- Monitor your performance.
- Aim for incremental improvement.
- Focus on repetition.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the growth I achieved during school, and the growth I have achieved in the time since school. I think that the algorithm above is the biggest contributor to the fact that my post-academic growth has been so much bigger.
Paying attention to what you can and can’t do well is important, but only in the context of working for improvement and achieving enough repetition to implement that growth.
My Cabaret band charts are so much better than when I started writing them a decade ago. But there is not one moment I can point to when I got massively better–every year I learn one or two or three things to make them more accurate and easier to read. The same is true of all of my writing, of my piano playing and singing and conducting.
I loved my time at school and made tremendous growth as a student. But time is a constant drip, and if you view graduation as the beginning of a new period of growth, rather than the ending of learning, you too will find that your skills will change far more after you finish school.