A popular author of 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades, Thomas Frank, introduced the three types of progress as you try to build habits and skills.
According to him, these types of progress mainly give you a satisfaction on different time scales.
Gear Acquisition
Gear acquisition gives you a satisfaction right away. If you want to learn to play any instrument, obtaining one will give you a satisfaction.
Learning
Learning, on the other, gives you a satisfaction right after you have spent time teaching yourself the basic of how to play the instrument. Gratification might take longer than gear acquisition because you need to understand a technique or undergo a course.
Deliberate practice
Thomas Frank explained that deliberate practice has the most rewards yet it entails more work to be invested. Plus, it has the slowest gain relative to the types of progress.
This is the type of progress where you need to acquire the same gratification with the gear acquisition and learning. Even more, in this progress, people might fall to gear acquisition syndrome while trying to master a skill. This syndrome refers to your behavior of purchasing various skills that you thought might help you to better in mastering your skills. Example, if you want to learn a piano, you buy the best cords, amplifier, and other gears to make you feel that you are doing good in playing a piano relative to practicing the techniques you have learned.
“Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance,” James Clear, an author of Atomic Habits, stated.
Importance of Progress
These are the three types of progress you should know when you are aiming to build new habits and skills. Keep in mind that constant practice makes progress. Be committed on the system you have built in order to obtain the goal and seek for improvement after achieving it.
