How do we get the best out of our time? How can we be most effective and productive with our time? What is deliberate practice and how do you do it?

Timing is critical, as time is the one truly limited resource, so we need to make sure we make the best use of the time we have. As Benjamin Franklin observed:

“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin

Therefore, we have to answer:

• What are we going to invest our time in?
• How much of our time should we invest?
• What is the most effective and productive way to use our time?

What should you spend your time doing?

Knowing what to spend your time on is a matter of prioritisation. You have to know what is the most important thing to do. To do that you have to understand why you even want to do something in the first place. This is the reason The Right Questions Framework looks at the ‘why’ questions first to help answer this.

Once that you know why you are wanting to do something you can confirm what is the best thing to do. This is where we identify our mission, goal or other measure of success.

Productivity and the effective use of time: the discipline of practice

We would all like quick success but our biggest dreams will take considerable time and a lot of hard work to achieve. One wise person once told me that people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in five or ten years. I have found this to be true.

Don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of applied time. Investors understand the power of compound interest when it comes to money. The same applies to the time we invest in something, including our personal development. If we continue to invest our time wisely and with focus then we can achieve great things.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success did a study that explored the lives of many of the world’s most successful people and looked at the patterns behind their achievements.  One large theme prevails: that it takes a concerted application of time to achieve anything truly great.  Gladwell estimated that it requires 10,000 hours of quality practice to become an expert at one given thing or become world-class in a particular field.

Deliberate Practice: what it is and how it works

The key point here is not so much the 10,000 hours but the idea of effective or deliberate practice, something explained in detail by Robert Pool and Anders Ericsson in Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise.

Deliberate practice involves these 5 things:

• It develops skills using proven training techniques
• Stretches the comfort zone; being just on the verge of one’s ability
• Is based on specific, well-defined goals (both overall and for each practice)
• Is purposeful and specifically focuses on those specific goals
• Is a learning cycle which includes experimentation, reflection and finding new ways to improve.

Or as Anders himself sums up:

“So here we have purposeful practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Oh, and figure out a way to maintain your motivation.” ― Anders Ericsson

The latter point, regarding the process being a cycle, is reflective of Kolb’s learning model, where there are four components in the learning cycle:

1. Concrete experience in practice leads to
2. Reflective observation of how that practice went, then
3. Abstract conceptualisation (mental representations) of what is being learned, followed by modification and
4. Active experimentation to get further feedback, and so the cycle continues.

So, we not only make good habits and routines, but we then, through deliberate practice, make sure that the time we put in has the maximum impact and effect.

Counting the opportunity cost

If we are going to be that focused and invest our resources in one particular way we are going to have to count the cost.  For every outlay of time or money, there is an opportunity cost; the cost of not investing our resources somewhere else.  In other words when we choose to do one thing, by default we choose to not do various other things.

You can become good at almost anything, but you cannot be good at everything.

We watch sports stars, standing on a podium receiving their gold medal at the moment of glory.  What we don’t see is the years of training, the sweat and tears spent hour after hour, day after day, invested in the dream of that moment, in the winning of the prize.  How many days and evenings out with friends were sacrificed?  What number of holidays were foregone?  Which alternative careers were declined?  You can be sure that the opportunity cost was high.

The fulfilment of a vision is going to take time and hard work.  That is why we need a dream to compel us, a mission to focus upon, and a passion to spur us forward, no matter what the obstacles are that lie in the way.  If we have that level of compulsion we can make the investment of time that is needed to succeed. With that motivation, we can build the habit of deliberate practice and self-discipline to keep pushing ourselves.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.” – Archilochus

The Sunglasses Tool: FOCUS

I pretty much never leave the house without sunglasses. I like to be outside, but I don’t like to squint the whole time, so sunglasses help me keep me see clearly and stay fully focussed. Sometimes it is almost like putting on another persona when I put on my glasses. At the beginning of a hike or a race, I put on my sunglasses and I become the focussed me; eyes on the goal.

That is why, when we need focus and deliberate practice, we can use The Right Questions Sunglasses tool. Here, the word ‘focus’ becomes an acronym for the five components of deliberate practice. In other words:

F – Fully Focussed

O – Outside your comfort zone

C – Clear goals

U – Using measures to monitor progress

S – Self-discipline

In my experience discipline is more important than motivation. That is because we don’t always feel motivated. Getting outside your comfort zone is challenging, we won’t always want to do it. That is why we need strong self-discipline. Motivation and a sense of flow may come when we act, but it is self-discipline that will most likely initiate that action.

With discipline comes a state of flow

The good news is that the more we use our self-discipline and apply the principles of deliberate practice we start to achieve mastery over something. When we do this and continue to apply our focus we can achieve a state of flow.

The idea of flow is the feeling of being ‘in the zone’, where there is a sense of timelessness as your body and mind become hyper focussed on what you are doing.

The term flow was first used by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1970.  Csíkszentmihályi was was fascinated by the way artists get lost in their work and could be so immersed that they forget the need to eat or sleep. This phenomenon has been observed in other fields and Sir Isaac Newton was famous for forgetting everything else when he was deep in thought.

The idea of flow also relates to the idea of the Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning and the experience of athletes in elite sports. Here once again, athletes can experience a hyper-focus that is also a transcendental experience where there is a feeling of effortlessness when they achieve their best. Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, whilst qualifying for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, put it this way:

“I was already on pole, […] and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel.”

We cannot guarantee getting into a flow state, but research does show that the more we gain mastery, through deliberate practice, the more likely we are to achieve this zone. And it is worth aiming for because if we can get into flow we get not just increased focus but also improved learning and a greater chance of overall success.

The time to start deliberate practice is now

As mentioned at the beginning, time is our only truly limited resource, therefore we can’t afford to waste any of it. That’s why it is so important to know what we want to achieve and why, and then find the most effective way to succeed. This is where deliberate practice comes in. Once we have built taken the first step and started to build new habits, one of those habits should be deliberate practice. Crucial to this is getting out of our comfort zone, and stretching ourselves to improve.

The theory is simple; it is the motivation, discipline and commitment that is hard. That is why we always bring to mind the vision, the end goal, and remind ourselves that it is possible. And on that note, I will leave the final word to Anders Ericsson who encourages us by saying that with deliberate practice:

“If you wish to become significantly better at something, you can.” ― K. Anders Ericsson