Practice, Practice, Practice...Who Says It Needs to Be Perfect?
- Terri Tomoff
- Jan 25
- 3 min read
Seth Godin mentions in many of his writings, blog posts, and books that the way to achieve something great in our lives is by the drip, drip, drip of daily practice, say, writing, or just about anything.
The shortlist below gives an example of the hard work and dedication “needed” to achieve dreams and goals, no matter the genre of literature, sports, song-writing, education, entrepreneurship, or being the first to step on the moon, it all took grit and a lot of repetition or homework way after hours or the “teacher/parent/coach” watching every move.
Chopin, Mozart, Leonardo, Michael Phelps, Oprah, Flo Jo, Venus & Serena Williams, Joan Benoit, Stephen King, Lionel Messi, Michael Jordan, Biles, Ledecky, Marta, Mia Hamm, Ali, Pelé, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, Tolstoy, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Anne Sullivan, Maria Montessori, Aristotle, Eleanor Roosevelt, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Neil Armstrong, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston…and the list goes on and on.
They all practiced something…most like daily (even for five minutes).
I’m mentioning this after reading an article in Tiffany Yates Martin FoxPrint Editorial I can’t get out of my head - you don’t have to write every day. It’s from Jane Friedman’s Newsletter by guest poster Allison K. Williams.
I disagree.
I don’t feel bad to have a different point of view. I do understand that there are many circumstances in which writing daily (or anything else) may not be feasible, so there is that. Maybe daily is too harsh?
Writing, and just about anything that someone wants to get good at (even though they may not publish a book or even win the pennant, gold medal, or best of ____ ), is in the work (grit) to reach a “good enough” plateau, or at least for me. Frankly, it's in the climb (queue up Miley Cyrus - Four minutes)
From hitting millions of tennis balls, running thousands of miles on back roads, sitting at the kitchen table dribbling a basketball, staying in the lab(s) for hours, reading, reading, reading, practicing a musical instrument until the fingers bleed, writing bad first drafts, practicing twirling in the air at 15 ft., studying some of the most challenging subjects of energy and physics to head off into space, these folks didn’t take much time off, if any.
Keeping the practice in anything we want to do and perhaps wish to improve (the climb), even writing one to three sentences every day or taking a one-mile walk around the block, can help.
And it’s not even writing, starting/owning a business, or being at the top of the major sports (super hard to last --- and the pressure ---Oy!). Most folks who know me know I have been crazy about the game of pickleball in the last year. The whole family is playing more and getting a little bit better every session played. Oh, we do have setbacks, but keep trying.
Yesterday, I played six hours of Pickleball. I had a one-hour break between session 1 and 2. There is no way to identify marked improvement, but I know there will be incremental improvement. Not tomorrow or next week, but as I learn to control my paddle, make minor adjustments, and dink more often, those six hours are not for naught—those three sessions I deem as building blocks. It was a coincidence I had three sessions in a row - most likely won't happen again).
When I write daily, whether or not I publish it, it is the same kind of building block for a better day at the keyboard, no matter what I am working on. I like what the paper in the typewriter says: Write something.
bSoleille!
Terri
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