Beyond 'Good Enough': The Power of Deliberate Practice

able to go past just their mistakes and eventually were able to practice for a certain amount of time and make progress without wasting any of that.

This goes deeper when Ericsson says that people usually just practice until they’re good enough. This means that you would practice tennis, per say, and you’d start with no prior knowledge of the sport. You’d then practice until you were pretty good….. and was it. You wouldn’t go any further in your work with tennis. This is what Ericsson is talking about when he says good enough. By using deliberate practice you’d be able to go above and beyond good enough. With a certain goal in mind each time you practice you’d be able to work to your fullest potential, rather than settling for good enough.

Once an overall goal has been set, a teacher or coach will develop a plan for mak- ing a series of small changes that will add up to the desired larger change. Improving some aspect of the target performance allows a performer to see that his or her performances have been im- proved by the training. (pg. 99) This is applicable to me because of the fact that when I’m learning some new piece of music I’m not accustomed to the sound or how it’s played. This means that my first attempt in playing the song is naturally very different in correctness but also in the way it sounds. My teacher will give me the music to play, I’ll attempt it, then hear it’s proper sound and correct my mistakes and continue to do so when I practice until it’s as perfect as I can make it.

• Deliberate practice is deliberate, that is, it requires a person's full attention and conscious actions. It isn't enough to simply

I will practice what we did in class until It’s near perfection. I’ll also make sure to start or finish any Smart Music. I’ll be doing Smart Music on a regular basis as it’s assigned rather than doing all in one night. This will make it easier for me to do better on the assignments rather than do poorly on them and have to play catch up. I will not be playing any sports so the only thing that would interfere with my practice an excess of homework or a test. My goals for the upcoming semester is to be able to play my music after it has been assigned; so by the next class period. In terms of my practicing, I’d like to be able to play everything when it’s assigned rather than at the last minute. I’d also like to get higher scores in Smart Music, and this can be achieved by me doing things on a schedule, which was talked about earlier, rather than all at once. Finally I’d like to be able to understand the music a lot better the first time through and I can do this by making sure that I pay close attention for my fingering as well as how the music is supposed to