I have recently come to the very obvious realization that practice is essential in order to improve. Now, it’s not like I didn’t know this before. It’s just that I realized how important practice is.
I was stressed about math when I remembered an episode of Grey’s Anatomy in which Burke explained to Cristina that she was good at medicine because of natural talent but he was good because he studied and he practiced. And that was the moment when I suddenly realized that the easiest way to improve was to practice. The problem occurs when you’ve been doing well for a long time, and the challenge increases unexpectedly. All of a sudden, you don’t know what to do. You can’t understand anything, which stresses you out, which only makes it worse. But really, the solution is pretty simple. That is, if you can actually go practice.
It seems like the hardest part of doing anything you don’t want to do is starting. I blame Newton’s first law for this. If you’re not doing anything to improve, then you’re not going to want to start doing anything to improve. Unless, of course, an unbalanced force acts on you, such as fear or a jeopardized feeling of pride or ego or dignity. However, this feeling kicks in at different times for different people. Some people may feel that they have to do better than everyone else and take it upon themselves to improve as soon as they feel like they don’t understand. Others may suddenly realize that they’re not doing as well as they would like the day before their exam and cram information all night in an effort to improve as quickly as possible.
One thing to remember is that practice is most effective over time. Sports teams don’t practice nonstop for a couple of days before a game or competition. Musicians don’t rehearse for hours on end for a couple of days, starting from scratch and finishing with polished performance-ready pieces (trust me, it doesn’t work). It usually takes at least a few months of consistent practice in order to get to a level at which you can succeed. But isn’t a bit of practice every day a lot less intimidating than a whole lot of practice right before you need to succeed?
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