Psychologist Anders Ericsson coined the term deliberate practice while
researching how people become experts. Studying experts from several
different fields, he dismantled the myth that expert performers have
unusual innate talents. Instead, he discovered that experts attain their high
performance through how they practice: it is a deliberate effort to
become an expert. This effort is characterized by breaking down required
skills into smaller parts and practicing these parts repeatedly. In between
practice, expert performers elicit feedback and reflect on their own
performance, which guides the focus of subsequent practice. The work by
Ericsson has led to the understanding that mere practice makes
permanent, but only deliberate practice makes “perfect.” Without the
deliberate aspect, practice may lead to automaticity and arrested
development, whereas experts always try to improve beyond their current
level of performance.