A formula to improve at any skill: practice analytically, perform intuitively.
Break down your craft when you’re away from it. Critique yourself, set a strategy, and hire a coach when you need to. But once it’s time to perform, follow your intuition.
Here’s Matthew McConaughey talking about how he uses the “practice analytically, perform intuitively” approach for acting.
He says: “You gotta prepare to be free. Be conservative early, so you can be liberal later.”
Spend enough time studying your craft and you’ll eventually embody the core principles. Like an Olympic gymnast, you’ll know your routine so well that you won’t even need to think about it.
Professional athletes exemplify this approach, as I explore in this thread.
Though we should trust our intuitions during moments of artistic performance, we should remember that our intuitions are fallible. That’s why professional chess players have turned to the wisdom of machines to hone their intuition.
perell.com/essay/practice…
Former college basketball star and current NBA player JJ Redick prays during the national anthem before every game.
As the Star Spangled Banner plays in the background, he says: “Play instinctually.”
When we’re doing what we do great, it looks easy. But it looks easy, and it consistently looks easy, because of the preparation. It’s the month leading up to go to work. That’s where I’m sweating. That’s where I’m working. That’s where I’m towing the plow.”
— Matthew McConaughey
You don’t reach a state of mastery when you know everything. You reach it when you’ve absorbed the knowledge so deeply that it becomes a part of you.
perell.com/essay/practice…
This is the most popular video I’ve ever published on Twitter, in part because it follows the “Practice Analytically, Perform Intuitively” approach.
I’ve written and refined my take on imposter syndrome multiple times, which makes it talking about it easy.
When you’re away from your craft, improve analytically. But once you’re in the flow, perform intuitively.
“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it.“ — Robert Pirsig
“I believe that all the great stuff floats around out there and the great stuff comes through you and not from you.”
— David Foster, 16-time Grammy Award winning musician
(h/t @matttillotson)
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