Repetition Does Not a Satriani Make.

A few days ago I posted my opinion on the old adage “Practice Makes Perfect“, but I feel I need to clarify a few things.

The original article I cited was referred to repetition of an activity as a means to improvement. But many people disagreed that repetition could make you better on it’s own. That’s basically true, just repeating the same dumb activity over and over again will only make you better at doing that exact same dumb activity.  I realized later that while other people had read the article as just espousing simple repetition, I had inferred the author as speaking about practice.

Practice, while often repetitious is not the same as rote repetition.  Practice is a learning activity and a growing activity.  Practice involves studying, analyzing, reading, discussing and, not least of all, doing.  That is something far different from repetition.  But practice isn’t perfect.

Just because you practice doesn’t mean you will ever become the best at something.  It will only make you the best you can afford to be.  I say ‘afford’ because practice is a payment towards a future return on investment.  Everytime I practice the guitar I have to pay a price; time, frustration, experimentation, reflection all have to paid toward the mortgage of proficiency at the guitar.  But all that practice will only ever make me as good as I can be, it will not make me a Satriani unless I have that in me.

When you invest your money in the stock market you are never really sure that, that investment won’t tank and your investment will be for naught.  When you practice though, you will always get a return.  You will always get a little better.  Practice may give you high returns and you will grow into an amazing *whatever*.  But it may have little return over time and you’ll only find out that you were never meant to be a *whatever*.  Either way you still get something from it.

Secondly, people were frustrated with the original authors statements about repetition.  They thought he meant just make crap over and over again and some day you’ll crap a golden egg.  I disagree that, that was the authors intent.  Again, I think he was referring to the importance of practice.  But I do think that you do need to generate a little crap before you learn how to make something akin to rare metals.  When I quoted Patton I was referring to getting off your butt and trying to do something and not waiting until the perfect moment.  I’ve worked for a couple companies that started as horrible, horrible systems that were at best mediocre products.  But someone created them, someone got off their butt and did it.  At least they have something to show for it.  Those of us who are always trying to craft the perfect system and are frustrated by people who buy crappy products need to learn something from that.  The crappy product is being used by the customer right now; the perfect system is still being tweaked but should be ready any day now.