Practice Makes Permanent

Introduction

Any athlete will tell you, practicing more won’t necessarily make you any better.

Just the same, working more hours won’t necessarily improve your productivity:

They say:

“Work smarter, not harder”

Real quality comes from analyzing process, learning from and improving mistakes and rehearsing good behaviors. This is why athletes have a coach…and we need one in our personal lives too.

Most Valuable Thing I Learned in School

If there’s one single thing I retained from my high school years, it would be a quote from my band instructor, Mr. Robinson.

He would drill into our heads a mantra that still has so much applicability today. Every day during practice he would tell us, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. What you practice is equally as important as how often you practice it.”

Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent.

A Lesson From Golf

A golf swing is a great analogy for life. We all have personal routines and flaws.

For those who don’t hit the ball perfectly each time, you’re just like me. I have a very predictable, yet frustrating, slice off of the tee-box.

Playing the slice

Some people tell me “just play the slice!” But that is really just accepting and reinforcing my flaw.

Fixing a Slide

Every spring, I am determined that I’ll fix the slice. I head to the driving range as soon as the snow thaws and buy 2 or 3 buckets of balls.

I take a couple swings and see where I’m at. If not good, I change something (grip, stance, backswing, etc) and take a few more swings.

Bummer - slice is still there. “Better luck next year”

Takeaway

I could hit one hundred balls, experimenting with every possible change I could think of, and it wouldn’t matter…continuing to practice, without knowing and fixing my flaws, won’t make me any better.

Don’t Practice Bad Habits

If you have bad habits, or habits that prevent you from achieving your goals, stop them as fast as you can.

Every day that you practice those rituals, you further cement them into your routine.

Creating new habits is hard .

Breaking bad habits is REALLY hard .

Even harder than making these changes is sometimes realizing what needs to be changed. This is why you need a coach.

Get a Coach

Before starting a large self-improvement regimen, get a coach. It sounds silly but minimally talk with someone that appears to do (your thing) well already.

All professional athletes have a coach. Why not have one for your work or personal life?

An athlete may be excellent at what he/she does, but a coach offers a third-party perspective that cannot be seen by an athlete themselves. Sometimes being too close to the problem IS ‘the problem’. This is my golf swing problem. As much as I read about what I should do, I am too close to the problem. I need a coach.

What you practice is equally as important as how often you practice it.

For your personal life, a coach/mentor can offer observations and help continually evolve your swing. Plus, a coach is especially helpful if you don’t know exactly how/what to change.

Experiment With A Coach

There is no right way to improve your habits or routines.

It’s very important to try a number of things and record how they work or don’t work.

Journaling Can Help Track Progress

If you’re giving journaling a shot, this is an excellent task for a writing prompt.

Give each experiment at least 3-4 weeks to work. Don’t experiment with more than 1 or 2 things at a time. It will be hard to determine what is/isn’t working with too much going on. Report your learns back to your coach and repeat the feedback loop.

Summary

If you are investing in improving your life, you should already be the type of person that realizes it will never be “perfect”. And that’s ok.

Perfect is not a reality that should be feasible

Self-improvement is a continuous cycle of goal setting, hard work, reflection and refined goal setting. So getting as much feedback and self-reflection on the what part will pay dividends as you progress.

And, next year, I WILL fix that slice. I promise.