When it comes to any type of career, especially creative careers, it can be hard to measure when your skills are growing. In some careers, it's clear as day, but in others, it can be vague at best to figure out your skillset.

Deliberate practice is essentially both purposeful and systematic. It's deeper than simply just practicing your craft, it's the focused effort that results in getting better.

If you've been following my content, you know I love Cal Newport. His books and blogs explained a lot of theories I had rattling in my mind but couldn't put words to. His book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, focused on a lot of topics, but one of the key parts was around this idea of deliberate practice.

The main idea behind the book is that instead of debating if something is your ultimate life "passion", instead you just focus on becoming insanely good. He goes on to say that working right is more important than doing the right work. You can agree or disagree, but if you're at a creative or professional stand-still, it's worth hearing how you can use this in your life.

There's a plateau most processionals hit and can coast by on being "good enough". But what if you want to be better?

So, that's where deliberate practice comes in so you can blaze past people in your industry.

With that, let's dive into the rules and how you can implement them.

1. Take on work that is outside of your comfort zone. If you're always doing things you know you're good at, you will start to coast.

2. Cal suggests starting with a time structure first before anything else. Aka - "I will work on this for one hour no matter what" versus any other measurement (page count, for example). Until you have the time commitment down, don't even think of adding in any other strategies.

He is a huge believer in keeping tallies of your sessions, just so you can watch the checkmarks accumulate because you won't have a lot of clear measurements outside of time investments when you're starting.

3. Implement a "research bible routine" where you take notes of everything you're learning and compare it to other topics you're learning about. This basically lets you cross-reference experts in your field and see if you can come up with new ideas or creative solutions.

4. Once a week, expose yourself to something new in your field. Take the time to think deeply about it. Take walks in nature just to think about this idea.

5. Come up with a "high level" view of your work and your life - what do you want to come of these skills you're developing?

6. Once you have that vision, create small projects that would last under a month to get you moving in that direction. Pull from your list of new and interesting ideas to see if there's something new you can create and put it out into the world.

Above all, it's essential to focus on the work in front of you instead of some big, fancy life. It's easy to dream about making hundreds of thousands of dollars and being in demand, but it's another thing to sit down and practice your skillset for an hour.

Only one of those will get you where you want to be.