Practice Doesn't Make Perfect...

Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect…

John Derryberry

Trainee: How did you learn how to do all this? It seems impossible.
Me, the trainer: Oh, I screwed up so much in figuring all this out. It's really about practice and getting better.
Another trainee: So you mean I'm going to screw up a behavior intervention and possibly cause some stress in a client's life?
Me: Unfortunately, yes, learning how to intervene means causing some stress in the clients' life. The good news is that we get better at it, which means clients better understand their mental health.

Trainee: So you mean practice makes perfect?

Me: Not really; practice makes better, but we will always, at some point, screw up an intervention. When we do, we apologize and move on to the subsequent intervention. Nothing in any field ever approaches perfect-- we shouldn't chase it. But chasing being better is a noble pursuit.

It's a lie we were fed by coaches, art teachers, and music instructors our entire young life; practice makes perfect. But, unfortunately, we don't work that way. There is always an error in our work, a mistake in our execution, and a minor mishap in our motivation. It's called being human, and we should embrace it: the art of screwing up, the belief that we can fail upwards, and the notion that practice will never achieve perfection, but it will make us better.

This is important for a couple of reasons; one, it will show those around us that we desire to get better and are willing to put in the work. And two, it will remind ourselves we don't have everything figured out yet. Lastly, it stops us from taking on the illusion of superiority. The notion that we couldn't be wrong because we have practiced ourselves to perfection is not achievable, so our settings must remain at, "this could have been my fault". That notion is such an important place to be as a leader, as a public figure, and as a basic human being.

Life gets better when we stop chasing perfection: less stressful, less notion that we have to keep up with others, and more thoughtful of the goal to be just a little bit improved from the day before. A screw-up becomes a minor and routine bump in the road and not the earth-shattering mental block that we make it out to be because it ruined the notion of perfection we falsely carried. I'm not perfect, no one is, and I hope more of us lower our expectations to, "I want to be better". Then, we can all practice at getting better.