Gregg Goodhart - The Learning Coach

The part that feels like struggle is the part doing the work.

A student spent months laboring through one passage. Fifteen minutes of practicing it a different way, and it came out faster, cleaner, and close to effortless. Most people back away from the hard stretch, which is exactly why most people stall out. Push into it the right way and the skill comes back stronger with every rep. This is how you get as good as you want at almost anything.

A good teacher's real value is the time they save you. They spare you the mistakes you'd make on your own.

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Most of what made the Beatles great happened before anyone was listening.

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Doing what an expert does, without knowing why, teaches nothing. I found that out walking around town with a guitar strapped on, thinking: now what?

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When you want to learn from someone good, the best question to ask is what did they do when they had as many practice hours as you have now.

The Beatles are always a good example. We tend to overlook the years of training and practice behind the songs. They were not born with the ability to write them. They had to learn, just like we do. Unlike us, they were deeply immersed in a culture of music for most of their lives.

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After a few weeks of small focused sessions, motivation moves from outside to inside. Practice starts driving itself. That's how a few weeks of work builds years of practice.

After one week of short focused sessions, things that were harder start to feel easier. That's earned. It's the fuel that keeps the habit going.

When a child learning to walk falls down, we don't say they lack talent for walking. We let them get back up and try again taking small steps. Same goes for practice. Start small.

Take out the garbage or start practicing?

Getting yourself to start practicing can feel like getting a kid to take out the garbage. That resistance stops more people than the practice itself ever does.

There's a name for pushing past it: orienting selective attention. It's a buildable skill. Start with ten focused minutes a day, and the habit grows from there.

Practice that feels worse is often practice that's working. That's the sound of weakness leaving the performance.