Whatever I do, my mother always tells me, “Once you decide to do this kind of thing, you must practice it deliberately.”

She also gave me a book — “Deliberate Practice: How to Begin to Master.”

After reading this book, in a word, the whole book is mainly about the relationship between “genius” and “deliberate practice.”

The original explanation of “deliberate practice” is to practice a certain skill intentionally, so as to surpass the realm and level of ordinary people.

In this book, correct “deliberate practice” requires four aspects:

The first aspect is to define specific skills goals, namely, the areas to be studied, the skills to be acquired, the height you want to achieve, or the level you want to achieve.

The second aspect is to focus on attention, that is to say, focus on the tasks that the goal requires to accomplish, and practice wholeheartedly.

The third aspect is to let people point out your shortcomings, including feedback from others and feedback from your own thinking.

The fourth aspect is to go out of our comfort zone and set new challenges for ourselves. It is not easy to accomplish a task required by a goal, so keep challenging.

Belief, positioning, practice, and challenge — these four words are the basis of “genius” through deliberate practice.

Investing a lot of time and energy is the basis of doing a good job. Only when we love it can we bring infinite motivational force to deliberate practice.

Since childhood, we have been practicing how to study. However, different people get different results.

Those who believe that the acquired efforts can improve their abilities not only face difficulties but also make progress, while those who believe in the “genius myth” retreat to a state of mental powerlessness when they encounter difficulties.

They are invisibly divided into two categories, on the same road to the goal, back-to-back, becoming more and more far away from each other.

Our values and behavioral patterns influence our vision of the world: Do you think that everything is destined for us and that it’s not good to work harder? Or do you think that there is always the possibility of improvement in reality and that you will grow from the challenges?

So if we can’t even do “deliberate practice,” how can we dare talk about learning, excellence, merit and talent?