Sometimes people who’ve met me in recent years have trouble imagining that I once wanted to be a Great American Poet. No one had heard of deliberate practice back then, but I set up a regimen to practice my poetry that even Anders Ericsson would love.

I took strips of paper and wrote the name of a topic on each one. Topics were things like “love” and “joy” and “justice,” but also things like “peanut butter” and “roaches.” I put the strips of paper into a coffee can.

Then I took other strips of paper and I wrote the name of a verse form on each one. There were strips labeled “villanelle” and “Petrarchan sonnet” and “ballad” and “free verse.” I put those strips of paper in a different coffee can.

Every night I drew out a strip from each can. Then, before I went to bed, I wrote a poem in the form I’d drawn on the topic that was on the other slip. Some nights I went to bed very late.

This was not classic deliberate practice. But that only works for certain kinds of activities. It works quite well for music and golf. It works less well for dance and public speaking. It’s almost useless for activities like supervision.

You may not find “deliberate practice” helpful or even possible with some activities. But you can practice what I call “deliberate improvement.” Pick something to work on. Critique your performance. Adjust.

That’s simple and powerful. When I did that with my poetry I improved dramatically. Those exercises affected my writing forever after. That wasn’t the only benefit.

By doing the hard work of trying to improve, I learned two things. I learned that I didn’t love the work as much as I thought. Part of the reason was the other thing I learned: I wasn’t as good as I thought. So I took “Great American Poet” off my To Do list.

Working hard at deliberate improvement turns out to be a great way to find out if you really like something or not. If you don’t, move on.

You’ll carry lessons with you from your hard work that will enrich the rest of your life. And you give yourself the opportunity to find the thing that you love and can build a life and career on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 8:12 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.