The Power of Repetition

Duncan Rawlinson via Compfight

The very first time you sat in the driver’s seat, did you think you could just turn on the engine and drive that car away? Did you try? My guess is, if you did, it didn’t work out too well for you. You maybe stalled the car, or it went somewhere you hadn’t intended it to, or you kangarooed down the road.

But now?

Now you can drive, right? And it’s easy, isn’t it?

When you stop and think about it, driving a car would seem to involve a great deal of brainpower. Your attention has to be constantly engaged on the road ahead, and behind, (your brain having to interpret the back to front information your eyes are receiving from the rear view mirror) taking in other cars and pedestrians, judging speeds, distances, possible dangers, reading traffic signals and signs, and all the time your hands and feet are responding to various commands from your brain as you steer, change gear, depress the clutch, the brake, or the accelerator, and often a simultaneous combination of many of these actions.

But you do it, and quite often you do it without thinking about it.

That’s the power of repetition.

You took driving lessons, you practiced, and now you probably drive every day, and have been doing for years.

If you want to learn a new skill, you need to find someone (or a learning resource such as a book or DVD) to teach you that skill. Then you need to put that skill into action every day, and practice.

Maybe you want to learn how to play the electric guitar, or teach yourself plumbing, or how to write a novel, or surf big waves, or run a marathon, or seven marathons back to back.

Work on your skill set everyday, and the power of repetition will make make you, perhaps not great, but good enough.

And good enough is what matters.

 

A quick note on ‘good enough’. I doubt very much that anybody drives a car ‘perfectly’. You drive it well enough that it gets you from where you were, to where you want to be, on time, and without incident to you and others. Isn’t that the whole point of what you wanted to achieve when you got in the car?

Don’t get hung up on perfect.