The ONE Small Habit DESTROYING Your Learning Potential

Main Idea

Simply rereading or glancing at mistakes is often ineffective. To improve, learners need to practice in ways that change the habits and patterns behind their performance.

A Practical Approach

1. Break the skill into small steps. Identify the sequence involved in a task, such as solving a problem, handling a sales process, or learning to ride a bike.
2. Find where you go wrong. Review your process step by step to locate the specific action or decision that leads to repeated mistakes.
3. Practice each step deliberately. Work through steps individually using concrete examples, practice problems, or a study group. This helps replace unhelpful routines with better ones.
4. Redo previous mistakes actively. Instead of only reviewing an incorrect answer, try the question again and explain your steps aloud. In the example, a student also prepared to teach the steps back to his tutor.
5. Return gradually to realistic situations. Once you have practiced the steps, apply them to complete tasks. Repetition can help you recognize patterns and respond without consciously recalling every step.
6. Expect discomfort and setbacks. The process takes discipline and may involve repeated failures before performance becomes easier.
7. Aim for intuitive performance. With enough practice, explicit steps may become less necessary, leading to what the speaker calls “unconscious competence”—acting effectively through pattern recognition and intuition.

Presenter and Source

Presenter: Stephen Petro Case example: “Tommy,” an anonymized former test-prep student