Deliberate practice

Welcome to Change, Logged, a bi-weekly newsletter offering 5 minutes of honest thoughts about life, design, and everything in between.

But as two bottles of wine harvested from the same vineyard in different years are at once similar and distinct, just so two signatures by the same person scrawled at different times are both recognizable as coming under which they are penned. Thus the perfect rendition of a signature requires not simply a mastery of the signatory’s underlying calligraphic style, but an understanding of his or her state of mind at a given moment in time.

— Amor Towles, Table for Two

Without spoiling too much, this passage comes from one of the chapters in Table for Two, which tells the story of Timothy Touchett, a keen reader of the classics. After meeting a bookshop owner, Timothy finds himself drawn into the world of rare books and eventually begins forging the signatures of famous authors for Mr Pennybrook, helping to increase the value of first editions in the store.

Around the same time, I was also reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You. The ideas from both books started to overlap in my mind, especially around the concept of deliberate practice and how it shows up in my own daily life.

A signature is not just a scribble but a trace of a person. As Timothy Touchett suggests, it reflects someone’s state of mind at a particular moment in time. No two signatures are ever exactly the same. The easiest thing to imitate is the outcome. The hardest thing to understand is the process behind it.

When you decide to learn a new skill, you naturally begin by reproducing what someone else has done. You follow instructions, copy techniques, and repeat movements until they become familiar. At first, the goal is simply to show up and build a habit.

Over time, something begins to shift. Instead of asking what to do, you start asking why. You notice the principles and small adjustments beneath the technique, and the decisions that separate imitation from understanding. Eventually, what started as replication becomes personal interpretation. The practice becomes your own.

But there comes a point where simply repeating the same thing is no longer enough. As Cal Newport argues, without deliberate practice, growth begins to plateau.

When progress no longer comes from doing more, the next step is learning to pay closer attention. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that mastery takes around 10,000 hours of practice. Cal Newport builds on that idea in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, arguing that the hours alone are not enough. It is deliberate practice that matters: pushing your abilities just beyond your comfort zone, paying attention to feedback, and refining the small details that most people overlook.

It is a lifetime accumulation of deliberate practice that again and again ends up explaining excellence.
- Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You

When I started practising Ashtanga yoga almost four years ago (and 692 classes ago), I was focused on achieving the postures through determination and brute force, quite literally. Over time, as my teacher shared more about the philosophy, history, and intention behind the practice, my perspective changed. It was no longer just about reaching the pose, but understanding how to enter it, how to transition with ease, and how each posture prepares you for the next. You never really complete the practice. You simply keep finding new layers within it.

Reading followed a similar path. What began as 30 pages one afternoon when I felt bored at home with my French bulldog gradually became two hours of uninterrupted reading every day. Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like a habit I had to maintain and became part of my daily rhythm. Like yoga, I now plan my evenings around it. Time for practice and time for reading come first, and everything else fits around them. They are no longer tasks on a checklist, but quiet rituals that have become part of who I am. Like any meaningful practice, repetition eventually gives way to intuition.

Some people say it is easier to commit to a practice when you are already good at it. Funny enough, as Newport shares, “you need to be good at something before you can expect a good job.”

For the last two years, I have spent 30 minutes every Friday riding. If there is one thing it has taught me, it is the practice of surrendering control and letting go. Not just to an animal that has a mind of its own, but also to the fact that there are some things you may never become exceptional at, and that is okay.

One of my favourite reminders from my yoga teacher is: “You’re not a better person because you can touch your toes.” It is a simple reminder that progress is not always measured by what we can achieve or how we compare to others.

I ride each week simply because it makes me happy. I invest time into it not for an achievement or a specific result, but because the process itself continues to teach me something. There is a balance between practising to achieve and practising to understand.

Through my yoga practice and observing others, I have realised that great work often looks effortless because of all the challenges, adjustments, and difficult decisions that happen along the way. As my yoga teacher always reminds us, it is your practice at the end of the day. It does not matter what it looks like to others, as long as it works for you.

People often ask, “Cass, how do you juggle reading over 100 books a year, daily yoga, weekly riding, side projects, and a full-time job?” My answer is usually: “I sacrifice sleep and a social life.” But jokes aside, it comes down to deliberate practice and being intentional about how you choose to spend your time and energy.

A signature can be forged. Yoga poses can be copied from photographs. Art can be recreated. But the deeper layer is the accumulated understanding behind them, something that can only be built through small, intentional practices repeated over years.

Like most new things, building a habit starts off feeling difficult. But over time, the discipline that once required effort becomes part of who you are. Excellence is simply the accumulation of small things done with intention. The practice never really ends. It just becomes deeper.

Books that inspired the thoughts on this page — and are worth a look:

• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

• Table for Two by Amor Towles