Globally, people chase ‘better’ with the Universal Improvement Formula (UIF).
Instruction + Fundamentals + Repetition + Time + Talent + Deliberateness + (X) Factor = Success
Fleshing that out…
Instruction: Self-taught and success don’t go together. There are right ways to do things… and wrong ways. Without instruction people learn ‘wrong’.
Fundamentals: Skill is almost universally considered to be the ability to consistently recite the correct recite the fundamentals of ones craft.
Repetition: How the fundamentals are drilled into the memory of ones muscles.
Time: 10,000-ish hours.
Talent: ‘Special abilities’.
Deliberateness: Focus. Commitment.
(X) Factor: Variables. Coach. Information. Brain training (sports psych). Special diet.
Success: For most… winning. Or a similar golden goody.
And the most common outcome of this formula is… failure.
It’s true! The only reason we believe that few will succeed, is because the majority don’t. And what has always fascinated me about that is, rather than conclude the formula is at fault… we decide it’s us.
If an elective surgery had a 90% global fail rate would we assume the issue was with the patients… or the procedure?
The Universal Practice Formula is the formula for failure.
Instruction is the denial of human intelligence. A rejection of nature. If there were ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways, and our natural tendency was to Lear the ‘wrong’ ones. We would not have survived as a species.
Fundamentals have nothing in common with performance.
Yes, the best tend to have great fundamentals. But there are many with great fundamentals who aren’t the best.
In the words of the great Apollo Creed, “You fight great Stallion. But I’m a great fighter.”
For years I conducted a thoroughly unscientific study. I watched hundreds of evenly paired club level tennis matches. Before the match I picked the player who had the better strokes. Technique was no better a predictor of the outcome than a coin toss.
Moreover, no matter how solid a persons “fundamentals” they aren’t always available.
Players lose their swing. Actors falls out of character. Basketballistas go cold. Pitchers misplace the strike zone.
“We’re not robots,” the ‘experts’ say. “Human performance is variable. The inference being we’re all imperfect actors in an imperfect world.
But this is absolutely not true. The heavens operate like Swiss clockwork. As does our world. And so do we. Our eyes and ears and circulatory and immune systems repeat their functions flawlessly every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Unless something is wrong.
Human performance does not vary… unless something is wrong.
So… what’s wrong?
The fundamentals aren’t ours. They are attempts to graft another persons interpretation of proper and improper… possible and impossible, onto ourselves. And they are rejected by a body that cannot find a way to adequately express itself through them.
The only ‘right’ way to run or hit a ball or speak or act or sell or play or perform… is your way.
You’re not struggling because you don’t know the right way. You’re struggling because you’ve been convinced there is one.
Every day millions of people, invest billions of hours, into repeating things they already know how to do.
I know it sounds weird when I say it that way, but repeatedly drilling the fundamentals of ones craft is, in fact, repeating something what one already knows how to do.
And now you know that what they know how to do has nothing in common with the success they think they’re after.
Nothing repeats. No moment, or bounce of the ball, or position, or opportunity, or threat is the same. Your craft cannot be memorized. And all attempts to do so will cause one to try to fit some preplanned… generic solution, to a totally unique situation.
Time is a complete unknown. The assumption is that mastery can’t be instantaneous. That’s because only we’ve never heard of it happening. Perhaps we’ve never heard of it happening because UIF doesn’t allow it?
More importantly, time is irrelevant. If one enjoys their art, it doesn’t matter how long it takes to perfect it. And if they don’t… if time is critical because they can only endure the agony of practice for so long. Well, what is the point in getting ‘better’ at something you don’t enjoy?
Talent is an invention of the human imagination. An explanation for things that we don’t understand. A way of saying “I don’t know”, without sounding like you don’t know.
It also serves as a loophole. An excuse for the global failure of the UPF.
Deliberateness: Focus and commitment exist only in the eye of the beholder. Deliberateness is a thumb on the scale to weight it towards proving Ericssons 10,000 hour rule. Another explanation for those who put in the hours and didn’t succeed.
The (X) Factor is commonly a silver bullet. A coach. A magic move. Brain training (sports Psych). A nutritional fad… (ie the current fascination with veganism)
Whatever ones (X) Factor is, they went looking for it because they know that the formula was failing.
Winning is not success. Winning is a separate topic… one of ego, and conquest, and need.
Success is mastery. At-one-ment with your thing. Expressing yourself through it without fear or hesitation or conscious effort.
Of course, people will list the greats who have used the formula as proof of it’s effectiveness. But it’s so widely used, that everyone has been subjected to it. In other words, if we dyed everyone’s hair green, only green haired people would succeed.
They didn’t succeed because of the formula. The excelled in spite of it.
What are your odds?