If you play a lot of games, you will quickly understand that you will reach a point when you will find it exceedingly difficult to progress by playing normally. Weak points will remain weak points regardless of how often you "play." This is where 90% of casual players become bored and give up.
If you want to win in games, you can't quit up now like the casual players. You can't even play lightly anymore. There is only one method to get beyond this limitation: Deliberate Practice.
What is Deliberate Practice?
Deliberate practice occurs outside of one's comfort zone. It necessitates that a student regularly attempt tasks that are just beyond his or her current skills. As a result, it necessitates near-maximal effort, which is often unpleasant.
Deliberate practice entails setting specified goals. It is aimed at increasing a specific area of the desired performance rather than some broad overall improvement. After establishing an overarching goal, a teacher or coach will devise a strategy for implementing a succession of minor improvements that will add up to the intended greater change. Improving some part of the target performance helps a performer to see how the training has improved his or her performance.
Deliberate practice necessitates complete focus and deliberate acts. It is not enough to merely follow the instructions of a teacher or coach. The student must focus on a defined goal for his or her practice activity so that adjustments to manage practice can be made.
Deliberate practice entails receiving feedback and modifying efforts in response to that feedback. Much of the feedback will come early in the training process from the teacher or coach, who will assess progress, call out faults, and give solutions to those problems. Students must learn to watch themselves, identify faults, and modify properly as they gain experience. Such self-monitoring necessitates the use of efficient mental representations.
Deliberate practice generates and is dependent on successful mental models. Improving performance is inextricably linked to improving mental models; as one's performance improves, the models become more complex and effective, allowing one to improve even more. Mental models allow one to track one's progress, both in practice and in actual performance. They demonstrate the proper way to do something and enable one to recognize and remedy errors.
In essence, to break your limits, you should
a) Identify - Determine exactly what is holding you back. When and how do you make mistakes? Push yourself far beyond your comfort zone and watch what fails first.
b) Design - Create a practice approach geared at improving that specific deficiency. You may be able to repair the problem yourself once you've identified it, or you may need to seek advice from an experienced coach or teacher.
c) Focus - Pay attention to what happens when you practice; develop and refine mental models of what is the most effective and right method. If you are not improving, you should try something different.
d) Motivate - Push yourself forward when you feel like giving up
The power of this technique is that it targets those specific problem areas that are holding you back rather than trying this and that and hoping that something works. Repeat these four steps every time you hit your limit.
Identify → Design → Focus → Motivate
Motivation is extremely important in deliberate practice (and becoming very very good). Without motivation, you will quit before you push yourself to your potential.
Here are some strategies to maintain motivation:
Make it a habit
Determine when and where you are most comfortable undertaking deliberate practice. Once you've made your decision, perform deliberate practice every day. Why? Routines are a blessing when it comes to completing anything difficult. A mountain of research studies, including a couple of my own, demonstrate that if you make it a habit to practice at the same time and in the same area every day, you don't have to worry about starting. You simply do.
Set up a certain time for practice that is free of all other obligations and distractions. Pushing oneself to practice is difficult enough in the best of circumstances, but when you have other things you could be doing, there is a continual desire to do something else and justify it by convincing yourself that it really needs to get done. If you do this frequently enough, you will find yourself practicing less and less, and your training program will soon be in a death spiral.
Embrace the challenge, don’t be afraid of other people’s judgement
Deliberate practice can be extremely rewarding. You can learn to embrace challenge rather than fear it if you work hard enough. You can perform everything that is expected of you during deliberate practice—a clear goal, feedback, everything—and still feel terrific while doing it. It all comes down to present-moment self-awareness without judgment. It's about letting go of the judgment that keeps you from appreciating the task. "That was difficult!" you tell yourself. It was fantastic!"
Get plenty of feedback and feel the joy of getting better
In general, relevant positive feedback is one of the most important components in retaining motivation. It can be internal feedback, such as the satisfaction of watching yourself grow at something, or outward feedback supplied by others, but it makes a significant difference in a person's ability to continue the consistent effort required to progress via deliberate practice.
Set things up such that you can see concrete indicators of improvement all the time, even if it isn't always significant improvement. Divide your long journey into attainable goals and focus on them one at a time, possibly even rewarding yourself with a tiny reward each time you complete a goal or reach a new level. By doing so, you gain a sense of accomplishment each time a new level is reached, and that sense of accomplishment will both increase his or her desire and make it less likely that the learner would become disheartened by a seemingly lack of progress. It makes no difference if the levels are arbitrary. What matters is that you break what may appear to be a limitless quantity of material to study into a series of distinct steps, making your progress more concrete and encouraging.
Use Social Motivation
The need to fit in—to conform to the group—is extremely strong. Some of history's most famous psychology experiments have showed how quickly, and often without conscious knowledge, an individual falls in line with a group that is doing or thinking differently. The easy solution is to employ conformity—the basic human desire to fit in—because if you're around a lot of gritty people, you'll act grittier.
Surrounding yourself with individuals who will encourage, support, and challenge you in your goals is one of the finest methods to generate and retain social motivation. Deliberate practice can be a lonely endeavor, but if you have a group of peers in similar situations, you have a built-in support system. These people respect the time and effort you put into your practice, and they can share training advice with you. They can also celebrate your wins and commiserate with you when things go wrong. They rely on you, and you can rely on them.
Believe that you can succeed
To push yourself when you don't feel like it, you must think that you can progress and, especially for those aspiring to be expert performers, that you can rank among the best. The strength of such belief is so great that it can even overpower reality.
Belief is essential. Don't give up if you lose faith in your ability to achieve a goal, whether because you've regressed or plateaued. Make a deal with yourself that you will do whatever it takes to get back to where you were or to break through the plateau, and then you will be able to.
*******
With deliberate practice and good motivation, you can push your skills to the next level.
Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong.