Deliberate Practice

We've all heard the saying that practice makes perfect. But is it enough to simply practice the same routine or task over-and-over in order to become a true expert at something?

Deliberate practice is the process involved in practising the task or activity that one is trying to master - but focusing specifically on the bits that one is not so good at.

For example: a tennis player may need to focus on her serve in order to improve their game. So they might spend many sessions deliberately practising the serve which they're not very good at, to improve their serve. Over time this practice will results in a much greater improvement in the server. This improvement of the serve will contribute to the overall improvement of their ability to play tennis.

So what's going on inside the brain when we're deliberately practising? 

Recall the two thinking modes: focused and diffuse. When we practice something we're in the focused mode. What we're doing is creating that neural pathway (like the way the pinball moves from target to target) every time we practice something.

The problem is: the specific neural pathway involved in completing a task needs to be repeated in order for the brain to be able to recall it later quickly.

This process of the brain recalling previously practised neural pathways is called chunking. If I want to put my jumper on it requires very little thought. This is because, over time, I have deliberately practised getting dressed so much that all of the individual tasks (neural pathways) that make up the overall process have been chunked together.

So by using deliberate practice we can turn a task or action that we're not so good at (such as learning to ride a bicycle) into something that comes very easily. Once the neural pathway (in the focused mode) has been walked enough times it becomes engraved in our memory as a chunk.

Further reading: The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.