Not just more hours
You can repeat something for an hour and only get better at doing it wrong. Deliberate practice gets the most out of whatever time you spend, whether that is one minute or ten thousand hours.
The Core Skill
Deliberate Practice
The name researchers gave to the thinking behind all effective learning. It works in any field, at any level, and it can be taught, learned, and practiced like anything else.
What It Is
Not more practice, better practice
Deliberate practice means working just past what you can already do, on purpose, with full attention and fast feedback. It is the process at the center of how learning really works.
In real life it is small and specific. You find the exact spot that is failing, decide how to attack it, run the attempt, then look honestly at what happened and change the next one. That loop is the whole thing.
The people who do it, even a little, are the ones who look talented. They pull ahead, and they keep pulling ahead.
Here is the strange part. Almost nobody actually does it, and most people have never been told it exists.
Clearing It Up
What deliberate practice is not
Most of what gets called practice is something else. Three things it is not.
Not general advice
Get out of your comfort zone. Focus. Find a model. All true, and none of it tells you what to do tonight with the passage that keeps falling apart. Advice is not a method.
Not one person’s routine
Plenty of teachers share what worked for them. That is useful, but it is their path, not a process. This is the thing underneath, the part that can be shown to anyone at any level.
From A Student
Most teachers show you what to practice with no organized method for how to practice.
Eric Mosley, adult guitar student
The Moving Parts
A few tools do most of the work
Small targets
Work the exact spot that is failing, not the whole piece.
Retrieval
Pull it from memory instead of rereading or replaying it.
Spacing
Spread practice out so it sticks for good.
Desirable difficulty
Make it a little harder now to make it automatic later.
Fast feedback
Know right away whether the attempt worked, while you can still use the answer.
Reflection
See what worked, then adjust the next round.
How It Gets Taught
Anyone can start right away
The hard part is not willingness. It is that you cannot see what you are missing while you are the one missing it. Psychologists call that the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it is why practice problems are so hard to catch on your own.
Gregg teaches around it with his Cognitive Load Reduction Protocol™. A room full of mixed levels can all begin using deliberate practice the way it is meant to be used. Beginners are moving within minutes. Advanced players get their real gaps uncovered.
Gary Radler, a clinical psychologist in Victoria, Australia, said Gregg is on the money when it comes to putting current neuropsychological research into his work. Dr. Jesse Plessis, a concert pianist, put it more plainly. Instead of sitting down with thirty pages of Chopin arpeggios and panicking, you have a path to follow, and practice flies by.
That is going to stick with me forever. The hard passages are no longer stressful once practiced the right way.
Joe K.
Cello Performance Major, Florida State University
The Masterclass
Learn it in one sitting
Deliberate Practice is where Gregg’s Lightbulb Masterclass Series started. No fluff, all learning, and built so you can use it the same day.
See the Masterclass →30 Minute Class
A short lecture and a live demonstration, straight to the point.
Open Q&A
Ask your own questions and hear the ones other people bring.
Notes And A Chapter
The Try This Now quickstart guide, a chapter on deliberate practice, and the recording.
Questions
Straight answers
No, and that is one of the biggest myths about it. Deliberate practice can be taught to anyone at any level, and it is motivating on its own. Use even a few hours of it and you are already ahead of the crowd.
No. It changes what you do with the time you already have. One good minute is worth more than an hour of repeating your mistakes.
Whole books have been written about it, and most of what you find stays general. The other problem is that you cannot see your own blind spots. That is where an outside set of eyes saves you months.
Yes. The process does not care what you are learning. Gregg has used it with musicians on every instrument including voice, with athletes, and with students in academics.
Often in the first session. In his live demonstrations Gregg takes a player from stuck to clearly better in a matter of minutes, then explains exactly how it happened so you can do it yourself the next day.
That is common, and it is usually not your fault. People lose motivation because the practice they were told to do was never going to work. Change the method and the motivation comes back.
Put It To Work Today
Get the free guide, or take the full Deliberate Practice masterclass and start using it in your next session.
Get the Free Guide →