More research is needed to settle the question, and in the next few years, I’m hoping that Ericsson, Csikszentmihalyi, and I can collaborate to do exactly that.
Currently, my view is that the primary motivation for doing effortful deliberate practice is to improve your skill. You’re concentrating one hundred percent, and you’ve deliberately set the level of challenge to exceed your current level of skill. You’re in “problem solving” mode, analyzing everything you do to bring it closer to the ideal—the goal you set at the beginning of the practice session. You’re getting feedback, and a lot of that feedback is about what you’re doing wrong, and you’re using that feedback to make adjustments and try again.
The motivation that predominates during flow, in contrast, is entirely different. The flow state is intrinsically pleasurable. You don’t care whether you’re improving some narrow aspect of your skill set. And though you’re concentrating one hundred percent, you’re not at all in “problem solving” mode. You’re not analyzing what you’re doing; you’re just doing. You’re getting feedback, but because the level of challenge just meets your current level of skill, that feedback is telling you that you’re doing a lot right. You feel like you’re in complete control, because you are. You’re floating. You lose track of time. No matter how fast you’re running or how intensely you’re thinking, when you’re in flow, everything feels effortless.
In other words, deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow is for performance.
Let’s return to swimmer Rowdy Gaines.
Gaines told me he once tabulated how much practice it took to develop the stamina, technique, confidence, and judgment to win an Olympic gold medal. In the eight-year period leading up to the 1984 games, he swam, in increments of fifty-yard laps, at least twenty thousand miles. Of course, if you add in the years before and after, the odometer goes even higher.
“I swam around the world,” he told me with a soft laugh, “for a race that lasted forty-nine seconds.”
“Did you enjoy those miles?” I asked. “I mean, did you love practicing?”
“I’m not going to lie,” he replied. “I never really enjoyed going to practice, and I certainly didn’t enjoy it while I was there. In fact, there were brief moments, walking to the pool at four or four-thirty in the morning, or sometimes when I couldn’t take the pain, when I’d think, ‘God, is this worth it?’?”
“So why didn’t you quit?”
“It’s very simple,” Rowdy said. “It’s because I loved swimming. . . . I had a passion for competing, for the result of training, for the feeling of being in shape, for winning, for traveling, for meeting friends. I hated practice, but I had an overall passion for swimming.”
Olympic gold medalist rower Mads Rasmussen offered a similar account of his motivation: “It’s about hard work. When it’s not fun, you do what you need to do anyway. Because when you achieve results, it’s incredibly fun. You get to enjoy the ‘Aha’ at the end, and that is what drags you along a lot of the way.”
The idea of years of challenge-exceeding-skill practice leading to moments of challenge-meeting-skill flow explains why elite performance can look so effortless: in a sense, it is. Here’s an example. Eighteen-year-old swimmer Katie Ledecky recently broke her own world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle. Improbably, history was made during a preliminary round at a competition in Kazan, Russia. “To be honest, it felt pretty easy,” she said afterward. “I was so relaxed.” But it’s not flow to which Ledecky credits her speed: “Breaking that record is testament to the work I have put in and the shape I am in right now.”
Indeed, Ledecky has been swimming since she was six. She’s developed a reputation for working fiercely hard at every single practice, sometimes training with male swimmers for added challenge. Three years ago, Ledecky described blanking out a little bit in the race that won her the gold medal in the eight-hundred-meter freestyle. “One thing in terms of swimming that people don’t really know,” she later said, “is that the work you put in [during] practice shows off in the meet.”
* * *
Here’s my own story of hours of effortful deliberate practice leading to moments of effortless flow. A few years ago, a producer named Juliet Blake called to ask if I’d be interested in giving a six-minute TED talk. “Sure,” I said. “Sounds fun!”
“Wonderful! After you have your talk ready, we’ll have a video conference where we watch you give it, and we’ll give you some feedback. You know, something like a rehearsal.”
Hmmm, “feedback” you say? Something other than applause? More slowly, I said, “Sure . . . that sounds fine.”
I prepared a talk and on the appointed day connected with Juliet and her boss, the leader of TED, Chris Anderson. Staring into the webcam, I delivered my talk in the allotted time. Then I waited for my effusive praise.
If there was any, I missed it.
Instead, what I got was Chris telling me he’d gotten lost in all my scientific jargon. Too many syllables. Too many slides. And not enough clear, understandable examples. Further, how I’d come to this whole line of research—my road from teacher to psychologist—was unclear and unsatisfying. Juliet agreed. She added that I’d managed to tell a story with absolutely zero suspense. The way I’d designed my talk was like telling the punch line of a joke at the very beginning.
Ouch! That bad, huh? Juliet and Chris are busy people, and I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance at getting coached. So I forced myself to listen. Afterward, I pondered who knew better how to give a great talk on grit: them or me?
It didn’t take long to realize that they were the experienced storytellers, and I was the scientist who needed feedback to make her talk better.
So I rewrote the talk, practiced in front of my family, and got more negative feedback. “Why do you say ‘Um’ all the time?” my older daughter, Amanda, asked. “Yeah, why do you do that, Mom?” my younger daughter, Lucy, chimed in. “And you bite your lip when you’re nervous. Don’t do that. It’s distracting.”
More practice. More refinements.
Then the fateful day arrived. I gave a talk that bore only a weak resemblance to the one I’d originally proposed. It was better. A lot better. Watch that talk and you’ll see me in flow. Search YouTube for the many rehearsals that preceded it—or, for that matter, footage of anyone doing effortful, mistake-ridden, repetitive deliberate practice—and my guess is you’ll come up empty.
Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They’d rather show the highlight of what they’ve become.
After it was all over, I rushed to meet my husband and mother-in-law, who’d been in the audience that day to cheer me on. As soon as they were within earshot, I called out preemptively: “Just the effusive praise, please!” And they delivered.
* * *
Lately, I’ve been asking gritty performers and their coaches in diverse fields to elaborate on how it feels to do deliberate practice. Many agree with dancer Martha Graham that attempting to do what you cannot yet do is frustrating, uncomfortable, and even painful.
However, some have suggested that, in fact, the experience of deliberate practice can be extremely positive—not just in the long-term but in the moment. Fun isn’t quite the word they use to describe deliberate practice, but neither is bitter. And, too, top performers point out that the alternative to deliberate practice—mindlessly “going through the motions” without improvement—can be its own form of suffering.