“The critical difference between ‘good-enough’ and exemplary is not talent or desire. It’s practice. Deliberate practice.

practicing the most important things. One of the most counterintuitive

Keep going so that what you develop is automaticity, fluidity, and even, as we’ll discuss later, creativity. Being great at the most important things is more important than being good at more things that are merely useful.

practice makes permanent—that

when you are doing some task you have done a thousand times and can complete automatically.

“Drilling creates a foundation on which individual initiative and imagination can flourish.”

To practice is to declare, I can be better.

Practice implies a judgment. It assumes a lack of competence. But of course this isn’t true. Lionel Messi, whose work ethic is remarked on constantly, assumes that practice is a driver of his success and a key ingredient in continuing it. But there’s more to the picture than the not-surprising surprise that the best still practice.

Drilling let players’ creativity emerge under pressure.