Practice time
Email smarter. Present better. Get handy with ChatGPT. We regularly resolve to develop new skills. But often we don’t plan enough practice time to really master something.
How long?
Everyone understands that learning a new skill takes time. But how much? How long does it take to practice to become adept at something?
Some immediately shout: 21 days (a popular myth). Or: 10,000 hours (also a myth).
A better answer is: it depends. Of which? Including what you want to learn, how good you want to become, your circumstances, how talented you are and how you practice.
Is there absolutely nothing to be said about the practice time required for a specific skill? With a little googling you will find some rough indications. Learning to ride a bike: one to two hours of practice. Using Excel professionally: eighteen hours. Playing pop songs on the guitar: practicing fifteen minutes every day for ten weeks. Learn to speak Spanish fluently: 600 hours.
No time
During study days I like to ask participants how much time they have reserved in their agenda to practice what they have learned. Often the answer is: none. With one exception, learning something new must be done ‘on the side’ or ‘in the work’.
But if you want to get better at leading meetings, for example, you really need to schedule some time before and after the meetings. For basic learning activities such as preparing, practicing and reflecting.
Anyone who reserves insufficient learning time and still hopes to improve at something will be disappointed. You start to think more negatively about yourself (I’m a clumsy), about the skill (meetings are nonsense) or about both. The trick is to invest enough time to get out of this sad initial phase.
What helps?
Suppose you do set aside time to get better at something, what is a good approach? Two pieces of advice from research.
1. Distributed learning: education experts recommend often and to practice briefly on a new skill. This leads to better performance that you can maintain for longer than if you practice one or more times for a long time. Distributed learning or spaced learning That’s what it’s called in the professional literature. So if you really want to become handy with Excel, it is better to practice for an hour on eighteen working days than for four and a half hours on four working days.
2. Slight variation: which also leads to better performance is vary a bit in what you practice. Don’t repeat the same thing over and over again, but, for example, always change and improve the way you prepare and deliver a presentation. Small variations on what you have already learned ensure that you master a skill faster and better.
And what always helps, of course, is a little sense of reality. If you want to learn Spanish but only have 60 hours, just be content with it conversations and idioms yip y janneke.
Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.