What is the key to being good at what you love?

Is there something YOU love to do? Are you good at it? Perhaps, since “good” is a judgement call, but are you improving? Or, are you complaining about your performance?

To help you in your evaluation of your performance consider this … you are either growing or you’re going. “Going where?” The answer is “downhill.” If you think you are stuck at a particular level of performance, you are not. You are gaining ground or you are losing ground. By the way, this is in life as well.

Okay, so then what’s the action you need to take?

If you haven’t yet asked this question, it would be useful if you did. The answer is, “are you practicing and if so how much and with purpose?” For the person you admire as the greatest at what you do, the number of hours it took for them is 10,000. At least, the researcher and author Matthew Syed proposes that number and I concur.

Our tendency is to chalk up our performance to how much talent we have. You know, as in you either have it or you don’t. That leaves us to being born with it or not. Now, we are “off the hook” and it is the fault of our lineage. How convenient.

Probably the best athlete to ever play NBA basketball is Michael Jordan. His freshman year in high school he was cut from the basketball team. Just not good enough. However, he was so determined to play the game he practiced countless hours and made the team the next year and the rest is history.

Michael Jordan has two other sports he loves, baseball and golf. In neither of these is he able to perform even close to what he did in basketball. The problem is his lack of 10,000 hours of practice. He has worked hard in both cases. Just can’t put in the hours.

Practice is a particular period of time when you are able to refine your skills in your game. It is time for you to give maximum effort, make errors, learn and go again. It is a time to try new things without feeling bad about your performance. It being on-purpose about it and learning what is there to learn.

Give it some thought and get to work!

Need some weekend reading advice? Check out the selection of coaching books in the Coaching Bookstore. You may find exactly what you’re looking for!