This series is my attempt to document the ideas, mental models, and practical lessons that worked for me while learning skills and building habits over the years. These lessons came from my parents, teachers, colleagues, friends, and from books and blogs on self-improvement. The path was anything but linear. It involved trial and error, false starts, and long stretches of inconsistency. I don’t aim for perfection. I go off track for days or weeks at a time—but once something becomes a habit, returning to it becomes easier.

This article distills what actually helps break plateaus and turn effort into measurable improvement.

Before we begin, a brief disclaimer:

 Keep in mind J. Krishnamurti’s guiding principle:

            “Don’t follow anyone. The moment you follow someone, you cease to follow the truth.”

Following anyone leads to imitation, fear, and a loss of personal understanding. Truth must be discovered personally and directly, not by accepting the beliefs of others.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s begin.

If you’d like a deeper context, I’ve explored these ideas earlier.

1. Self-improvement: Goals, Mindset, Habits, Focus, Practice, and Self-help books
2. Habits: Discipline and Habits – How to Build Habits

The Plateau Problem

We want to pick up a new skill – let’s say playing a musical instrument, badminton, basketball, coding, or photography. We start working on it. When we start learning from zero, we see rapid improvements. The initial learning curve looks steep. Improvements we make are highly visible. We imagine we will become an expert in another few months. But after a while we feel that we have hit a plateau even if we keep practicing every day. What happens? The brain pulls a fast one on us. Remember the habit we discussed in the previous post. Once we reach a satisfactory level of skill, our brain wants to move that skill into a habit so it can stop thinking about it. Hitting a plateau is something we all encounter, where progress slows due to comfort-zone complacency.

Why the plateau?

• Automation: The brain moves skills to autopilot mode to conserve energy, leading us to repeat the activity without thinking.
• Ineffective routines: Techniques that worked earlier stop working at higher levels.
• Rising complexity: Skill demands increase faster than visible progress. Knowledge requirements grow exponentially. Progress slows down due to increased complexity and may result in mental fatigue.

Why Practice Alone Isn’t Enough

When they don’t see progress, most people will convince themselves they don’t have the talent or capability to continue to improve the skill. A few give up learning. We want to avoid that. To break through we need to change how we look at practice. By definition Practice is simply repeating a task to get better at it. It is repeatedly doing something in a comfortable way. It does not focus on improving weaknesses or increasing complexity, and the feedback loop is either missing or limited. It is like playing the same piece on a piano or solving many similar math problems. Without a feedback loop we keep repeating mistakes. Without increased complexity we cannot move to the next level. So, the skill set plateaus. So, how do we get out of the plateau? By deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is the term coined and developed by Swedish psychologist and researcher K. Anders Ericsson. He detailed it in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (co-authored with Robert Pool)

Instead of just repetition, deliberate practice is a structured and focused effort to improve specific aspects of performance with immediate feedback.

What Makes Practice Deliberate?

Key characteristics / components:

• Set specific goals: Break the skill into tiny, manageable chunks and practice only that till you observe improvement.
• Eliminate distractions: Practice with intense concentration by removing distractions. One cannot do deliberate practice when distracted. Block 1-2 hours with no distractions.
• Seek immediate feedback: Need to know immediately when we fail and exactly where we failed. A coach or mentor can be of great help to show us the gap between what we did and what is intended to be done.
• Comfort zones stall progress: Try tasks we have been avoiding due to its complexity. This bump is harder to get over than in the earlier phase of learning. This will be taxing, but it is the one and only way to improve the skill.
• Increase complexity in slices: We don’t want to move from comfort zone to high complexity zone in one step – that will be impossible, demotivating, and we will quit. Complexity needs to be increased in slices. Slices that are not too low (too easy a challenge) or too high (too big a bite to chew) in complexity. Hit the sweet spot with trial and error that keeps the motivation and interest level in continuous learning without getting bored or anxious.
• Focus on weaknesses and continuous correction: Identify the mistake, adjust the technique, and try again immediately till you correct the mistake.

For continuous feedback, one can come up with their own techniques like record your play of a piece on a piano, identify weak areas, and repeat the process. Better, have a coach or a mentor who can provide the feedback and guide you.

Practiceand deliberate practice both involve repetition to improve skills, but they differ significantly in purpose, structure, and effectiveness. Deliberate practice requires very high mental effort, focus, and grit. Deliberate practice is practice with purposeful improvement

How to Apply Deliberate Practice

What do we need to do for deliberate practice? Break the skill into small components. Here’s a simple loop you can apply to almost any skill. For example, instead of playing an entire song on a piano repeatedly, identify the weakest part. Practice only the difficult bars. Practice that part slowly and repeatedly. Get feedback. Correct finger movements and repeat until perfect. Play it 10 times without mistakes. If a mistake is made, start the count from 1 again. Repeat until you hit 10 in a row with no mistakes. Move on to the next difficulty. If it is a new technique of finger movements, play only that technique following the above loop technique. This method can be applied to any skill – long distance running, basketball 3-point throws, singing, picking up a new language, coding, etc.  Deliberate practice works by strengthening the neural circuits related to the skill in our brain. Instead of reinforcing mistakes, the brain learns the correct pattern.

Deliberate practice is not going to be fun-it requires extreme mental effort and practice sessions will be exhausting. If mental fatigue sets in, take a short break. Use the break to process information. This will help to get out of the fatigue. But try to avoid long breaks-days or weeks-that break continuity. If it feels too stressed out on a particular day instead of skipping the practice, practice for 10-15 minutes with no specific goals – say play known pieces on the piano or do a few 3-point throws.

Understand the difference between passion and skill set. One can have lots of passions. It is acquiring a skill set that gives satisfaction as we observe continuous improvement, and quality of the outcome. Deliberate practice is the technique to acquire new skill sets. Remember experts are made, not born, through intense, lifelong practice rather than innate talent. The real question is not whether you are talented-but whether you are willing to practice deliberately.

Some of the books and ideas that influenced my thinking:

1. Peak by Anders Ericsson
2. Mindset by Carol Dweck
3. Grit by Angela Duckworth
4. Deep Work by Cal Newport
5. Tyranny of Merit by Michael J Sandel
6. Atomic Habits by James Clear
7. Hyper Focus by Chris Bailey
8. How Minds Change by David McRaney