Practice is the breakfast of champions, but not all practice is created equal. That old adage, where it is the mileage of your accumulated pencil strokes that makes all the difference? Well, yes and no.
Sitting down and pointlessly noodling on the page is almost worthless. There are some people I
know who have been 'practicing' in this way for 10 years and they are getting nowhere.
Like all undertakings, great and small, perfect growth inducing practice needs to be focused and disciplined.
This type of practice requires two things:
1. A singular focus.
2. Discomfort.
A singular focus means just that, you should aim to improve one or at max two aspects of your game and nothing more. You can choose to either practice the things you're already good at and make them greater, or your can practice the things you suck at - I generally prefer the latter.
Tiger Woods, regardless of his extramarital affairs is a great example of the singular focus, he will often go to the range and work on a single type of difficult shot for hours to bring up his overall game.
Secondly, discomfort is a sign of stretching your skill set, if you always feel warm and fuzzy doing your 'practice' it means you're probably re-treading prior knowledge. Discomfort means you are at the a current boundary of a particular skillset and are pushing beyond what you know to be safe and do-able. It is dicomforting because there is a real chance you will not be able to successfully pull off what you are wanting to practice, failure comes with the territory of growth, and most people are shit scared of failure.
Most people naturally push this boundary when they are new, and then pull back from it when they achieve a decent level of proficiency - my advice is to always push that boundary, whether you are 8 weeks into learning art, or 80 years into learning art, the complexity of visual reality guarantees an infinite stream of knowledge that you can learn from, for the rest of your life.
When singular focus and discomfort are present, then 'pencil mileage' will actually mean something.
Work harder, D.
Like all undertakings, great and small, perfect growth inducing practice needs to be focused and disciplined.
This type of practice requires two things:
1. A singular focus.
2. Discomfort.
A singular focus means just that, you should aim to improve one or at max two aspects of your game and nothing more. You can choose to either practice the things you're already good at and make them greater, or your can practice the things you suck at - I generally prefer the latter.
Tiger Woods, regardless of his extramarital affairs is a great example of the singular focus, he will often go to the range and work on a single type of difficult shot for hours to bring up his overall game.
Secondly, discomfort is a sign of stretching your skill set, if you always feel warm and fuzzy doing your 'practice' it means you're probably re-treading prior knowledge. Discomfort means you are at the a current boundary of a particular skillset and are pushing beyond what you know to be safe and do-able. It is dicomforting because there is a real chance you will not be able to successfully pull off what you are wanting to practice, failure comes with the territory of growth, and most people are shit scared of failure.
Most people naturally push this boundary when they are new, and then pull back from it when they achieve a decent level of proficiency - my advice is to always push that boundary, whether you are 8 weeks into learning art, or 80 years into learning art, the complexity of visual reality guarantees an infinite stream of knowledge that you can learn from, for the rest of your life.
When singular focus and discomfort are present, then 'pencil mileage' will actually mean something.
Work harder, D.
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