The deliberate practice relies on small, achievable, well-defined steps that help you work your way toward meaningful improvement. These steps should take into account your current knowledge and skill level and push those boundaries little by little, consistently expanding your abilities.
With deliberate practice, goal-setting isn’t like making a New Year’s resolution and hoping you’ll stick with it. It involves thoughtful planning, identifying areas for improvement, and creating a specific game plan for building on top of your current abilities.
This is the question that allowed Ben Hunt-Davis and the British Olympic rowing team to win a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, which was the first time a British crew won this event since 1912. The question was applied as a basic stress test to whatever decision the team made in their training leading up to the games. For instance:
“Will practicing rowing today make the boat go faster?” Yes. So, do it.
“Will following a strict diet that boosts energy, maintains muscle mass, and minimizes fat gain make the boat go faster?” Yes. So, do it.
“Will going out on Friday night to get wasted make the boat go faster?” Probably not, unfortunately. So, don’t do it. It’s a simple question that focuses us on the goals that we are trying to achieve, and then aligns every decision, big or small, in life to get them closer to the goals, in an almost robotic, uncompromising way, leaving no room for excuses or poor judgment.
This type of discipline can be practiced. It may not be easy or intuitive at first, but having this kind of perpetual compass to guide your every move will help you at least objectively see whether an action will get you closer to or further away from your goal. The final call is still yours, but more often than not, just being aware of the ultimate objective is incentive enough to stay on track.
If you are guilty of being a Good Starter, but a lousy finisher — at work or in your personal life — you have a very common problem. More than anything else, becoming a Great Finisher is about staying motivated from a project’s beginning to its end. Recent research has uncovered the reason why that can be so difficult, and a simple and effective strategy you can use to keep motivation high.
In their studies, University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach examined how people pursuing goals were affected by focusing on either how far they had already come (to-date thinking) or what was left to be accomplished (to-go thinking). People routinely use both kinds of thinking to motivate themselves.
Intuitively, both approaches have their appeal. But too much to-date thinking, focusing on what you’ve accomplished so far, will actually undermine your motivation to finish rather than sustain it.
Koo and Fishbach’s studies consistently show that when we are pursuing a goal and consider how far we’ve already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment and begin to slack off.
When we focus on progress made, we’re also more likely to try to achieve a sense of “balance” by making progress on other important goals. This is classic Good Starter behavior — lots of pots on the stove, but nothing is ever ready to eat.
If, instead, we focus on how far we have left to go (to-go thinking), motivation is not only sustained, it’s heightened. When the human brain detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information, and willpower.
In fact, it’s the discrepancy that signals that an action is needed — to-date thinking masks that signal. You might feel good about the ground you’ve covered, but you probably won’t cover much more.
Results-driven and process-driven are the two mindsets for getting things done. You are either motivated by the outcome you expect every day, week or month, or by the process that gets you the outcome. The important question is— which mindset succeeds over time?
People who are motivated by the results are more interested in the focussing on action “flowing” towards the result. Process mindset, on the other hand, is going after the repeatable approach to solving a problem or getting the results you want.
You need both. And the timing and context of using the two is important to make you go closer to finishing line.
When you are just starting on your work for your goals, and when you are definately far away from goals still (for example, when you are set out to be a millionaire in 5 years when you are still making just a small money), setting your eyes on process goals will help more than setting on result goals.
In addition, when your goals are essentially driven by your action (for example write book in 12 months) it might help in setting your eyes on result goals when you are nearing the finishing line. But, if achieving the results involves significant actions by other people over which you do not have a control (for example, sales of US $ 1000 next month), measuring on how far you are from the gaols may not be as useful as focussing on process goals (a.k.a. sales funnel management including campaigns and outreach plans).
You still need to use both mindsets — results-oriented and process-oriented to your benefit. They don’t oppose each other — they enhance each other.
Experiment and do more of what works for you and gets you closer to the big picture faster.
Turn off auto-pilot “gut checks” and measure progress thoughtfully.
Measuring progress is important. But not all of us do it well, it least in some areas of life. This can lead to some real misjudgments.
Measurement tells you how you’re doing and how much progress you’ve made. Progress checks can motivate you, help you catch yourself when you’re slacking, and tell you when to change course.
Without giving thought to how you define progress, however, you can measure the wrong thing, or measure the wrong way. You might end up demoralized for no reason, or falling behind unknowingly on a project, or missing opportunities. So if you’re going to measure progress, do it right!
First determine the kind of goals you’re chasing and outlines the difference between outcome goals and process goals.
On a daily basis, measure progress through movement toward your process goals. It doesn’t matter how much you work, only whether that work takes you closer to finishing that day’s process goals. Then check that your process goals are doing what they should, by tracking overall movement toward an outcome goal.
Another way to track progress is to look at how far you are from your starting point.
At some point when your goal is within reach, you can start measuring how far you are from your goal, and concentrate on closing the gap. But, mind you, if you do this too soon, you can hurt morale.
Once you figure out the best way to track your progress, and the types of progress you need to track, choose how often you’ll track. On a daily basis, concentrate your measurements on your progress goals, rather than your outcome goals. Then choose a less-frequent measurement that is based on where you are in your project: distance to your goal, or distance from your starting point. With a little experimentation, you can find the magic balance that works good.
Did I tell you, it takes months to get to that magic balance for some goals and you still continue to discover it for others.
But, remember not to forget: what gets measured gets managed.
Best position to operate is not to operate from thinking “I’m right” and rather shift it to asking “How do I know I’m right?”
And the best way to answer this question is by finding other independent thinkers who are on the same mission as me and who see things differently from me. By engaging them in thoughtful disagreement, I’d be able to understand their reasoning and have them stress-test mine. That way, we can all raise our probability of being right.
In other words, if I just want to be right—I don’t have to care if the right answer comes from me. So I got to learn to be radically open-minded to allow others to point out what I might be missing. The only way I could succeed would be to seek out the smartest people who disagree with me so I could try to understand their reasoning.
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
– John Lennon
You do not need to be perfect to be AMAZING and continue to be WONDERFUL ! Perfection is elusive, So, Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Your best efforts towards your level of excellence is good enough.
I’m really trying to keep believing in that. Most days, I feel like I’m losing the battle. That is getting beat out of me a little every day.
Measurement! I just love measurement. That’s because it tells you how you’re doing and how much progress you’ve made. Progress checks can motivate you, help you catch yourself when you’re slacking, and tell you when to change course.
Without giving thought to how you define progress, however, you can measure the wrong thing, or measure the wrong way. You might end up demoralized for no reason or falling behind unknowingly on a project, or missing opportunities. So if you’re going to measure progress, do it right!
Many of us probably overwork ourselves, under the assumption that more work gives more progress. But does it? Have you ever measured it? Just being busy and stressed doesn’t mean we’re getting anything done. We need to track how far we are from our goal, and whether we’re closing that gap.
First, determine the kind of goals you’re chasing. Are you chasing outcome goals or process goals?
Outcome goals —like getting 100 new signups or getting an A grade – are something you strive for, not something you just do. Process goals, on the other hand, are measurable actions that help you get closer to your outcome goal, like making ten more sales calls each day.
On a daily basis, measure progress through movement toward your process goals. It doesn’t matter how much you work, only whether that work takes you closer to finishing that day’s process goals. Then check that your process goals are doing what they should, by tracking overall movement toward an outcome goal. Maybe you need to make progress on the quality of your process-related actions. So make your new process goal.
100 Words Everyday 