Ever heard the phrase “practice makes perfect?” According to Anders Ericsson, that’s only true if that practice is done deliberately and not simply absently-mindedly. He discusses the idea of deliberate practice and how to apply that not only to technical fields and artistic practices, but also to our daily work lives.

Anders Ericsson is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is internationally recognized as a researcher in the psychological nature of expertise and human performance. He focuses primarily on the idea of deliberate practice as a means of how expert performers acquire their superior performance.