Why Practice Matters: Lessons from Athletes to Business Leaders #3

As a fan of sports and/or intellectual contests like chess, we pay to see the performance and rarely, if ever, see the practice. In essence, we see the talent on display during the game or match and miss all the work that takes place before and after.

It’s easy for us to believe in natural talent and say things like, “that person must’ve been gifted at birth.” Believing in talent can be like believing in magic…we know it’s not real and yet we want it to be real. Mastery is not inherited, it’s earned through discipline and practice.

I’ve seen many extremely talented minor-league baseball players that lacked the discipline to continue their career into the Big Leagues. I’ve also seen many baseball players become major leaguers through the discipline of never missing a workout and always being focused at practice. These are good examples of it’s not about where you start, but where you finish.

Basic math and discipline are understood by the high-achieving business executive. She knows that if she reads 10 pages a day, every day, of a good book, in a year she’ll have read 3,650 pages. That’s about 18 books a year or 90 books over 5 years. She will win the promotion or the job interview based upon her discipline and, in this case, the good information she’s consumed. Ten pages is not a big deal while 90 books becomes a separator...this is how the math of discipline combined with practice works.

We all know who the disciplined people are even though we don’t often see them practice. We never hear them say, “I’ll do it later,” or “I’m just not that talented.” They don’t negotiate, they do. They know their practice starts with every new day. They have simple routines that set themselves up for success, like thinking about tomorrow and laying out their clothes for the next day. All these routines start with practice.

At Leadership Training Camp we are fortunate to see the business people we work with practice leadership skills. They tell us “here’s what I did, and why I did it.” Continued practice builds the routine of success. These winners understand that success does not know the difference between talent and hard work. That’s why they build on these new leadership skills through practice with a goal of becoming a master.

We encourage you to take a quick minute and think where you would like to add more discipline into your life. Maybe it’s relationships or your health or developing your mind or your spirituality. We all have the same 24 hours in a day and we encourage you to use your 24 well.