By nature, humans are inclined to avoid anything that appears potentially painful or overtly difficult. This instinctive aversion is not limited to our everyday lives but extends to our practice of any skill. When we first engage with a new skill, we are often drawn to the aspects that come naturally to us. Once we attain a certain level of proficiency in these areas, we tend to stick with them, repeatedly honing our strengths while neglecting our weaknesses. This approach creates an imbalance, leading us down the path of amateurism. To truly achieve mastery, however, a shift in strategy is required. This is where the concept of Resistance Practice comes into play.
Embrace the Discomfort
The journey to mastering any skill involves confronting discomfort head-on. This principle of Resistance Practice requires a deliberate shift away from your natural tendencies. When you practice a skill, your instinct is to focus on what you excel at, where success feels easy and encouraging. However, true mastery demands that you flip this instinct on its head.
Instead of seeking comfort, you must actively seek out the elements of your skill where you falter or lack confidence. These are often the areas we are most inclined to avoid, whether due to frustration, fear of failure, or simply because they don’t come as naturally. To embrace this discomfort, start by identifying these weak points with meticulous honesty. This could be a specific technique in playing a musical instrument, a particular move in a sport, or a challenging aspect of a craft or profession.
Once identified, integrate these weaknesses into your regular practice routine. For example, if you struggle with a particular chord progression on the guitar, make it the focal point of your practice sessions. If writing eloquent prose is difficult, dedicate a significant portion of your time to writing exercises that challenge your style and coherence. This approach forces you to repeatedly engage with these difficult areas, fostering improvement and resilience.
The discomfort accompanying this process is not a sign of failure but a crucial part of the growth journey. You build greater strength and capability each time you push through this pain. Embracing this struggle transforms it from a barrier into a stepping stone, ultimately enhancing your proficiency and confidence.
Intensify Your Focus
The second component of Resistance Practice is to resist the inclination to relax your focus. This involves treating your practice sessions with intensity that far exceeds ordinary expectations. By doing so, you mimic real-world scenarios’ pressures and push your limits beyond what is required.
To intensify your focus, start by designing practice routines that are as challenging as possible. For instance, if you’re preparing for a public speaking engagement, practice delivering your speech to increasingly larger and more critical audiences. If you’re an athlete training for a competition, simulate the event’s intensity by incorporating drills that replicate the exact conditions you’ll face, such as high-intensity interval training or competitive scenarios.
The idea is to create a practice environment that is as demanding and immersive as the real thing. This approach helps you build endurance, mental fortitude, and the ability to perform under pressure. When you practice with this intensity, you condition yourself to handle high-stress situations with greater ease and composure.
Moreover, be creative in devising these high-intensity routines. Challenge yourself with exercises that test your skill and push your mental and physical boundaries. For example, if you’re a writer, set strict word count goals and deadlines to simulate the pressures of publishing. If you’re a musician, experiment with complex variations and improvisations that push your technical abilities.
Set Arbitrary Deadlines
Incorporating arbitrary deadlines into your practice can significantly enhance your progress. These deadlines should be challenging and set to push you beyond your current limits. By introducing a sense of urgency, you create an environment that mimics the pressures of real-world performance and drives you to achieve higher standards.
Start by setting specific yet ambitious goals for your practice sessions. For instance, if you’re improving your public speaking skills, give yourself a deadline to memorize and deliver a speech with a high degree of fluency and confidence within a set period. If you’re learning a new language, set a deadline to reach a particular level of fluency or complete a certain number of practice exercises.
These deadlines should be self-imposed and designed to stretch your capabilities. By committing to these goals, you simulate the pressures of external expectations, which can help you develop a stronger sense of discipline and urgency. As you approach these deadlines, the drive to meet them forces you to focus intensely, work efficiently, and overcome procrastination.
Additionally, adjust these deadlines based on your progress and challenges. If you consistently meet your goals, raise the bar to maintain a sense of progression. This continuous cycle of setting and achieving challenging deadlines ensures that you always push the boundaries of your abilities.
Invent Exercises That Challenge Weaknesses
Creating exercises that target your weaknesses is a critical aspect of Resistance Practice. This requires a proactive approach to designing routines that address the areas in which you need the most improvement. By focusing on these weak points, you turn them into opportunities for growth and development.
Begin by analyzing your skill set and identifying the areas that need the most attention. For instance, if you’re a tennis player struggling with your backhand, create drills that focus exclusively on improving this shot. If you’re a writer facing challenges with grammar, develop exercises that specifically target grammatical accuracy and style.
Inventing these exercises involves a degree of creativity and experimentation. Don’t rely solely on traditional methods; think outside the box to devise new ways to challenge yourself. For example, if you’re a musician, create complex rhythmic patterns to practice difficult time signatures. If you’re an athlete, design unconventional drills that simulate the unpredictability of a real game.
The goal is to make these exercises as relevant and demanding as possible. By regularly incorporating them into your practice routine, you ensure that you consistently address and improve upon your weaknesses. Over time, these targeted efforts significantly increase your overall skill level and performance.
Personal Reflection: Move Toward Resistance
Daily Law: Invent exercises that work upon your weaknesses. Give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain standards, constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits.
From Mastery, II: Submit to Reality—The Ideal Apprenticeship
I like to do an exercise whenever I speak to an audience about challenging themselves and their comfort zones. I ask everyone to raise their hands as high as they can. When everyone does, I ask them to raise their hands higher. Invariably, everyone stretches themselves a little bit more. That’s them moving out of their comfort zone and going a bit further by overcoming whatever resistance they felt.
Resistance practice is prevalent in situations that involve progression, including but not limited to the gym, sports practice, studying for an exam, training for a marathon, and meditation. People challenge themselves to a certain benchmark and raise the bar for themselves to improve once they are comfortable with it.
In my work as a writer, one boring yet critical thing is developing the habit of sitting for hours daily. I have to sit in front of my computer with a pen, paper, water, and food so that I am comfortable for a long time. Next, I must remove all distractions to free my mind from focusing on my thoughts instead of consuming content endlessly.
Once you close YouTube, stop listening to music, and just sit quietly without doing anything, it gets weird, irritating, and awkward because you are not used to the silence. All kinds of thoughts flow, and you feel like you are watching another YouTube video or being distracted. It takes conscious practice to accept the mental resistance and let things happen. In such situations, not doing something is more difficult than doing something.
Creative work is mostly boring in the beginning because it requires discipline. If you ever try meditating, the experience is almost the same as I described above. It takes a lot of resistance practice to allow the mind to focus at any time.
Conclusion
The journey to mastery is not one of avoiding difficulties but embracing them. By adopting Resistance Practice, you deliberately move toward the areas that test your limits. This approach fosters an unparalleled level of skill and resilience. Invent exercises that address your weaknesses, intensify your focus during practice, and set challenging deadlines to push yourself further. Through this method, you will refine your craft and achieve a level of excellence that stands out in its apparent ease and proficiency.
This article is a part of the Reflections on The Daily Laws Series based on Robert Greene’s book.