Book introduction:

“Practice Perfect,” as the title hinted, is a how-to method book. I really enjoyed it and highlighted many notes. However, it couldn’t be half-long. The book chapters are not well-organized. Lemov, the author, breaks the core concepts(rethinking of practice, how to practice, using modeling, feedback, culture of practice and post-practice) into smaller and repetitious portions so that I could not connect every chapter in a straight way.

Below were some of the rules I felt applicable in this book:

Rethink practice and isolate your skills:

Practicing in a hustle and bustle environment sometimes distracts me from recognizing I’m learning in the wrong way. So I participate in the learning workshops or study groups for getting feedback from the other members. I could re-examine what skills to be sharpened through rethinking. Then I break the difficult paths for isolated skill development.

Bright spot:

Focus on your strength. Improving your weakness is a waste of time.

In the past, I tried to learn different domain knowledge and skills for the sake of proving myself. However, these skills didn’t turn out to be a competitive work advantage. As a knowledge worker, you must make effective contributions to your cooperation.

However, honing my weakness only makes me a mediocre worker. Why do I spend more energy    on my strength?

Shorten the feedback loop:

Implementing a small and easy change right away can be more effective than a complex rewiring a skill. So I usually try to post my thoughts on my Facebook after reading.

Replace your purpose with an object:

I love to make a New Year’s resolution to improve myself over the next months. Unfortunately, after only a few short weeks, most of them failed. By writing a reflective journal, I know it’s not realistic. So I adjust my goals to make them specific and measurable. For example, I want to speed up my writing, so I use Excel to record my word count every day.