All activities have skills that can be broken down and improved. This is where you focus on the quality and not the quantity of the practice. Deliberate practice is the act of working on one very small activity in order to improve your performance. Each skill set is broken down into the smallest segments in order to master each individual step. This is called practicing with a purpose. 

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For example, say you want to improve how fast you can swim a lap using freestyle. You could just show up to the pool everyday and swim a bunch of laps and hope you will get better over time. Or, you could break down each individual step of your stroke and practice those bits separately. One of the elements you could choose is your breathing. After a little research here's what you decide you need to do to improve your breathing while swimming:

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• You need to exhale under water, so you only have to inhale above water.

 

• Keep your head still while swimming.

 

• Breathe into the pocket created in the waves while you're swimming.

 

• Don't lift your head up to breathe.

 

• Don't rotate your head too much when you take a breathe.

 

• Take a breathe on odd strokes, so that each breathe lands on the opposite side.

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I bet you didn't know breathing had so many steps when swimming. For this example you could work on these steps individually or all at once. Your goal may to go to the pool every day and practice sticking your head under water 50 times to practice exhaling. While this may not sound very fun compared to swimming laps, but deliberate practice is meant to get you results. 

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What is you're not an athlete .... can deliberate practice still be used to increase performance? Of course it can. Musicians, Public Speakers, Artists, Chess Players, etc.. all use this strategy to work on key parts of their skills. Think about ways you can incorporate deliberate practice into your daily life and you may take your performance from good to great!