Quotes About Practice

She is practicing, because she knows that there is no difference between practice and art. The practice is the art.

When it comes to the practice of writing, it cannot be distraction that propels us but rather the patience—the openness, the willingness—to meet ourselves on the page. To stop being at the mercy of what we surround ourselves with, but rather, to discover our story.

creativity is not an easy equation. And there is no direct line. You are not born with it, and you cannot learn it. It is a combination of dedication, practice, study, passion, and desire all coming together at one time.

The sweet spot: that productive, uncomfortable terrain located just beyond our current abilities, where our reach exceeds our grasp. Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.

repetition. "Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts," he wrote in The Wisdom of Wooden.

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them—as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go—end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it.

Although talent feels and looks predestined, in fact we have a good deal of control over what skills we develop, and we have more potential than we might ever presume to guess.

Deep practice feels a bit like exploring a dark and unfamiliar room. You start slowly, you bump into furniture, stop, think, and start again. Slowly, and a little painfully, you explore the space over and over, attending to errors, extending your reach into the room a bit farther each time, building a mental map until you can move through it quickly and intuitively.

Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.

As the martial artist and actor Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times.

Struggle is not optional—it's neurologically required: in order to get your skill circuit to fire optimally, you must by definition fire the circuit suboptimally; you must make mistakes and pay attention to those mistakes; you must slowly teach your circuit. You must also keep firing that circuit—i.e., practicing—in order to keep myelin functioning properly. After all, myelin is living tissue.

Whenever you notice your mind wandering," a fundamental instruction in meditation advises, "bring your mind back to its point of focus." The operative phrase here is whenever you notice. As our mind drifts off, we almost never notice the moment it launches into some other orbit on its own.

An altered trait—a new characteristic that arises from a meditation practice—endures apart from meditation itself.

Meditation is a catch-all word for myriad varieties of contemplative practice, just as sports refers to a wide range of athletic activities. For both sports and meditation, the end results vary depending on what you actually do.

Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them - which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye - and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks.

Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them - which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye - and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks. The feedback matters and the concentration does, too - not just the hours.

The positive lens keeps the joy in practice and learning - the reason even the most seasoned athletes and performers still enjoy rehearsing their moves. You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive. You need both, but in the right ratio.

Whether we're trying to hone a skill in sports or music, enhance our memory power, or listen better, the core elements of smart practice are the same: ideally, a potent combination of joy, smart tactics, and full focus.

it seems likely that the states we practice in meditation gradually spill over into daily life to mold our traits—at least when it comes to handling stress.

Don't underestimate the value of practicing the guitar or keeping that promise to feed the guinea pig and clean its cage.

As he practiced more, added loving-kindness to the mix, and went on retreats, his PTSD symptoms gradually became less frequent, less intense.

What seems to set apart those at the very top of competitive pursuits from others of roughly equal ability is the degree to which, beginning early in life, they can pursue an arduous practice routine for years and years. And that doggedness depends on emotional traits—enthusiasm and persistence in the face of setbacks—above all else. The

Independientemente de que se trate de desarrollar una habilidad deportiva o musical, de fortalecer nuestra memoria o de escuchar a los demás, las claves de la práctica inteligente son siempre las mismas, una combinación agradable, en términos ideales, de alegría, estrategia inteligente y concentración.

Yvonne Sell, the Hay Group's director of the leadership and talent practice in the United Kingdom, who did the study, found such leaders are rare: only 18 percent of executives attained this level. Three-quarters of leaders with three or fewer strengths in people skills created negative climates, where people felt indifferent or demotivated. Lame leadership seems all too prevalent—more than half of leaders fell within this low-impact category.