Member-only story
A 3-Step System to Become World-Class at Anything
Fragment it. Fuse it. Feel it.
Practice makes perfect, right? So why is it that countless people practice certain skills for hours on end, but very few ever become world-class? What matters is how we practice.
In his book The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else, Daniel Coyle discusses “deep practice,” a method used by world-class musicians, athletes, writers, and other masters of their craft. The idea is that the more new mistakes you can fix in a relatively short period of time, the faster you’ll make progress.
The trick, then, is to aggressively make and fix new mistakes instead of just repeating what you already know. Each time you fix a new mistake, new combinations of neurons fire in your brain, creating new mental pathways.
I’ve adapted Coyle’s research into a three-step practicing strategy: Fragment it, fuse it, feel it. You can use it to practice anything more deeply. Here’s how it works:
Fragment it: The easiest way to spot mistakes early is to chop your practice into the smallest unit that makes sense for your level of proficiency. If you’re a piano player, for example, it might make sense to study a new piece one musical bar at a time. If you’re a writer…
