What is Deliberate, Purposeful and Ordinary Practice?
There are three types of practice: naive (ordinary), purposeful, and deliberate. In order to improve we have to be hitting purposeful practice.
What is Ordinary Practice?
Ordinary practice is the type of practice where you repeat the same actions over and over without much thought, effort, or challenge. It becomes mindless, lacking focus and the push to improve.
A simple example is driving. Initially, you're focused on learning each component of driving, but once you’ve passed your test, your progress stalls. Someone driving for 30 years might not be much better than after five. This is due to ordinary practice, which becomes repetitive and doesn’t challenge you.
Similarly, in trading, simply increasing your screen time won’t lead to improvement unless it's purposeful.
What is Purposeful Practice?
There are four key elements to purposeful practice:
- Having a clear, specific goal
- Maintaining focus
- Pushing beyond your comfort zone
- Obtaining feedback.
For purposeful practice, you need to set clear, specific goals. A vague objective like “work on analysis” won’t cut it. Make your goals clear to reduce distractions and stay focused. Mix up your practice to keep improving multiple skills simultaneously.
Next is focus. Distractions weaken memory and learning. Limit practice sessions to 60-90 minutes to maintain intensity. As Nathan Milstein, a famous violinist, once said, “If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.”
Then pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone is important for growth. A "mistake-rich" environment is ideal for learning. You want to aim for a challenge-skill balance where you’re making errors about 15% of the time, as this keeps your brain alert and primed for learning.
Finally is feedback. It's not just about repeating actions but learning from your mistakes, solving problems, and making improvements.
What is Deliberate Practice?
Once you’ve mastered purposeful practice, you can transition to deliberate practice, the gold standard of learning.
This requires maximal effort and isn’t meant to be fun, it’s hard work, but that’s where growth happens. The main difference is that you have a coach to help you push past sticking points.
In the end, it’s up to you to keep challenging yourself. When practice feels too easy, increase the difficulty. Your learning is supposed to be tough and frustrating, that’s how you grow.