Why Should You Engage in Deliberate Practice?

“The champions in any field are those who devote the most time to what performance experts call deliberate practice. Hard work is fine. But for it to be genuinely effective, the work needs to be directed. Deliberate practice is an activity designed to help you improve a specific skill or performance, to enable you to reach for goals just beyond your level of proficiency, to provide you feedback on results, and to build a program that allows for high levels of repetition.”
- James M. Citrin, The Dynamic Path

The artist in all of us; creates through the forward tension of our ideal existence and our current states. This unique tension creates desire, the fuel that compels development. Deliberate practice is no more than strategically and meticulously developing your capacities that will create that ideal existence.

Faith enters the picture of such creative intentions. One would not invest valuable time into deliberately developing, honing, and refining their abilities if they did not have a high level of faith or belief in the realization of their ideal. There is nothing worse than hard work without direction. Without direction and purposes existence is stifled, our will diminishes. Our will is strengthened with deliberate practice that overcomes resistance. The famous dictum of Nietzsche tells us this - Will To Power.

Power is only felt with the overcoming of resistance. Think of fitness for example. The athlete's "high" comes from the endorphins released upon exertion, i.e., the use of our will to overcome physical resistances. The feeling of our own power, is thus the feeling of pleasure. This is so for the obstacles we overcome in all aspects in life. The individual who has overcome more resistances is usually an individual with more power & confidence.

Contrary to cultural myth, great accomplishments are not attained by lucky, chosen, or gifted people. But, by those who have, like James Citrin says, habitually tended to deliberate practice. We like to believe that the lack of resistance, tension, and obstacles would produce pleasure of orgasmic proportions. Yet when analyzed from most all perspectives, from cellular growth, to intellectual accomplishment we see the divinity of challenges that feeds life into our spirits, and thus gives us a greater capacity of enjoyment and pleasure.

Angel Armendariz

Your Brain Might Be Falling Apart

According to Neurologists there are three main factors that contribute to neuroplasticity. This is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself, adapt, and grow. Neurogenesis (a form of neuroplasticity), explains Ernest Rossi is activated through novelty, environmental enrichment, and physical exercise. In his landmark book The Psychobiology of Gene Expression, Dr. Rossi attributes this adaptability to the action of genetic mechanisms, termed activity-dependent gene expression. Thus by taking in a hefty dose of these three brain growth elixirs we become more mentally capable, more healthy, and in a more harmonious state.


Novelty involves new information, or learning. New information is the very substance of all growth and development. Whether we're talking about innovation in business, governmental reform, or personal development; new information yields growth, learning, and possibilities. The deluge of information disposable to the average person on earth today in general is astounding. Never before has information been so disposable. Information is the most valuable commodity in existence; its return on investment is staggering. And rightly so; not only do we use information to grow and to gain knowledge consciously, but all organic life is dependent on information for existence. What is the opposite of information increase?

Entropy...remember that from biology class, it has to do with the breakdown, decay, of systems; the weary second law of thermodynamics that dooms all matter to death by loss of information and energy. Eminent biophysicist Werner Lowenstein, in his work The Touchstone of Life, poignantly explains how to battle the malaise of time's arrow, "There is only one way to keep a system from sinking to equilibrium: to infuse new information...Thus, to maintain its high order, an organism must continuously pump in information."

So we thus have a clearer understanding of the need and tremendous benefits of novelty through information. We also tend to see more insights and knowledge from fields such as physics and biology. Which give us incredible models of efficacy. We tend to see a pattern though, or a lag time between the time we discover an insightful method in the working of nature and the universe, and the time we see the same pattern arise while studying ourselves, our business, economy, and other sociological systems.

It might make more sense to study the ways nature has developed schemes to deal with progressive existence, as opposed to studying the subject within itself; and closely mimic, or devise models that cultivate the insights gathered by such inspection. In a recent interview with the Harvard Business Review, economist and business consultant Paul Ormerod compares business strategy with evolution, he says, " Companies should embrace the inherent randomness that drives success and failure...The companies that are most able to explore and innovate - something akin to random mutation - and then rapidly and flexibly adapt when an innovation succeeds or fails, will do best."(italics added).

To "explore" and "innovate" is precisely what novelty is about. So by directly participating in neurogenesis by learning, creativity, or gathering new information you are putting yourself in a better position to succeed in business, and life overall.

excerpt, Untitled, by
Angel Armendariz

Gratification from Performance

Gratification from Performance
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

"Precisely under conditions of reduction of tensions and gratifications of biological needs, novel forms of mental disorder appeared as existential neurosis, malignant boredom, and retirement neurosis, i.e., forms of mental dysfunction originating, not from repressed drives, from unfulfilled needs, or from stress, but from the meaninglessness of life." - Ludwig von Bertalanffy (General Systems Theory pioneer)

The quote above caught my attention the other day. The reason being is that I have frequently ran across people who have a mild case of what Ludwig is talking about. Especially "malignant boredom," and the meaninglessness of life.

Boredom can be, I believe, a symptom of life having a lack of meaning for someone. Additionally it can be a lack of self-esteem. Let me explain. When life has a meaning, or grandeur purposes beyond the current state; then a person's actions are usually in sync with what those grandeur purposes are. If there is no grandeur purpose; then there is no motivation to act towards something, hence boredom results.

Self-Esteem, creeps its head into the boredom picture when there is a lack of it. A lack of value for oneself, self-esteem, means that a person feels and sees themselves as unworthy of a more fruitful existence or future. Thus, if one feels unworthy, one will not have a belief in a grandeur picture; and if there is no belief there will be no action to grow and move towards a meaningful state of being.

Tensions in life are beneficial. For example, fitness is based on "tearing down" the body so as to allow the body to compensate and build itself stronger. Thus, no "tearing down" = no growth or fitness. To paraphrase Nietzsche - the feeling of power is what is felt when one overcomes some resistance. In a sense the function, action, or performance itself "is" the pleasure we seek as we grow.

Angel Armendariz