How to avoid getting stuck
- Change to more challenging environments where your performance is no longer adequate. It will put you back on the learning curve.
- Get a coach to get access to high-quality instruction and feedback. If you're on a tight budget, informally ask for feedback.
- Use new methods to increase your chance for a breakthrough.
- Join a community for practice. A community can share methods and learn from each other.
- Focus on a specific area of improvement. In writing, pick one sentence and rewrite to make it more clear.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
You might not study at all. However, learning underpins your life.
In relationships, you need to understand your partner and know how to communicate. At work, you profit from being good at rare and valuable skills. Health involves learning what to eat and when to exercise.
Given that learning is essential, it helps to understand how it works.
Doing something every day doesn't guarantee mastery, only adequacy. What is needed is deliberate practice.
Only putting in time does not lead to mastery. You may improve at first but will eventually reach a comfortable level and stay there indefinitely.
Research on violinists shows that those who went on to become concert performers didn't practice more, but the time spent in deliberate practice was much higher.
Deliberate practice means trading automatic behavior for strategies to increase performance.
RELATED IDEAS
Decide whether what you're trying to improve is mostly a habit or mostly a skill: if your main problem is with doing something you already know how to do, but doing it consistently, that’s probably a habit. If your main problem is not knowing how to do something well enough, that’s probably a skill.
The term "deliberate practice" is mostly attributed to Karl Anders Ericsson, an influential figure in the field of performance psychology. Deliberate practice turns amateurs into professionals. It creates top performers in any field.
Doing something regularly but mindlessly is not the same as practicing it. Deliberate practice means repeatedly performing a set of activities with the intention of improving the specific skill.
Turn your reading habits into specific and time-sensitive goals and place them on your priority list.