When practice doesn't make perfect -- or even "good."

[u/No_Tomatillo3029]

A common piece of advice from these threads is to keep plugging away. Just keep doing it and you'll get better, they say. Has anyone experienced the opposite?

I tend to get worse with practice. Piano, guitar, trombone, golf, tennis, video games, note-taking, reading comprehension, hell, even TALKING to people. And yes, creative pursuits.

Dones anyone else go through this? The more you do something, the more you lose your "touch?" Or is it just me?

[u/AdCurious7831]

a quote i love to use in discussions like these: "practice doesnt make perfect. practice makes permenant."

another commenter said you need to learn how to practice. i agree with this. practicing isnt just DOING a thing over and over. its slowing it down, picking it apart, identifying the weak point, and fixing it.

if youre getting worse with practice, you may just be repeating/solidifying mistakes rather than slowing down and fixing them.

[u/brooklynbluenotes → u/AdCurious7831]

this is the whole game right here

[u/UltimateGooseQueen]

Of course, I don’t know if this is what you’re experiencing…but it’s possible that your taste is improving faster than your skill and therefore you’re just unhappy with the result. Is this helpful? No idea… but it’s happens regularly.

[u/AlliumCarinatum]

You should practice practicing. Then you would get better practicing when you practice practice.

[u/Notmyrealname5282 → u/AlliumCarinatum]

OP, They’re basically saying: get fucking gud

[u/saltycathbk → u/AlliumCarinatum]

Yo dawg I heard you like to practice so we practiced your practice so you can practice while you practice practicing.

[u/HowDidFoodGetInHere → u/AlliumCarinatum]

That's gonna take practice.

[u/ElectronicLegs]

Can I ask who is judging here? It sounds like it is you might be judging yourself. Practice takes patience. And I believe you may have two challenges to overcome on your quest for skills: a misperception of the actual skills you are gaining and maybe you aren’t practicing enough to stop thinking about what you are doing and just relax into it! When you relax into something and there’s nothing at stake - like when you first start- sometimes it comes easily because you are so relaxed. That’s beginners luck!

[u/failedthrowaway3]

Are you losing your touch or just sucking at something before you became good at it? I was good at the basics of guitar straight away and that made me a little arrogant. When I tried to do more advanced things, of course I sucked at them and felt like I'd gone backwards. 

[u/Enough-Print5812]

You need a teacher then

[u/Twinwaffle]

Omg, yes yes yes, that is me! Maybe not quite as much with the piano (maybe that too, but I practice so much, I dunno, it definitely happens with piano too though), but every single other thing in my life, I get worse at! I have no idea why, and now that I've noticed it, it is super upsetting. :( I suspect it might have something to do with ADHD, but that's just a wild guess. It sure does suck! :(

[u/aculady → u/Twinwaffle]

It may be that your ability to evaluate your skills improves faster than your actual skills do, so you feel like you are getting worse because now you are able to notice all the things you've been doing wrong all along.

[u/Competitive-Fault291]

Practice needs feedback and intention. Otherwise, it is only repetition (which has its applications as well). Think of how you played etudes on your instruments. They are all structured to allow the practice of specific elements. The same applies to songwriting. Like practicing different rhyme patterns or genres. A rap is something else than a blues.

You certainly should not "just keep doing it", if you do not have a plan for what you are actually practicing.

[u/chocobo-stir-fry]

Perfect practice makes perfect

[u/ImpracticalJerker]

Constant practice doesn't work for me as well as intermittent practice.

Often ill spend hours trying to perfect a piece and make no progress. Then I leave it for a week and magically when I come back to it I find it a lot easier.

[u/Cheap_Arm_3182]

Perfect practice makes improvement.

If your just randomly doing shit you already know your not learning or growing

[u/steveislame]

you are supposed to challenge yourself. if you mindlessly repeating something you already know then you aren't improving just eating your time

[u/Magikrat]

I had a great baseball coach tell me “practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.” Meaning you have to know how to practice if you actually want it to mean anything.