Practice Makes Perfect; Or Does it?

"Practice Makes Perfect."

Ask yourself, do you really believe in this? Do you believe that you will achieve perfection in any skill after putting your heart and soul into it for a week or a month or may be few years? Do you actually believe that you will reach to the epitome of perfection with literally zero faults and errors in any skill? Well, I for one, certainly don’t and never will agree to this.

You must have come across numerous times while growing up, ‘Practice makes perfect..’ I want to introduce a new approach to this and slightly correct this.

Growing up, I always had a strong passion for art, and still do, so I signed up for a few art classes and my teachers always used to tell the students, including me, “With enough practice, anyone can become the next Bob Ross.” Since I was quite young to evaluate my own perspectives, I believed them blindly. I worked diligently and always tried to give my 100 percent to art. But no matter how hard I tried, when I looked back at my piece of art after completion, there used to be something that I wanted to fix. Gradually my skills improved but with that a list of other new things were ahead of me, reminding me that there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Take a moment and think. Had humans stopped after inventing the wheel, we would not have airplanes and rockets now. Had scientists been content with their first successful operation we would not have ever imagined organ transplantations.

Finally, I realized you just can’t be perfect at something. Practice can surely help you to progress, you can always improve, but perfection is an impossible goal.

Those three words although appearing innocent have made us believe that if we practice, practice, and practice a lot more, we can be perfect. But I would like to reframe it as, ‘Practice Makes Progress, not Perfect.’

I hope I was able to give you something to think about, and next time when you hear it again, I’m sure, you’ll give it a thought.

Azzah Abrar, 10H