How Deliberate Practice Outperforms Experience and Makes You Better, Faster

There’s a big difference between showing up and getting better. You might know the feeling: you try something over and over—typing up reports, jogging around the neighborhood, playing guitar—but after months or years, you’re not much better than when you started. The reason is simple: repeating an activity isn’t the same as practicing deliberately.

Deliberate practice is intentional and focused on improvement. This method isn’t about pushing yourself relentlessly for endless hours or racking up years of experience; it’s about engaging in purposeful practice sessions that push you just beyond your comfort zone. Instead of performing what you already know, you zero in on what you can’t do yet, pick it apart, and work obsessively to patch the gaps. It can be uncomfortable. Sometimes, it’s downright frustrating, but it’s the fastest way to build mastery.

Top performers—from Olympic athletes to world-class surgeons—plan their practice around highly specific weaknesses, set clear stretch goals, and continuously seek feedback. They block time, shut out distractions, and are painfully honest about how far they have to go. They record their performance, ask for direct critiques, and constantly review what to do differently in the next round. Each effort is measured, refined, repeated, and improved.

Research on expert achievement is clear: what separates true growth isn’t years of doing something, but hours of deliberate, goal-oriented practice. The people who climb the highest are the ones who spend the most time practicing in a way that’s targeted, difficult, and feedback-rich—even if it means failing, fixing, and failing again. That’s how you convert ordinary effort into extraordinary improvement.

Pick just one difficult aspect of your skill—a musical run, a tough math question, a business pitch intro—and make it your stretch goal today. Find a quiet spot, switch your phone to flight mode, and focus completely on that piece, resisting the urge to multitask. After every attempt, get fast feedback from a friend, teacher, or your own recording, and jot what isn’t working without sugarcoating it. Before you try again, spend a quick moment reflecting on how to tweak your approach, then jump back in for another focused burst. Instead of running through easy routines, make this your habit for practice sessions this week—you’ll be amazed how much more quickly you improve.