When more practice won't help

Things that are much harder to achieve without meaningful feedback, #4,706. (Image by Ania Klara)

“Just keep practicing! You’ll get it.”

Have you ever had a well-intentioned teacher tell you something like this?

It can be decent advice. But it’s limited.

“Just keep practicing” works when you’re on the right track. You understand the mathematical concept — you just need more experience solving similar problems. You are doing your scales with the correct fingering and just need to build speed. You have successfully completed one public speaking engagement and you’re gearing up for the next one.

Sometimes, however, this advice is deployed when the teacher doesn’t really know how to help you.

Your chord changes on the guitar are halting and uncertain — and have been for months.

You keep serving the tennis ball straight into the net.

You can’t seem to memorize your times tables despite hours of trying.

In these situations, more practice is only reinforcing what you’re already doing — it isn’t helping you to get any better. You need to take a different approach.

Unfortunately, many teachers aren’t equipped to troubleshoot problems. They’re only prepared to help you learn the next thing on the list. So all they can say about the old thing that isn’t really working is, “Just keep practicing!” And then they add another layer of complexity to it — another story of the building, stuck on top of a shaky foundation.

Thus, so many of us take four years of foreign language classes and can barely ask, “Where’s the bathroom?”

If you want to actually improve at a skill, you need meaningful feedback on the work that you’re doing so that you can make adjustments. You need a coach who will help you to see what you don’t see, and then you will actually change.

We don’t expect traditional education to change us. In the context of school, your failure to master the nuances of a skill are seen as your fault. It’s because you didn’t try hard enough or work long enough — it would never be considered to be the teacher’s fault. Even when you ask for help, the assistance is often simply additional explanation. One student of mine confessed that when she asked her former teacher a question, she would just nod and act as though she understood, even though the explanation just confused her more. Therefore, everything stays the same.

Instead of explaining, it is most helpful of a teacher asks questions or observes your performance of a skill so that she can assess what needs tweaking. Under her guidance, you will actually do things differently than the way you were doing them before. From that point forward, your practice will be useful, because you’re actually practicing the right thing.

To master a skill, you’ve got to have help. This help can come from books and YouTube videos, but your best progress will come from the guidance of an actual human being who is invested in your success.

Even if you’ve been disappointed by teachers in the past, I encourage you to keep searching. The right support can yield priceless results.