A Deliberate Act.

It seems average tennis players focus on the ball, and would have no idea where the serve would go.?Whereas the best tennis players don’t look at the ball! ?They look at the opponent’s hips, shoulders, or arms which foretold where they would hit the ball.?The best tennis players know where the serve would go, and can position themselves on the court to return the serve even before the serve was hit by the opponent.?By the time the ball lands, they’d be in position to return the serve.

In an interview, a few years ago, one of tennis’ champion players, Andre Agassi of USA, narrated about how he got the better of another champion player, his then arch rival, Boris Becker of Germany.?

Researchers have uncovered that the best performers in any field deliberately learn and extensively practice to perceive more; to quickly spot and respond to the non-obvious, but important information that is valuable to a specific domain.?Deliberate practice helps acquire the specific abilities one needs to excel in a chosen field.?

Legend has it that Charles Haskell Revson, the co-founder of Revlon, could distinguish several different shades of black, a particularly difficult ask even for people who work with colors.?

Geoff Colvin articulates in his book “Talent Is Overrated” how deliberate practice requires a constant endeavor, for years, while extending one’s abilities in a field to amass knowledge.?Such a focused effort develops the critical connections that organize all that knowledge and makes it useful. Deliberate practice also involves an ability to get at long-term memory - remembering the acquired knowledge and using it in a fast and reliable way.?It further involves the hard work of consistently relating new information to higher-level concepts. Across realms, the required focus and concentration is so intense that it’s exhausting.?Tons of deliberate practice equals great performance.

Research shows how best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.?Best performers deliberately sketch exactly how to get to where they’re headed. They routinely use self-observation, what is termed ‘metacognition’ - the ability to step outside themselves and systematically monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it’s going.?Along with their ability to perform, and a strong belief that all their work will pay off for them, best performers stay motivated, with a deep feeling of fulfillment, and consistently perform their work.

Most of us are awed by the performances of champion sportspersons, expert musicians, great actors or such accomplished people.?We might have something to learn by studying how they became so accomplished, is a thought that doesn’t cross the minds of most.?It is for no reason it is said that the resource that is quite scarce in today’s global economy is ‘human ability’.