Practice, Practice, Practice

I’ve been reading a few books lately and it has me thinking about how I practice and the purpose for practicing. In order to become a master at doing most things well it requires practice. Actually, I venture to say that everything we do by habit or perhaps even by instinct is because of what we have practiced. Everything from walking to driving a car to our relationships requires practice. We have practiced ourselves into many of our skills, abilities and behaviors, many without calling it practicing or realizing that we were and are practicing.

Being a musician, tennis player, runner, and second degree black belt has given me some insights into practicing and as a result, I have a long relationship with practice. True practice can be humbling. It provides a mirror into how we treat ourselves and by default how we treat others. It tests our limits and we fail frequently when we practice. It is also clear, that when we cease to practice, we lose expertise that existed before. Interestingly enough, we haven’t lost the knowledge. What we have lost is the connection between the knowledge and the actions to be taken based on the knowledge we have accumulated.

Recently, I realized I was out of practice driving my car. Covid-19 and self-quarantine has decreased the amount of time I spend driving. I realized I jumped more frequently seeing something out of the corner of my eye, that I looked more carefully, and I was a bit slower in making decisions. By contrast, when I drove during rush hour every day to and from work, my driving skills were fluid, flexible, and self-assured. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how to drive, it was that the connection between my knowledge and my physical driving had lost some level of expertise.

Based on my experience in learning what happens when I cease to practice the question came to me, what do I want to master? What do I want to spend my time doing to achieve and maintain a level of expertise? What area of my life is calling for me to gain a level of expertise that I do not have today? Is it possible to work on everything all the time or is there one area that, when I focus my attention on it and gain a level of mastery or expertise, every other aspect of my life will improve as well? What I also noticed is most of my examples are about mastering a skill, like driving. What would it look like if I focused on Self-Mastery. Rather than gaining expertise in something that is visible such as, say, driving, what if I focused on the invisible, the intangible. What if I spent time practicing self-worth, intuition or intention? How would that impact the other capabilities, skills and expertise that are part of my life? In other words, how would mastering the intangibles impact my expertise and ability to lead projects?

Another way to look at it is to consider the difference between doing project management and being project management. What are the tangible differences that can be found when we focus on the intangibles? What difference does it really make in the success or failure of a project? And how can we learn how to practice those intangibles in a way to accelerate our success and the success of the projects we lead?

Over the past three years I have spent time, money and energy investing in self-mastery as a course of study and what I’ve discovered is that it has changed my level of success, my level of fulfillment and has delivered successful results for the projects I’ve lead. In the next several weeks I will provide what I’ve learned and share with you the possibilities that exist for bringing a new awareness and energy to your project management, a new way of viewing project management and providing the guideposts that will bring you to being project management rather than doing project management.