No Limits: The Art and Science of High Performance

by Mukesh Bansal

Research has shown that even medical professionals don’t necessarily show improvement with more years of experience. So, it isn’t just about spending a certain number of hours or years, repeating a skill mindlessly. What’s also needed is deliberate practice. What is deliberate practice? You can think of regular practice as coasting along within your comfort zone; while deliberate practice involves breaking down what you are trying to learn into smaller elements and specifically focusing on each step, pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone, and doing it again and again. For example, let’s visualise a sprinter working on their starting steps. Imagine that the sprinter takes their crouching stance on the starting block and takes off for a few steps until they are fully upright. Then they go back and do this again and again, while a coach observing them gives continuous feedback about what they’re doing right and what needs to be improved. Or imagine a badminton player practising hundreds of serves, but each time they only focus on their athletic stance during the serve, without caring about anything else. These athletes are engaged in deliberate practice—an extremely powerful tool to consciously refine something until it becomes second nature. This method can be translated to almost any task or skill in which one aspires to excel.