What good practice looks like: 7 Methods for Improving Repetition

Now, lets have a look at the sort of activities you can use to practice almost anything.

Remember, our target is to overcome the limits of our working memory. There three ways to do that:

1. Focus: decrease distractions
2. Offload: use some external medium like a piece of paper
3. Practice: increase the size of the chunks

Only practice leads to sustained improvement. It does that by developing embodied mental schemas that can be inserted into it as chunks. We have talked about how to identify those mental schemas (or representations) to target, lets now talk about how to develop them.

As always, we are relying on the experience of others rather than a deep scientific insight into what our brains look like on the inside. But, for the most part, we don’t see any great contradictions between the two.

Characteristics of a “true” practice session

How do you know that you have had a true deliberate practice session? For a session to count as practice, it should:

1. Have a practice target: Before you start your session, know what you are going to practice. It is so easy to waste your time by thinking about what to do.
2. Focus the practice session on one thing: Do not try to practice too many things at once. Ideally, you are just focusing on one aspect of your performance. Sometimes, you may combine more than one but then treat them as one.
3. Focus on problems only: Repeating on what you already know well is not helping. You should try to push yourself and that requires that you repeat the areas where you struggle.
4. Log what you’re doing: Make a record of what you did. Combine qualitative and quantitative aspects - how much you wrote, how you felt about the process or how you feel about the outcome. This will become very important later on but even during the time, it will help you solidify the outcomes of the session. Do NOT think of the practice session as finished until you have made a note about it (it is better to shorten the practice time and take some notes and reflect than not to reflect at all).
5. Plan for next time: This takes us back to point 1. If you make a plan for what you should be doing during the next practice session, it will make it easier to come to the next one prepared for success. This can very much be a part of your reflection and logging process but it is better to make it explicit because not having clear tasks at the start of practice is probably the most common cause for people not making the most of their time or even skipping the practice / work session altogether.

This brings up an important question! What if my practice session is not a ‘true’ deliberate practice session? Remember, any practice is better than no practice.

Maybe you haven’t remembered to set a practice target last time - or you find that it was the wrong target. Still, you will at least get some practice.

Or maybe you haven’t logged what you did. But hopefully, you made a mental note of what you did and that gave you some space for reflection.

Does work count as practice?

Next question is: Can you combine work and practice? Does doing the actual tasks you are practicing count as practice? The answer is, possibly but only if you are getting enough feedback.

As we saw, people often regress slightly after they have reached a plateau. That is because normal repetition of the task does not give enough feedback for improvement. Also, in normal practice some of the tasks that you are most likely to need practice to improve do not come up often enough to give you actual repetition.

Andy Matuschak [REF] describes his experience of getting worse at sight reading sheet music because he did it less as part of his learning of more advanced pieces. At the same time, his lack of skill at sight reading made it more difficult for him to progress further.

Research shows [REF] that doctors get much better at diagnosing their patients with experience up to a certain point and then they regress slightly because they stop paying attention to improving and many of the issues they may need to diagnose simply do not come up often enough for them to keep up their skills.

So, simply doing something regularly (even if it feels like every day) will not help you improve. But you can certainly insert some elements of true practice into your work. Most important of these is reflection and focused repetition. If you reflect on what you are doing, you will notice choke points. You can then introduce little bouts of focused repetition to help you improve.

Reflection without action is not enough and neither is action without reflection. But the reflection must not be confused with meditation. The reflection has to be deliberative. It has to focus on performance and building the sort of embodied mental schemas that can be used to overcome limitations of working memory.

What this means in practice is that if you want to improve while doing the actual work, you have to inject elements of deliberate practice. This will mean that you will sometimes have to pause and repeat something you did (maybe several times and in different ways) and assess how it contributes to your performance.

Which brings us to the question of what actual practice will look like.

What does practice look like? What kinds of activities should you perform?

So far, we’ve been talking about why practice, what to practice towards, and how to structure programme of practice. This is not an accident. In many ways knowing the goal of practice, how to apply it, and so on, is more important. The actual practice activities will offer themselves naturally and will differ based on what you came to practice. But using some clear examples and lessons from others, will help you save time and avoid too many dead ends. (While remembering that some dead ends are inevitable and are a part of the learning process).

7 Methods for Improving Practice

At heart, practice is nothing more than pure repetition of patterns of performance in a feedback rich environment. We already discussed the importance of feedback and broad patterns of performance. But here are some typical and effective approaches to making the repetition more effective.

1. Varying the size of chunks
2. Substitution
3. Back chaining
4. Varying speed
5. Adding rhythm
6. Adding constraints
7. Adding visualisation

Varying the size of chunks

Chunking is the ultimate target but also a very powerful method. When repeating, vary the size of chunks you work with. When you repeat, try with the smallest possible chunks first, then increase them in size. And then reduce them again but using different boundaries. This technique is very common in language learning but also in music, and runners use it, as well.

Here is an example of how you could use the technique to practice the Czech example above:

You want to internalise the pattern for Staré knihy jsou támhle (old books are over there) so that you can perform some actions with it*.* Start with staré knihy (old books) and then jsou támhle (are over there) but also add knihy jsou (books are) into the mix. And then combine these chunks in different ways staré knihy jsou (old books are) and knihy jsou támhle (books are over there).

Backchaining

Backchaining is the same as varying the size of chunks but starting from the end. You can do it for individual components of larger patterns. In language, it works at the level of words, sentences or even paragraphs. But in other disciplines it may only work for certain components or actions.

So in the example above, you would start repeating ‘hle’ then add ‘tám’ to it to make up ‘támhle’. Or should start with jsou and then add knihy to the front of it to make up knihy jsou. The principle is obvious but people often do not realise how many variations there are.

Varying speed

In real life, performance happens in many speeds. Speed is usually not the primary target of practice (unless you are practicing for a race or typing championship) but fluency is. Being in control over speed is very important. In some ways, that is the definition of fluency.

So, it is not the speed that is important but the variation. Speed up and slow down. Repeat in different bursts of speed. Have sessions that focus on repeating things very slowly, sessions where you focus on speed, and sessions where you vary.

Of the different speed variations, slowing down is probably the most effective. This is probably because most people find it unnatural. What you should is repeat something so while slowing down to the point of feeling strange and then try to stay at that speed. Use this slow speed to really focus on your performance.

When speeding up, don’t just rush to get it over with. Speed up with a purpose. Even if just for a short burst to get used to the idea of greater speed. Set a timer or even a metronome (see below) and slowly increase it with each repetition.

To continue with our example above:

Have flashcards of a number of words and flip them around for increasingly short periods of time to see how well you can recognise the words.

Next start speaking the words and phrases as slowly as possible. First, do it in English to get used to the idea. Then in Czech. Slow down more and more.

Next vary the speed, pronounce one word very slowly and then the next one as fast as possible.

Start recording yourself. Record yourself while speaking very slow and then much faster. Is your pronunciation still as accurate at the higher speed? Again, speed without accuracy is no good.

One of the reasons varying speed is so useful is that it involves the whole body. Even if you are trying to speed up just in your mind, your posture changes (either literal or metaphorical). You become more involved, increase focus. And also reduce boredom.

Add rhythm

As we started playing around with speed, we started to introduce elements of rhythm almost without trying. It is important to do this explicitly, to take advantage of the bodily nature of speed work.

There are many ways you can do this depending on the activity:

1. Start tapping a rhythm with your foot or hand
2. Create a chant that follow a certain rhythm (it could be a march or a flowing rhythm as in classical music or a choir)
3. Listen to different music in the background varying speed and beat (usually you want to keep it to instrumental music but in very physical activities music with words may be fine)
4. Use a metronome and set it to different speeds (there are many apps that will do this for you)

This is very easy to do with language. In fact, there are books published that do this for English (Jazz chants):

To practice knihy jsou, you can:

1. sing it to a different songs
2. clap your hands at the start of each word
3. clap your hands at start of each syllable

Of course, you can and should combine speed and rhythm with all the other variations we’ve seen so far.

Substitution

Substitution is essential. You cannot just repeat the same thing over and over. So, substitute the parts of the pattern you are repeating. Again, this is at the heart of language learning (and writing) but is common to most practice. To continue with the example above:

The next step would be to learn to substitute other words into the same pattern new, cheap, good for old, or here for over there. And so on. You would then repeat them in different combinations until they the whole pattern becomes one flexible chunk you can read without processing individual components.

Substitution is essential when you want to progress and you want to build more generalised schemas. Repeating the same thing over and over without adding other contexts will not be enough to develop more general schemas.

For example, when learning a language, all the repetition we have done so far would work for a single sentence or maybe a handful of phrases that would serve you well on a holiday abroad. But not for a whole language.

Adding constraints and changing contexts

You have to train for making mistakes. James Hoffman, world barista champion [REF]

You almost never get to do what you do in ideal conditions. But it is not just matter of conditions, it is the variation in what you do. Your embodied mental schemas have to be flexible enough to adapt to new inputs or drive your change.

One very useful way to expand the flexibility of your mental schemas is to introduce constraints into your practice. These could be natural or artificial.

Natural constraints are the sort of things that may happen to you when you need to perform an action. For example, there may be noise, or you may be interrupted by pop ups on your computer. Or you may have limited time, or feel really exhausted.

You can focus on these in your practice. Practice in noisy conditions, have your email client or Twitter open next to your word processor and practice not looking at it. Or commit to writing 3 times for 10 minutes in a day rather than once for 30 minutes and do it after a meeting or after a meal.

This has to be deliberate. Do NOT use this as an excuse to have bad practice hygiene. Make sure that you identify a condition you are trying to practice and focus on designing practice conditions you want to improve it. You must also take note of your response to the disruption and improvement under those conditions.

Remember, it is not a good idea to introduce a lot of distraction into your practice routine without a purpose.

Artificial constraints are paradoxically more useful than natural constraints. They serve two purposes:

1. Provide more avenues of developing flexible and usable embodied schemas
2. Make practice more varied and enjoyable

There is a whole approach to coaching in some sports that is built around artificial constraints. For example, a catcher in a game may be thrown foam balls or players learning to catch balls have to catch irregular objects instead. Of course, they still practice with regular balls most of the time but these constraints serve to develop more flexibility.

Musicians will often practice with just one hand or by skipping certain keys on their instrument. A common practice for developing musical sensibility is to play expressively with just one or two notes.

In language related practice, like writing, there are many opportunities for introducing artificial constraints that will clearly help you develop different schemas better. Here are some examples:

• Avoid words beginning with letters H and W
• Don’t use the letter J at all
• Never start your sentence with a noun
• Write a paragraph where every last word in a sentence is a rhyme on the previous one
• Limit your sentences to 12 words
• Write every sentence with 32 words or more
• Write every other sentence from back to front

Unlike with the natural constraints which should be used sparingly and more deliberately, you can introduce artificial constraints more often just to spice up your practice routine. Because they are so artificial, they will not lead you to develop bad habits but will rather make you a more flexible performer.

Location and time changes

One specialised way of adding constraints is to change locations and times of practice. Having stability is important to habit formation which help you ensure you practice regularly. For example, having a stable place to write or practice your vocabulary can be very useful. You may find it easier to get started and focus better when you are in your comfortable place. The same goes for having a regular schedule.

And you should spend significant time and effort to establish such times and places when you do your best work. Particularly, when you are starting out. But performance does not always happen in one time or place. And even if it did, you may not always be able to pick your time or place.

That’s why it is important to practice varying the time and place you do your practice. Again, this should not be something that may or may not happen. Be deliberate about it. If you find, that you can only do practice or work at a certain time and place, practice doing it at different times. For instance, write at the end of the day instead of at the beginning once a week. Or do your drills in the park or cafe, instead of a at home.

Adding meaning through visualisation

As I keep repeating, pure repetition is not enough. We don’t get better any more after a while by mindlessly repeating the same thing. All the techniques we discussed so far will automatically inject a bit of reflection into your repetition. This will help you develop better, more flexible representations (embodied mental schemas) that will then become available to working memory as usable chunks when you need them.

It seems that these chunks can be very large and one thing that makes them richer and more usable is meaning. It is easy to loose sight of the meaning as you are repeating what you are doing - even when you vary the repetition. But you should always keep your practice meaningful.

Visualisation is a powerful way to inject meaning into your practice. As you are practicing, thing about using the skill in a real context. Imagine your conversation partner, imagine your readers, or imagine the place you will run through. If you watch professional skiers before a race, you will see that alongside stretching and warming, they have their eyes closed and move their body in different shapes. They are running the course in their mind - they are using visualisation.

Do that as often as possible.

Not everyone can easily recall rich images in their mind at will. But you can always rehearse the context verbally in your head. Just think about all the steps you have to take. There are two ways to add meaning through visualisation:

1. Internal to the activity: Visualise the time and place where you do something. Think about the people around you, think about the purpose, think about what it will look like during or after. This could as simple as saying: ‘when I sit at my computer, I will click here to open Word, and then click in the last paragraph and start writing’ or it could be more elaborate. But when you practice, always think about what it will look and feel like when you do it in the real context. For example, when you are practicing vocabulary with a flashcard, think about using the word or phrase in context. But that does not just mean “in a sentence”. Visualise yourself saying or writing this in a real situation or several. Visualisation is like free travel.
2. External to the activity: Not all of your visualisation has to be about what you are practicing. Sometimes you can use mnemonic devices to build useful associations. That is how the famous ‘mental palace technique’ works. You associate the thing you want to remember with a powerful image, so that it is easier to recall, focus and remove other distractions. But that is also how motivational mantras work. As you are practicing, think to yourself about how much you are going to enjoy being better at what you are doing. Then when you are doing it, you can think back and appreciate all the work you’ve done. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Practicing to practice

All of the techniques for improving practice are skills. And skills need practice to get better at them. This is how scaffolding works. If you want to build a building, you have to build a scaffold to help you. Without it, you can’t build the building. But it is work, it takes time and resources.

So, you should spend some time to practice your practice techniques. Reflect on whether you are doing them right and what you could improve. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on most of them but allocate about 5% of your practice time to this.

Sometimes, the technique itself is so complicated that it is its own skill. Or at least for some people. For example, many beginning musicians struggle to use the metronome or to count to help them keep rhythm. That in itself is a skill to develop and requires its own practice even if it is not something to use during performance.

The same goes for tools such as apps for writing or note taking. They all require their own level of skill that needs to be performed with certain minimal level of fluency and accuracy. Much of the time people just achieve those after a few repeats. But if you find, that you can only do practice or work at a certain time and place, practice doing it at different times. For general, people underestimate how much better their other work could be, if they practiced to use their tools a bit more.

Intentionality

One last thing that will make repetition more powerful is intentionality. You are practicing with the intention of improving your performance. You are not doing it for the sake of practice. You are not doing it just as a random mindless repetition during every day activity.

You are introducing a certain amount of intentionality just by calling it practice. But you can do even more. Think explicitly about what your repetition is doing to improve your mental schemas. Focus on that and evaluate it from that perspective. You may think of it as a special kind of visualisation (meta visualisation).

Intentionality is also another way of introducing focus and attention into your practice. Those are both really important but they take a lot of effort and not-everybody finds that easy. By doing something with the intention of improving your working memory, you will find that you are more mindful of how distractions interfere with that.

One way to help intentionality is to set a timer and log what you are doing. That simple action tells your body that this is about something different. People still do get distracted and this is something that you may need to practice. But it is worth it. Tell yourself that you will not look at email, turn on music, go get a cup of coffee, during the time the timer is running (anywhere between 5 and 50 minutes). And practice how long you can do it. Make setting the timer a part of the ritual - a trigger for intentional, focused work.

You can even introduce intentionality into your regular practice. Just pause sometimes, redo an action you just did while thinking about how you could do it slightly better. Repeat it once more to see, if you change made a difference.