How many times have you heard the phrase ‘Practise Makes Perfect’? Well it’s not true. We all are taught from an early age that practice will make us perfect however, there is no such thing as perfection and so you can only just keep getting better, which is what you should strive to be doing.
Many children get taught and believe that just practising will make them perfect at what they are trying to do, the problem with this is that many other factors involved in improving; these factors include knowledge, understanding of where you need to improve and goals of what you want to achieve.
A good example of this can be found in all sports, in darts you would need to throw the dart then align the next one in relation to where the previous dart landed. You would not just throw hundreds of darts without caring where they landed, as it would not help you achieve your goals.
Learn – Knowledge
You know how to learn. Go read a book, take a course, get a friend to teach you. It does not really matter how you learn, what matters is that you have a solid foundation for whatever it is you are trying to do. For example, before you made a cake make sure you know the recipe and how to use the equipment.
Analyse – Understanding where to improve
There are many ways to analyse where you need to improve, you could compare yourself to those that you look up to (which I do not recomend), you could just use your initive and decide what parts of whatever you are doing you do not that you are doing well enough or you could ask for advice.
Whilst writing this post I was on the DeviantART #DigitalMedia chatroom which is a place where digital artists can get critiques and learn how to really improve their work. One of the users, The-Rails (aka Connor Adams), was commenting about how practise makes perfect. However, he did not just say to keep doing the same thing over and over.
“I’m deadly serious when i say this though, draw, draw, draw, paint, paint paint untill your fingers bleed, take in everything people advise even if it seems more offensive than good, etc. You get there in the end”
Connor Adams
Now you are probably thinking something along the lines of “you just said practise is not the only factor in improving, but that guy says it is!” Well, look more closely.When he said ” take in everything people advise” that is why I quoted it. You will improve if you practise all the time AND do something different, by using people’s advice.
Plan – Setting goals
Settings goals is a very simple part of planning, it is up to you how far you would like to take this stage. The best way to set good goals is by using what you learned from the first section about what is possible to do, then include what advice you have been given and what you analysed in the second section. It is a good idea to set both short and long term goals, but remember to check and update your targets often!
“Practise makes better, not perfect!”
Michelle Baker (my mum)
Oh well, I guess I can take that quote out of my quote box!!! I use it A LOT. You are right though, after much practice, we are better, but there is always room for improvement.
I have used the above process (more or less) for many years. Reading quality books has been the best and most useful thing. Implementing what I have learned has been the key to improving things for me.
Yes, i heard many time Practise makes perfect, but i first time heard about “Practise makes better, not perfect!”. Good point of view.
oooohh aaaahh… yep it does work..the kids will love it..he he Jim lad
Everything takes practice, practice and more practice to get better at it. To help you get better at swimming, you should try to find a instructor for help. The best techneques to get better at swimming are to play games in 4 feet water, go to a local pool to practice and asking a lifegard will be fine, know how to float for 1 minute at first, then 3 minutes, after that, you should know how to stay underwater for at least 10-30 seconds.