Last week we talked about Myelin, that white, fatty substance in our brains
The more we have of it wrapped around our neural pathways, the more talent we have
So uh, how do you get more of it?
That’s today’s secret for an awesome life: you develop talent by growing your myelin and you grow your myelin the fastest with deep practice.
Myelin is living tissue. You gotta keep it alive. You gotta feed it.
What do you feed it?
Practice. Practice, practice, practice.
But not just any type of practice. Something Daniel Coyle calls Deep Practice.
Which is a very specific way of practicing that covers the answers to three questions:
How hard, how fast, and how much.
When you practice, how hard should what you are practicing be?
If you’re learning the piano and you’ve mastered the basics, playing twinkle twinkle little star as practice won’t help much
But, if you try and play Beethoven’s 5th, you’ll be miserable
“This is so hard, so so so hard”
That’s why you gotta practice right in the sweet spot. What’s called the Zone of Proximal Development
It pushes you just enough, but not too much
It’s the best place to practice but it’s also uncomfortable, because you’re going to make mistakes
Which leads us to the next question
How fast should I practice?
This isn’t “how fast” meaning “how much time should I spend? 30 minutes?”
This is how fast should I expect to go. To improve. How quickly should I be moving on.
The answer is… not very.
We always want to learn faster than we can, then we get frustrated
But slow down! That’s actually how myelin grows the best. When you practice slow
Coyle says repeat the same thing over and over, make mistakes, and then stop immediately and fix the mistakes
If you’re practicing chess and make a mistake, don’t finish the game and fix the mistake later
He says fix it now, right away. Then repeat it again and again.
If practice is like feeding your myelin, then repetition, making mistakes, and fixing them immediately is like a lobster and steak dinner!
But Joey, I’ll never make it all the way through the thing I’m practicing if I keep stopping to fix my mistakes!
That leads us to the final question, how much of the thing should I be practicing?
The answer? Small chunks
By chunking up what you want to practice, it makes it easier to spot mistakes and fix them
What does this look like?
Well, I’ll give examples of talents that the teens who showed up live to last week’s Hero Training Room said they are wanting to improve this month:
If you’re playing the organ, practice the the first four measures of “The Spirit of God”
If you’re playing the cello, practice the first line of Bach’s Cello Suite #1
If you’re playing chess, practice opening moves
If you’re making more friends, practice starting conversations
If you’re improving your fielding in baseball, practice catching a grounder and throwing to first base
If you’re acting, practice one emotion on one line of a monologue
If you’re being less bored, practice filling just 30 minutes of your time with something worthwhile
I want you all to start doing deep practice starting this week
And I don’t want you to ever practice without it
Remember the answer to the three questions
How hard? In the zone of proximal development
How fast? Slow enough to repeat it over and over and fix the mistake right away
How much? Cut it up into smaller chunks. Get really good at one chunk, then move on to the next.
That is deep practice and your myelin will feast upon it and become so thick that the electrons in your brain will be firing like a machine gun
Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew
It’s hard, consistent work
But your myelin will grow big and strong!
Your myelin will eat other people’s myelin for breakfast