My 13 year old tried out and made a competitive softball team. The girls on the team have been playing nearly year round, while my daughter hasn’t played since her rec team finished up 9 months earlier. After one of her first practices she got in the car, upset and near tears. When I asked her what was wrong, of course her being 13 I got some moody response, but for the sake of story telling I’ll speed past the hormone fueled emotions and get to the point when she finally opened up, “I suck! Everyone on my team did awesome, but I missed every ball.” I was at that practice, she really did do a poor job. She is talented and she was performing nowhere near her ability. I sympathize with her. She is embarrassed the coach and players will think she isn’t capability. She’s afraid she won’t get any playing time. But then we get to talking about how little she has practiced for the last 9 months. How can she expect to be amazing, without doing the work? The other girls have been practicing hours every week and it shows. She’ll get there but she has to put the time in first.

In the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, they tell a similar story. At the beginning of the semester, Professor Jerry Uelsmann divided up his students. Half the class would receive a grade according to how many photos they turned in. 100 would earn them an A,  90 a B, 80 and C and so on. The other half of the class would only need to turn in one photo and would be graded on the quality of that photo. At the end of the semester guess which half was actually producing the best work? It was the half that was putting in all the practicing to get those 100 photos.

Yes, we do need to aim to improve our skills. My daughter can’t just show up to practice, goof off and expect to be a star player. We can’t walk around, take a 100 photos and call ourselves a master. At the same time, we can’t expect to become great with out doing, and doing, and doing, over and over again. I love the famous saying, “Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.” So get out, start practicing.