Practice does not make perfect.

Part one in a series on habits.

There’s a paradigm that you are likely very familiar with: “Practice makes perfect”. It’s enticing, with the promise that if you keep working on something, you’ll become proficient and you’ll be better off in life as a result. But what if you’re becoming proficient in a habit that is worsening your life? 

Let’s use multitasking as an example of a habit that people might start because they think it’s beneficial. Who’s heard someone say “I’m really good at multitasking” or “I’m really bad at multitasking”? Either of those statements requires that you believe multitasking is evidence of higher functioning—that you can achieve more because you think you’re doing more at once. But if you investigate, you will find there’s no “multi” to the tasking. Our brains rapidly switch between tasks in a serial way, at a small but cumulative cost. That cost is distraction—our attention is divided between several things we are doing in rapid serial fashion.

The more you do it, the more a habit like this will persist in your life, even if you occasionally notice the cost. With multitasking, perhaps you get better at talking on the phone while watching TV, better at responding to a slack message while on a video call, better at texting while driving. If you slow down you can see you are getting increasingly proficient at a habit that increases your distractedness in life, and the cost is growing over time: distracted driving, distracted parenting, distracted video calls. 

Practice does not make perfect. It makes persistent. 

There is a way to use this to your advantage. What if you slowed down to examine your habits, noticing which ones improve the quality of life and which ones diminish it? What if you stopped practicing the habits in your life that are limiting you and instead chose to become proficient in the habits that improve your life?

That’s the work we do. We interrupt the path you’re on when it is unworkable or self-limiting, and help you slow down to choose a path you know will improve your life. 

As an exercise, consider writing a starter list of the habits you want to change. The wonderful thing about habits is that, just as you can make them, you can also break them. We know how this works. And habits are not as hard to change as you may have read. 

If you’d like to learn more about how coaching can help you change your habits, simply reply to this email.

To choosing the habits that work for you,

Tom and team