Focused Edge Interval Practice

What is FEIP? We'll get to that, first let me tell you a story

I was having chat with my kids and they were dreaming of the day they finish school so they won’t have to do homework or practice anything.

I let them dream until they asked what i was doing and i explained that when you start working you start learning other things and practicing all the time to get better and be relevant.

I happened to be reading a book and trying to solve a problem for work. So I told them about the concept of edge practice and how it helps us learn skills. I highly recommend “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle (get it here: https://danielcoyle.com/the-talent-code/) if you’re interested in edge practice.

After this chat i went for a run, sorta, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with HIIT (high-intensity internal training) it’s fairly common now but just in case read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training.

Don’t worry this isn’t a humble brag. I have 3 kids and not super young anymore and i’m trying to get back in shape after the lock-downs. I find HIIT to be a good way to get exercise in a short space of time, say 30 min before i’m too fatigued to make good use of the time for exercise.

I have been doing something called a fartlek (means speed play in Swedish, read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartlek) for two reasons first i know how to do it from my old triathlon days many moons ago and second it offers HIIT intervals and also a build up.

This second point is important to me and one of the ideas that lead to FEIP. I’ve discovered as i get older that i don’t adapt or transition as fast as i used to. This could be waking up in the morning, changing focus during work tasks, or getting warmed up for exercise.

The Fartlek allows me to alternate from low intensity to high intensity while also easing into or building up the speed/intensity while decreasing the interval. So what does this have to do with professional learning? 

When trying to learn or improve a skill the initial practice is slow, methodical, uncomfortable, and much time is spent on correcting small issues when trying to complete a task. This can be disheartening for people when they are trying to say prospect to 10 accounts with a new product line and they aren’t clear on how to message or communicate.

Think of me trying to warm up my legs to run. I’m not a natural runner I have to remind myself to relax my shoulders, arms, and hands. Lead with my knees and press down to create a strike with speed. This takes me a bit of time and the method (Fartlek) allows me to do this and by the end I’m sprinting full speed without thinking about running form.

Back to the work analogy. The first of the 10 can take the longest. My pitch is to embrace that transition as you work out how to send the first one you’ll correct ideas, learn new information, and often understand it better as you look to educate the recipient. By the time you finish the last few fly by as you hone the skill.

I’m arguing that the set period of time doesn’t have to be split into even intervals. Taking the time to improve the skill on the initial transition is important for learning and in the subsequent repetitions you’ll pick up speed.

The second benefit is managing fatigue. There are tons of articles talking about WFH or digital fatigue and i find that setting a fixed time for a set of tasks helps manage time and sanity. After the set time take a break. Sometimes I just sit with my 3 year old and whatever she is doing for 15min because its guaranteed to be different and that’s good.

You can determine your own intervals and if you have more than our example of ten you can have multiple intervals in a day. I prefer to use 1 hour to include focused time and a break.

So what is FEIP or Focused Edge Interval Practice

• Focused - taking time to focus on the skill, task, topic. Make sure its something you want to improve.
• Edge - learning, practicing on the edge of your skillset. If its comfortable and automatic you won’t be learning. This method is about improving you.
• Interval - set an interval for 1 or more repetitions and don’t feel guilty about putting it down at the end of the interval.
• Practice - No short cuts. Learning and improving both take practice and repetition. Whether its a pitch, push-up, or run.

So how do you get started? I’m in sales so let’s take a standard flow for stories.

Goal - let’s say you want to learn the messaging for a new product line focused on cloud. We’ll over simplify and stop with discovery meeting messaging.

Challenge - This is not the core business and you currently aren’t comfortable with cloud as a theme.

Solution - setup a FEIP schedule as part of your personal cadence to build up skills

Benefit - you’ll build up the skill of messaging cloud until it becomes automatic.

To realize the benefits you’ll need to learn how to do the following: 

1. outbound messaging - email/phone/messaging/social
2. Messaging and social snippets, email template, then call template.
3. Meeting messaging

• opening - 30 sec - 3 min
• Big real world problem
• challenges and needs
• outcomes and solutions
• benefits & next steps

You probably guessed I’m a fan of story telling the story telling arc. If you’re not familiar you can start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_arc

And specifically I’m a fan of the heroes journey concept here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

TLDR summary:

1. Practice need focus: scheduled time including work and rest internals
2. Practice for improvement requires pushing to the edge of skill set. Rule of thumb: if it’s comfortable or automatic it’s not edge.
3. Accomplish what you can during the interval and don’t feel guilty about putting the idea down until the next interval or scheduled time for execution.
4. Practice is about making mistakes and getting better. The first attempt will be the hardest and take the longest. This is also true of the first interval. This is ok embrace the effort as the struggle on the edge is where learning happens.
5. Story telling arc: Goal, Challenge, Solution, Benefit (or a variation on those words with the order the same)

• Meetings, parts of meetings, and messaging can be broken into story arcs.

Thanks for reading, if you have something related to share please do and comments are always welcome.

Next time I’ll cover story arc as the foundational building block for messaging and meetings.