Practice

We've all heard the old joke: a concertgoer is lost in Midtown Manhattan, and stops to ask someone on the street how to get to Carnegie Hall.  Their response: "Practice."

Practice is the key to refining any craft.  Practice isn't always fun; indeed it's often tedious.  But if any of us are interested in becoming masters of our craft, practice is the only way.  As Rafe Esquith has quipped: There Are No Shortcuts.  Musicians practice their scales for hours on end, not because their recitals or concerts will involve playing those simple progressions, but because they know that they are developing a foundation for greater things.  Even Miles Davis and John Coltrane, incredible musicians remembered for improvisation, practiced scales for up to 12 hours every day.

Coltrane, Esquith, and the Karate Kid all understand the value of long hours spent practicing the basics.  Most of us do not have the discipline (and the ear) of Coltrane, or the obsessed passion of Esquith, but we can learn from them.  Our success in school is often no different from Daniel-san whitewashing the fence or Coltrane practicing his scales - in fact, we need to spend concerted amounts of time plowing through algebra problem sets if we are to master the distributive property or thinking and rethinking all angles of a historical event if we are to fully appreciate it.  Put simply, there is no substitute for practice.

Yet, our culture is filled with those who promise a short and easy way to the top.  Fad diets, get-rich-quick schemes, and test preparation services that guarantee a boosted score with minimal preparation are rife.  Many test prep companies focus on the structure and setup of standardized tests rather than the content of the tests, and then imbue students with a set of test-taking strategies and tricks.  These have their place - it is absolutely crucial to understand the beast you are to do battle with - but equally important is time spent acutally learning the content and skills that will serve you on these tests.  And that involves practice.

Whether we choose to excel at standardized tests, music, the martial arts, or anything else in this world, we need to practice.  Psychologists put the amount of time one needs in order to achieve expertise at 10,000 hours (that's about 4 1/2 years of full-time work!).  Whatever the number may be, the point is that in order to achieve our goals, and achieve them well, there is no shortcut.  We must put our time in and practice the basics.  Only then will we be able to find our ways to the respective Carnegie Halls in our lives.