How you practice is more important than how often you practice.

“If you want to achieve mastery, you must learn to practice deliberately.” — Ken Sterling

There was once a woman who went to another city for an urgent work leaving her two teenage boys with an assignment: To take care of her garden.

She had been taking care of her plants in her beautiful garden for years, making her garden the best in the neighborhood.

She told her boys to take care of her plants while she is away for a few weeks.

Her sons started taking care of their garden the next morning. They watered every plant before they went to school.

The next day, they woke up early and went outside to their garden. And stopped suddenly when they saw something that was not there the day before.

Weeds.

The boys talked to each other. They decided to water the garden, leaving the weeds as they are.

The next day ….

The weeds in the entire garden had magically popped up and increased in numbers. The boys did not learn the lesson.

They ignored the weeds and watered the plants continuously for the next few days.

Until their mother returned to their home.

She found her garden a mess.

She called her boys and told them about the necessity of pulling weeds. And that they must be done even if they hate that chore.

She taught them that a way of keeping plants alive is by watering and at the same time taking out the weeds every day.

Forget about the 10,000-hour theory.

Here’s why. Mastery is achieved through practice. Practice and repetition are not the same. The (known, and often attributed to Einstein) definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

What is the difference between insanity and practice, if practice also means doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

Practice is noticing how you are doing that same thing differently.

Some days, you do better than the day before. A good day deceives you into believing you are improving.

What if the next day you get worse? What do you do when you start going backward?

Everybody does because progress is never linear.

Practice is less about repetition and more about observation, discipline and getting to know yourself.

Mastery is the command of this experience.

Passive practice will not make you achieve mastery.

“If you want to achieve mastery, you must learn to practice deliberately.” — Ken Sterling

Let me share with you what I’ve learned about mastering a skill.

First, practice is important.

After 18 months of continuously writing and publishing my articles on many platforms (my blog, Quora, and Medium), I am now a better writer than I was a year ago.

Secondly, practice alone is not enough.

You have to regularly check on what you are practicing. You have to improve on what is working and learn from what is not working.

Remember, those teenage boys who continued watering their garden by ignoring the weeds that were right in front of them.

Simply repeating one thing will not make us a master at that thing.

“Passive practice does not lead to mastery.” — Ken Sterling

How you practice is more important than how often you practice.

So, yes. I have practiced writing relentlessly. But I have also checked my writing on an everyday basis. I have learned from other best writers. Abandoned style of writing that did not work. And I am still practicing deliberately.

This is how I am mastering my writing skills.

And this is true for any skill you are trying to develop.

To your inspirations,

Banchi