In 2018, what are you in the practice of?

Everyone agrees that they’d like to be better at their job, increase their performance at work, or bring more value to their employer so that their compensation will change. Also, they agree that if you want to be better at something it takes practice. But, I am not sure if many are thinking about their day to day work as practice leading to better performance.

My daughter just turned 8 years old. She is in gymnastics and is at United States Gymnastics Association level 2. This means that she practices 2 times a week for three hours each time. She loves it and looks forward to practice every Wednesday and Friday. Her first season of USGA ended in November. She had four mandatory competitions over 4 weeks. In each competition, they’re scored on bars, beam, vault, and floor exercise. I’ve been there to film each of her performances. At the last competition it struck me how short each event is:

·      Beam – 00:00:42

·      Vault – 00:00:32

·      Floor – 00:00:47

·      Bars – 00:00:25

The total amount of time that she is presenting her skills is less than 2.5 minutes at each meet. She has been practicing for a year for the competitions 6 hours a week for 52 weeks or 312 hours to compete for 10 minutes over four competitions. It’s amazing how good she has gotten from where she started and that over the season she improved at each competition.

Some of my friends and family are shocked when we tell them that my daughter practices 6 hours a week, but that’s what it takes to become good at something. And, to her it’s just fun with friends. My goal for her and my son is to learn that hard work is the route to achievement, whether it’s gymnastics, school, or career. It’s not about winning at gymnastics, it’s the lessons taught around hard work and practice.

Watching my daughter’s success with gymnastics got me thinking about work and careers. If you think about the historically most respected careers, doctors and lawyers, both of them are referred to as practice. He practices medicine or she practices law. I always thought this was a little funny because who wants a doctor to practice on them, I want them to be ready for the big game before they work on me. Though, if practice is systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency then maybe practice is fine for a doctor or lawyer because they’ll be better every day. 

According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. Not just practice but deliberate practice. In the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth she argues that practice must be deliberate in order to achieve mastery. She defines deliberate practice as practice that includes:

·      A clearly defined stretch goal

·      Full concentration and effort

·      Immediate and informative feedback

·      Repetition with reflection and refinement

You’re never going to reach the 10,000 hour mark with 45 minutes per week.

If we thought about our jobs or careers, sales professional, marketing manager, product line manager, project manager as a practice, would it change our mindset around career growth? Would we continuously be improving our performance? I’ve never heard anyone say “She didn’t perform as well as a project manager, but that’s all part of her practice and will improve.”

Unfortunately, as an employee we do not have the luxury of practicing for 300 hours before we’re judged on 10 minutes of work. But, we do put in 2,000+ hours a year into our jobs. This provides quite a bit of time for us to dedicate to systematic exercise in pursuit of improvement. If we come to work each day just to do the job and get home, we will never improve. However, if each day is a chance to practice so that we can perform better the next day it now becomes an opportunity to challenge ourselves, bring more value to our employers, and eventually more value to ourselves.

In the busyness of our daily business how often are we setting goals, using concentrated efforts to achieve them and then seeking feedback through the repetition of work towards those goals? As an employee, I am going to change my mindset. I am now in the practice of product line leadership. I am in the practice of new product introduction. I’m in the practice of portfolio management. I am going to systematically exercise to acquire mastery.

If you made the same commitment for 2018 how would it change your year?