Deliberate practice on reflection

I just finished reading a book called Talent is Overrated. The main premise is that the traditional way we think about talent is misguided.

We tend to think of those who are talented as having special powers from birth. No matter how hard we mere mortals work, we cannot compete against those who are “chosen.” In reality, success actually comes from a combination of a lot of practising (at least 10,000 hours), a strict deliberate practice regime, and continual practice even once you reach the top.

Theoretically, anybody can take up such tasks and become an expert. The main difference between those who work hard and those who don’t is motivation. That’s when it becomes a bit murky about what causes some people to have extremely high motivation, and hence discipline, and others to be happy staying at the same level throughout life.

The book is not very well written and the research it cites is nothing novel – if you have read “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, you’ve read 70% of this book. Yet it really drives home the point of setting up a regime of deliberate practice to work on something you want to improve. Deliberate practice is where you set up practice in a way that makes sure you’re always stretching to the limit of your capabilities. Always working on a specific part of the task that you are weak in and then moving onto the next weakness when the previous one is conquered.

This will not always guarantee success, especially since which areas of expertise will lead you to success is hard to predict. It would, however, ensure that you do progressively improve in the field. The great part of this theory is that deliberate practice can be applied to anything: whether it is chess, management skills, or meditation.

Throughout reading the book, I tried to think of a skill that I would really like to improve to the point where I need to put in 10,000 hours. My motivation didn’t point to skills such as running, playing the piano, photography. I did hesitate on management skills, communication skills, and knowledge in the development field. In the end, the same skill kept popping up as the perfect candidate – reflection.

I would really like to become better at reflection. Able to gain lessons and perspectives from daily life. Able to apply this knowledge gained to other areas of life. Able to stop myself in the middle of a heated moment and reflect on what I am doing. I would like reflection to become an automatic part of me to allow me to continually improve.

I’m not sure if this is a far-fetched idea. I also don’t have much idea on how to set up a strict deliberate practice routine to work on “reflection.”

So far I’ve come up with a very unoriginal idea – really committing to writing one short post a day, whether it is on this blog or otherwise. I would set the alarm for 17 minutes of uninhibited writing of a thought that needs reflecting upon. Then I would spend 5 minutes editing the post after writing.