What is Deliberate Practice?
Let’s define deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

Can You Achieve Anything With Enough Practice?
Deliberate practice does not mean that you can fashion yourself into anything with enough work and effort, though. While human beings do possess a remarkable ability to develop their skills, there are limits to how far any individual can go. Your genes set a boundary around what is possible.

However, while genetics influence performance, they do not determine performance. Do not confuse destiny with opportunity. Genes provide opportunity. They do not determine our destiny. It’s similar to a game of cards. You have a better opportunity if you are dealt a better hand, but you also need to play the hand well to win.

Regardless of where we choose to apply ourselves, deliberate practice can help us maximize our potential—no matter what cards we were dealt. It turns potential into reality.

Examples of Deliberate Practice
Joe DiMaggio was one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. I recently heard a little-known story about how DiMaggio developed his exceptional ability. Read more…
In some circles, golfer Ben Hogan is credited with “inventing practice.” Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement.

In some circles, Ben Hogan is credited with “inventing practice.”

Hogan was one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century, an accomplishment he achieved through tireless repetition. He simply loved to practice. Hogan said, “I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it.”

For Hogan, every practice session had a purpose. He reportedly spent years breaking down each phase of the golf swing and testing new methods for each segment. The result was near perfection. He developed one of the most finely-tuned golf swings in the history of the game.

His precision made him more like a surgeon than a golfer. During the 1953 Masters, for example, Hogan hit the flagstick on back-to-back holes. A few days later, he broke the tournament scoring record

Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. For example, he was one of the first golfers to assign specific yardages to each golf club. Then, he studied each course carefully and used trees and sand bunkers as reference points to inform him about the distance of each shot.

Hogan finished his career with nine major championships—ranking fourth all-time. During his prime, other golfers simply attributed his remarkable success to “Hogan’s secret.” Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement: deliberate practice.

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

The greatest challenge of deliberate practice is to remain focused. In the beginning, showing up and putting in your reps is the most important thing. But after a while we begin to carelessly overlook small errors and miss daily opportunities for improvement.

This is because the natural tendency of the human brain is to transform repeated behaviors into automatic habits. For example, when you first learned to tie your shoes you had to think carefully about each step of the process. Today, after many repetitions, your brain can perform this sequence automatically. The more we repeat a task the more mindless it becomes.

Mindless activity is the enemy of deliberate practice. The danger of practicing the same thing again and again is that progress becomes assumed. Too often, we assume we are getting better simply because we are gaining experience. In reality, we are merely reinforcing our current habits—not improving them.

Claiming that improvement requires attention and effort sounds logical enough. But what does deliberate practice actually look like in the real world? Let’s talk about that now.

Examples of Deliberate Practice
One of my favorite examples of deliberate practice is discussed in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In the book, Colvin describes how Benjamin Franklin used deliberate practice to improve his writing skills.

When he was a teenager, Benjamin Franklin was criticized by his father for his poor writing abilities. Unlike most teenagers, young Ben took his father’s advice seriously and vowed to improve his writing skills.

He began by finding a publication written by some of the best authors of his day. Then, Franklin went through each article line by line and wrote down the meaning of every sentence. Next, he rewrote each article in his own words and then compared his version to the original. Each time, “I discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.” Eventually, Franklin realized his vocabulary held him back from better writing, and so he focused intensely on that area.

Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.

Here are some more examples.

Cooking: Jiro Ono, the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a chef and owner of an award-winning sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of making sushi and he expects the same of his apprentices. Each apprentice must master one tiny part of the sushi-making process at a time—how to wring a towel, how to use a knife, how to cut the fish, and so on. One apprentice trained under Jiro for ten years before being allowed to cook the eggs. Each step of the process is taught with the utmost care.

Martial arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist who holds several US national medals and a 2004 world championship. In the finals of one competition, he noticed a weakness: When an opponent illegally head-butted him in the nose, Waitzkin flew into a rage. His emotion caused him to lose control and forget his strategy. Afterward, he specifically sought out training partners who would fight dirty so he could practice remaining calm and principled in the face of chaos. “They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence,” Waitzkin wrote. “Dirty players were my best teachers.”

Chess: Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster and one of the highest-rated players in history. One distinguishing feature of great chess players is their ability to recognize “chunks,” which are specific arrangements of pieces on the board. Some experts estimate that grandmasters can identify around 300,000 different chunks. Interestingly, Carlsen learned the game by playing computer chess, which allowed him to play multiple games at once. Not only did this strategy allow him to learn chunks much faster than someone playing in-person games, but also gave him a chance to make more mistakes and correct his weaknesses at an accelerated pace.

Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging sections of a song until you master them. Virtuoso violinist Nathan Milstein says, “Practice as much as you feel you can accomplish with concentration. Once when I became concerned because others around me practiced all day long, I asked [my professor] how many hours I should practice, and he said, ‘It really doesn’t matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.’

Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”

The Unsung Hero of Deliberate Practice
Perhaps the greatest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition is this: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of deliberate practice—whether they are an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin—has developed methods for receiving continual feedback on their performance.

There are many ways to receive feedback. Let’s discuss two.

The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This holds true for the number of pages we read, the number of pushups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and any other task that is important to us. It is only through measurement that we have any proof of whether we are getting better or worse.

The second effective feedback system is coaching. One consistent finding across disciplines is that coaches are often essential for sustaining deliberate practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to both perform a task and measure your progress at the same time. Good coaches can track your progress, find small ways to improve, and hold you accountable to delivering your best effort each day.

The Promise of Deliberate Practice
Humans have a remarkable capacity to improve their performance in nearly any area of life if they train in the correct way. This is easier said than done.

Deliberate practice is not a comfortable activity. It requires sustained effort and concentration. The people who master the art of deliberate practice are committed to being lifelong learners—always exploring and experimenting and refining.

Deliberate practice is not a magic pill, but if you can manage to maintain your focus and commitment, then the promise of deliberate practice is quite alluring: to get the most out of what you’ve got.

Scientists have further decoded how mammalian brains perceive odors and distinguish one smell from thousands of others.

In experiments in mice, NYU Grossman School of Medicine researchers have for the first time created an electrical signature that is perceived as an odor in the brain’s smell-processing center, the olfactory bulb, even though the odor does not exist.

Because the odor-simulating signal was manmade, researchers could manipulate the timing and order of related nerve signaling and identify which changes were most important to the ability of mice to accurately identify the “synthetic smell.”

“Decoding how the brain tells apart odors is complicated, in part, because unlike with other senses such as vision, we do not yet know the most important aspects of individual smells,” says study lead investigator Edmund Chong, MS, a doctoral student at NYU Langone Health. “In facial recognition, for example, the brain can recognize people based on visual cues, such as the eyes, even without seeing someone’s nose and ears,” says Chong. “But these distinguishing features, as recorded by the brain, have yet to be found for each smell.”

The current study results, published online in the journal Science on June 18, center on the olfactory bulb, which is behind the nose in animals and humans. Past studies have shown that airborne molecules linked to scents trigger receptor cells lining the nose to send electric signals to nerve-ending bundles in the bulb called glomeruli, and then to brain cells (neurons).

The timing and order of glomeruli activation is known to be unique to each smell, researchers say, with signals then transmitted to the brain’s cortex, which controls how an animal perceives, reacts to, and remembers a smell. But because scents can vary over time and mingle with others, scientists have until now struggled to precisely track a single smell signature across several types of neurons.

For the new study, the researchers designed experiments based on the availability of mice genetically engineered by another lab so that their brain cells could be activated by shining light on them—a technique called optogenetics. Next they trained the mice to recognize a signal generated by light activation of six glomeruli—known to resemble a pattern evoked by an odor—by giving them a water reward only when they perceived the correct “odor” and pushed a lever.

If mice pushed the lever after activation of a different set of glomeruli (simulation of a different odor), they received no water. Using this model, the researchers changed the timing and mix of activated glomeruli, noting how each change impacted a mouse’s perception as reflected in a behavior: the accuracy with which it acted on the synthetic odor signal to get the reward.

Specifically, researchers found that changing which of the glomeruli within each odor-defining set were activated first led to as much as a 30 percent drop in the ability of a mouse to correctly sense an odor signal and obtain water. Changes in the last glomeruli in each set came with as little as a 5 percent decrease in accurate odor sensing.

The timing of the glomeruli activations worked together “like the notes in a melody,” say the researchers, with delays or interruptions in the early “notes” degrading accuracy. Tight control in their model over when, how many, and which receptors and glomeruli were activated in the mice, enabled the team to sift through many variables and identify which odor features stood out.

“Now that we have a model for breaking down the timing and order of glomeruli activation, we can examine the minimum number and kind of receptors needed by the olfactory bulb to identify a particular smell,” says study senior investigator and neurobiologist Dmitry Rinberg, Ph.D.

Rinberg, an associate professor at NYU Langone and its Neuroscience Institute, says the human nose is known to have some 350 different kinds of odor receptors, while mice, whose sense of smell is far more specialized, have more than 1,200.

“Our results identify for the first time a code for how the brain converts sensory information into perception of something, in this case an odor,” adds Rinberg. “This puts us closer to answering the longstanding question in our field of how the brain extracts sensory information to evoke behavior.”

New research untangles the complex code the brain uses to distinguish between a vast array of smells, offering a scientific explanation for how it separates baby powder from bleach, lemon from orange, or freshly cut grass from freshly brewed coffee.

A single scent can trigger a complex chain of events in what’s known as the olfactory bulb, the brain’s control center for smell. To unravel the intricacies of that process, researchers in the U.S. and Italy turned to a technique known as optogenetics, which uses light to control neurons in the brain. In research on mice, they used light to trick the brain into thinking it smelled a particular scent, then studied brain activity to understand the role different neurons play in a mouse’s ability to recognize that scent. Their findings were published Thursday in Science.

When we encounter a certain smell, it stimulates a specific pattern of activity among tiny spheres known as glomeruli, which are found in the olfactory bulb. The odor plays across these glomeruli like a melody across piano keys: Just as a tune is made distinct by which keys are pressed and at what point in the melody, a scent is made distinct by which glomeruli are activated and in what order.

A tune remains identifiable even with some tweaks: We can still place a melody marred by a wrong note or a mistimed beat. Likewise, we can still recognize a scent altered by some change in its characteristic activity pattern. The researchers wanted to understand how the specific combination of neurons that respond to a scent — including where they’re located, and when they’re activated — might affect whether the brain registers a smell as recognizable.

To do so, the researchers harnessed optogenetics to activate genetically engineered, light-sensitive neurons. The scientists used light to stimulate a specific pattern across glomeruli in mouse brains, which gave the mice the experience of smelling a particular scent — even though that scent that did not actually exist outside of their own heads.

You can do this experiment with the music. I’ll play different music and see which notes are more important, less important,” said Dmitry “Dima” Rinberg, a neuroscientist at NYU Langone Health and a senior author of the study. “We asked not on the level of the external stimulus, but at the level of stimulating neurons.”

The scientists trained the mice to respond in a particular way to this “synthetic smell.” Then, they introduced different tweaks to that pattern — like wrong notes in the melody — and watched to see which of those changes affected whether a mouse could still “smell” the scent.

Justus Verhagen, Yale researcher who studies taste and smell and was not involved in the research, said that the new paper builds on past research into the locations of olfactory neurons and the timing of their activation by bringing the two factors together into a single, comprehensive model.

The difference in the perception seems to follow fairly linearly with the magnitude of the change in either space or time of the stimulation of the olfactory system,” he said. “That linearity is kind of surprising because, in neuroscience, we’re very used to a lot of nonlinear effects.”

The study also cemented the findings of previous research, which has shown that receptors activated earlier are more essential to scent recognition than those activated later on.

“If I messed up with the first note, you have a much higher chance to misinterpret the melody than if I messed up with the 25th note,” Rinberg explained. That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, he added — animals out in the wild need to make instantaneous assessments of danger. It’s what’s known as the primacy effect. Rinberg added that the effect carries over even to lower-stakes settings like smelling wine, where the specific notes that might suggest where the grapes were harvested only follow after we get past the immediately overwhelming impression of alcohol.

There are no immediate therapeutic applications of the research, Rinberg said. But a better understanding of how the brain perceives scent could one day shed more light on other scientific questions that also involve smell, such as why people sometimes temporarily lose their sense of smell when sick, which has been observed in some patients with Covid-19. Verhagen said research on the logic of the olfactory system could also be of use in developing new technologies.

“In terms of medicine, there is increased interest in brain-machine interfaces. And so it is very important to understand how the brain encodes stimuli,” he said. “If we understand that coding logic, we can use that to help people who have deficits.”

Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan today held video conference with Food Ministers of States and Union Territories.

The meeting was held to discuss the roll out of One Nation One Ration Card scheme in remaining 14 states and Union Territories. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Paswan said that in the time of Covid-19 pandemic, the scheme proved immensely beneficial for migrant labourers, stranded and needy persons to access their quota of food.

He said by August this year, three more States – Uttarakhand, Nagaland and Manipur will be added to the national cluster. He said, the Department is making all necessary arrangements to include all remaining 14 States under One Nation One Ration Card scheme by end of this year. Mr Paswan said that sufficient food grains are available in buffer stock and assured no one will go hungry in this difficult time. The Minister said that around ten States have written to the ministry to extend the distribution of free food grains under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana for three more months.

Mr Paswan asked the remaining States and UTs to speed up the authentication of biometric and ePoS, so that the beneficiaries can conveniently lift their entitled quota of subsidised food grains from anywhere across the country.

Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has decided to terminate the contract with Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Group limited. In a statement, DFCCIL said, the contract has been terminated due to poor performance of the company.
 
In 2016, the Chinese company had won the contract to install signalling system and telecommunications work in over 400 kilometre of rail lines of kanpur Deendayal Upadhyaya section.
 
DFCCIL said, despite the passage of four years there is only 20 per cent progress in the work. Non availability of their engineer and authorised personnels at site was serious constraint. The physical work also could not progress as they have no tie up with local agencies.

Health Ministry has issued an advisory for managing health care workers working in COVID and Non-COVID areas of the hospitals. The Health and Family Welfare Ministry said an Infection Control Officer cum Nodal Officer will be identified by each hospital to address all matters related to Healthcare Associated Infections to prevent and manage the Covid-19 infection among the health care workers.
 
The Nodal Officer will ensure that healthcare workers shall use Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) as per their risk profile while on duty.
   
In the advisory, it is said, all healthcare workers managing COVID-19 cases are being provided with chemo-prophylaxis under medical supervision.
 
Healthcare workers have been asked to use appropriate PPE during their duties and any breach in PPE and exposure should immediately bring into the notice of the Nodal Officer of the Department.
 
It is recommended that pregnant, lactating mothers and immuno-compromised healthcare workers shall inform their medical condition to the hospital authorities to get them posted only in non-Covid areas.
 
It is advised that all the health care workers must report every exposure to COVID-19 to the concerned nodal officer of Department immediately.
 
After the information, the Nodal officer will get the exact details of exposure to ascertain whether the exposure constitutes a high risk or low risk exposure.
 
The Nodal Officer will form a sub-committee to assess the level of exposure and the risk and further action will be taken on the basis of guidelines issued by the Health Ministry.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan on Saturday to boost livelihood opportunities in rural India. The Prime Minister will launch the campaign through video-conference in the presence of Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar.
 
The campaign will be launched from Telihar village at Beldaur Block in Khagaria district of Bihar. It aims to provide livelihood opportunities to the returnee migrant workers and rural citizens.
 
Briefing media about the scheme, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana with an outlay of  50 thousand crore rupees will cover 116 districts in six States, namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan.
 
She said, workers from all over the country wanted to go back to villages after the lockdown began and Central and State governments made some arrangements, and they have gone back. The Minister said, the government looked at the districts to which they have largely returned.
 
She said, the Centre and State governments have meticulously mapped the skill sets of the migrant workers who have returned in large numbers to the 116 districts. 
 
The Minister said, everyone who needs an assignment in these districts will be given work under the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan. Ms Sitharaman said, the campaign will involve intensified and focused implementation of 25 different types of works to provide employment to the migrant workers and create infrastructure in the rural regions of the country.
 
The Minister said, nearly 25 schemes of the Central government are being brought together under Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan for 116 districts. She said, the objectives under these schemes will be achieved within 125 days, by offering work to migrant workers and rural citizens.

Elections for 19 Rajya Sabha seats spread over eight states will be held today. Of the 19 seats, four each are from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, three each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two from Jharkhand, and one each from Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya.

In Karnataka, where elections were to be held for four seats, all the candidates have been declared elected unopposed. They are former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, BJP candidates Iranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti.

BJP nominee Nabam Rebia was also elected unopposed to the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Arunachal Pradesh.

The counting of votes for all the 19 seats will be held this evening. Legislators vote to elect candidates for the Upper House of Parliament.

Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements for the voting keeping in mind the coronavirus pandemic. Every voter (MLA) will be screened for body temperature and will have to use mask and adhere to social distancing norms.

Legislators having a fever or showing other symptoms will be kept in a separate waiting room.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed people to mark 6th International Yoga Day on Sunday at home with family while following all norms of Physical Distancing. In a video message, Mr Modi said, we are marking the 6th International Yoga Day in extraordinary times. He said, usually yoga day is about public events and mass participation but this year yoga day goes indoors.
 
The Prime Minister said, the theme of the International Yoga Day this year is Yoga at Home and Yoga with Family. He said, the world is fighting a pandemic of monumental scale, but yoga provides multidimensional solutions to multiple challenges Covid-19 has brought.
 
Mr Modi said, Yoga gives people an opportunity to know their immune system better, enables strong mind and healthy body. He said, yoga has potential to cater mental, physical and psychological challenges.
 
The Prime Minister said, in post covid era, the focus on preventive healthcare will get stronger. He expressed confidence that yoga will be more popular. Mr Modi expressed happiness over growing popularity of yoga in last few years especially among the youth.

In Chennai and its suburbs, the full lockdown has come into effect from midnight last night. It will be in force till the end of the month, as announced by the Tamil Nadu Government.
 
Meanwhile, the total Covid-19 infection in the state has zoomed to 52,334, with 2141 people tested positive yesterday. They include 1373 in Chennai. A record 26,736 persons were tested in the state on a single day yesterday. Meanwhile, 1017 patients were discharged from hospitals while 49 others succumbed to the disease taking the fatalities to 625. The active caseload in the state is 23,065, as mentioned in the state health department bulletin.
 
AIR correspondent reports that the full lockdown in Chennai and its suburbs is necessitated by the pouring new cases of COVID-19 for the past many days in the region. Shops will be open till 2 pm during the 12 days from today. Relaxations are being extended only to medical and other essential services.
 
The health, revenue and police officials in Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur districts have prepared an elaborate action plan to implement the full lock down.
 
The public bus transport already stands withdrawn for quite long in the region though flight and long distance train travel continues as per the existing schedule of the service providers.
 
Though ATMs will function normally, banks will be open only during the last two days of the month, as announced by the state government. However, in other parts of the state, the unlock-phase-1 continues.