The next obstacle to developing grit is the feeling that you’re not making any progress. Even if you’re interested in a task, if you put in a lot of time and don’t feel you’re getting a reward, it’s hard to keep persevering.
The way to guarantee progress with your time is to conduct deliberate practice. This is a structured, disciplined way to put in time and get results.
Deliberate practice consists of 4 steps:
Note how deliberate this is, compared to merely putting in time absent-mindedly and going through the motions. Good practice requires deliberate effort to do every time.
Much of the deliberate practice concept comes from Anders Ericsson, who popularized the well-known idea that to become an expert, you need to invest roughly 10 years of hard work or 10,000 hours. Other evidence cited to support deliberate practice:
Deliberate practice is more effortful and less enjoyable than other forms of practice. Even world-class performers handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and can only do 3-5 hours of deliberate practice per day. Dancer Martha Graham described the path to achievement as "daily small deaths."
Even very motivated people don’t necessarily practice deliberately. (Shortform note: This could be part of the reason people complain that a person can work very hard but not succeed. It’s not just about putting in time, but also using that time efficiently to get the best results.)
Grittier people tend to find deliberate practice more enjoyable than less gritty people, and they also do more of it. It’s unclear what direction the causality is – grittier people could spend more time in practice because of their perseverance and develop a taste for it, or grittier people innately enjoy hard work and that pushes them to do more of it.
To increase deliberate practice, make it a habit. Figure out when and where you’re best at doing deliberate practice. Then commit to doing it then and there every day. This makes you get into deliberate practice automatically without thinking about it.
Furthermore, change how you feel about deliberate practice. Embrace the challenge and feel great at your improvement. Toddlers repeatedly try to learn to walk without getting anxious or embarrassed. Then they start getting cues that failure is bad from adults. Embrace it as "that was hard! It was great!"
How does this painful deliberate practice idea fit in with the idea of flow, described as "performing at high levels of challenge and yet feeling effortless," a pleasurable state often reached by top performers? Athletes and performers describe it as an automatic performance at a very high quality, done without thinking. Deliberate practice is effortful and painful; flow is effortless and enjoyable.
There may be no conflict. Deliberate practice is a behavior or a habit, and flow is an experience. Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow than non-gritty people. Deliberate practice and flow aren’t experienced at the same time.
In other words, deliberate practice improves your skill, and the challenge level exceeds your current skill. This practice allows you to achieve flow at a different time, when the level of challenge meets your level of skill - here you’re not analyzing your mistakes, you’re just doing.
Analogously, a figure skater toils through deliberate practice to perfect her jumps and spins. Then, on performance day, she allows her skill to engage automatically – she’s already trained for that moment.