Faith Venture

The phrase we learned went like this, “Practice makes perfect.”

That thought misleads us. The practice must be deliberate, intentional. I can’t just pick up my guitar and plunk away at a few chords and call it practice. I discovered 16 finger-picking patterns. I knew maybe three. Deliberate practice involves going through those patterns one-by-one until I master them.

Same with study. You can’t just pick up the Bible or other book, read a few sentences, and call it practice. Or even worship. Or service.

My reading led me to this set of practices uncovered by an organization called Teach for America. They identified these five practices of stellar teachers. These practices can apply to all of us for many of the things we do.

• They set big goals for their students and are perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.
• They’re obsessed about focusing every minute of classroom time toward student learning.
• They plan exhaustively and purposefully, “working backward from the desired outcome.”
• They work “relentlessly”…”refusing to surrender.”
• They keep students and their families involved in the process.

These first four sound like deliberate practice. “Customers” or “members” can be substituted for “students and their families” for the rest of us.

A hat tip to Cal Newport for starting this thinking.

This entry was posted on June 10, 2024 at 7:24 am and is filed under Disciplines. 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.