn't need so much packaging or cold storages.

Last few years there has been much debate about allowing FDI in retail. People fear Walmart and it is a giant to be feared. They can wipe off many kirana stores. They will render more people jobless than the jobs they create. They will promote indiscriminate buying due to low prices, which will lead to
garbage hell and inflation. That's my 2 cents. But, look at what China did. They let FDI in select parts where they thought it would not affect the local shops. They did a slow, planned move to allow FDI. They ensured that people were not affected by that. Can we do that here? That move is what is required in India for every new thing. We have so many entertainment forms today. Do we know how to use them? We use them for every abominable purpose. We kill ourselves. We kill our creativity. Using things without knowing what they are and what best we can do and what harms they produce is like what happened with tobacco and teflon coating. All of us rushed to buy tobacco and teflon coated non stick pans, only to discover later that they cause cancer. The manufacturers give a damn. All they want, is to make money, even if it means killing you (literally here). That's how much your favourite product's manufacturer cares about you. Forget the touchy feely commercials. The most touchy feely ones will be from the more hazardous products. I no longer buy these commercials. It requires a certain sense of maturity, understanding and analysis to imbibe new things. What's good for the US or China may not be good for India. We should be strong enough to resist such things. We need education and empowerment and thinking for that. Education alone cannot bring that. A certain amount of philosophical reflection can help achieve that state where we know what matters and what we need and what we don't need. Till then we will do all nonsense and buy everything that we don't need and keep stressing ourselves and our neighbours and the planet.


Today, I have no idea what to do with the ever increasing mess of shampoo bottles, paste tubes, lotions and other potion bottles. The quantity of packaged water bottles that needs to be disposed nearly terrifies me. We have started using so much because it comes out of factories at cheap prices or because we can afford.
Do the companies who bottle water have decent reuse mechanism? How is my daily milk sachet reused? How am I choking the planet?

We have emptied the last of the last of earth's resources without forethought, because we started without planning. We started growing without knowing how much weight we can afford to gain and how will we ever lose it, if we ever were to lose. Today we can talk about green earth, solar energy and carbon footprints and reducing carbon footprints or offsetting carbon footprints. But how far can we go? The same countries which are doing research on this, are propagating consumerism and they consume 1/3rd of the world resources. It's ironical isn't it?

All these things depress me. As an individual, I want to do the best I can to lead a good life without choking anyone or the Earth. I wish I could retreat into a village and create an old style world... where produce is local and fresh, where there is minimal packaging to throw, where things are planned and where we do not adopt new things without forethought, where growth is slow and steady and adopting technologies is slow and well researched. That way, we will have time and resources to research the effects. We'll not create massive divides like today. We'll give many people an opportunity to catch up and none would feel left out. We should have a world where everyone gets to do what they want, where there is no competition but just an endeavour to enlarge your perspectives and improve yourself. There should be a feeling of community, love and sharing. We should all gather and celebrate the seasons and the festivals. We honour the janitor and timekeeper as well as the author. We respect everyone for who they are. Where education is available to all who want to learn. Where people give their knowledge for free for the betterment of others and to create a conscious and high society. Can I create such a society somewhere in the remote parts on India?