Why practise means progress, not perfection

Practise what you preach, right? Before heading off in praise of practice and potentially clambering up onto some kind of pedestal, I wanted to share a bit of my personal history of practising. 

For the biggest part of my life, I’ve not been much of a fan. 

When I was young, I started to learn the piano. Practice quickly became a joyless burden. Most days there would be this tense standoff between my parents and me about the if, when and how much. I came to hate it – both the piano and the practising.

I think the root of the problem was I didn’t want to play the piano for me – I was doing it for my parents. Desire is the key to motivation, they say.

And so to sport. As a kid, a scratch game of rugby with friends –  on a backstreet, in a playground, even occasionally on a nice patch of grass – was nothing but joy. The chase, the pace, the intuitive seeking of space. Only a few rules, agreed on the fly to suit the ‘field’ and players available. I loved it. But with schools and clubs came shirts. Shirts have numbers – and those come with a list of skills attached.

Like being able to kick an odd shaped ball. The first time I really tried, I was terrible. I looked around me – yep, plenty of people managing to boot the ball a good distance. A few making it look completely effortless. It didn’t occur to me that I could learn that skill – and that maybe they’d practised. 

My own expectation tripped me up. It left me with the ridiculous mindset that I should just be a naturally gifted kicker. What was it that Jedi Master Yoda said? “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”

He was so wrong. But I take a crumb of comfort from the company I used to keep.

In search of peace of mind

What changed me from a practice-a-phobe into a tolerably patient, focused, acolyte of the art of practising? It was a quest – overdue some would say – for a little less anxiety and a tad more peace of mind in my life. 

Here’s how it happened:

• I had a very clear goal and modest expectations  [ be ten percent happier ]
• I found a process – a practice – that others had tried, and seemed to work for them. So there was a workflow, and an element of trust too. 
• I bumped into a teacher that taught me how to perform that practice effectively – deconstructed it, shone a spotlight on each element, helped me decide where and how to make the necessary effort
• One of those elements was self-compassion – an essential part of any practising
• Seeing and feeling that practice work, a little every day

You and I could substitute pretty much anything in the square brackets above, and the recipe works just as well. In my case [ guitar playing ] and a couple of others. It works almost like magic, except, it’s backed up by cutting edge neuroscience too. 

Does the approach still work if you want to be the world’s best at something? Yes it does, so long as you’re not aiming to be the world’s best on Day 1. Don’t take my word on it – listen to The Practice of Practising podcast, where the brilliant Stephen Hough breaks down the routine he uses daily as an acclaimed concert pianist. Pretty sure the resurgent Simone Biles would say much the same things. 

At Cohesive we write stories – business content that connects on a very human wavelength, to promote trust and curiosity. Funnily enough, we  weren’t born writers – we practise every day. What we do, you can learn to do too. 

Here’s my colleague Sharon Tanton with some practices that you can try. 

Simple practices for improving your writing and content creation

Just start. If getting started is difficult, begin with ten minutes free writing by hand to get yourself into the swing of it. It doesn’t matter what you write, pick a sentence from the nearest book you have to hand, and use that as a jumping off point. Or write down what you can see, hear, and taste and see where that takes you. The point is to engage your creative brain, and get over that hurdle of whatever it is that’s stopping you. Blank pages, procrastination slumps, difficult concepts you haven’t yet figured out how to explain; there are lots of reasons we put off starting to write, and the ‘just write anything’ is the cure to them all.

Embrace a messy first draft.  Get as much as you can down, and figure out what to do with it later.

Pay attention to your headline. There are lots of great headline tools you can play with, and it’s well worth putting aside extra time at the end of your writing to write an attention-grabbing headline. I like the gamification of the Coschedule Headline Analyzer, but there are lots of others.

So just try and remember: practise makes progress, not perfection. If you’d like any more tips about how to start stories, that’s a link to an article you’ll find useful too.

Keep practising!