One of my family members recently had surgery on a limb and is now in physiotherapy for rehabilitation.
She is doing very well. In fact the doctors are describing her as a star performer.
But other people in the clinic are barely making any progress.
As part of physiotherapy, patients are given exercises they need to complete, which push their bodies to continue stretching past what they could previously do, and strengthening by pushing past their previous limits.
Many of these other patients however are not pushing very hard.
In fact, they are not even pushing to their limits. Some are doing exercises until they get a little bit uncomfortable, and then give up and refuse to go any further.
The problem is that if you never go past your comfort barrier, you will never improve. Your body and mind need to push up to the limit of what it is capable of in order to figure out what it feels like, and what needs to happen to reach the next level.
Top class performers know that they need to engage in deliberate practice, where they seek to improve on very specific aspects to reach the next level.
And anyone who has aspirations of being a top level creative needs to improve their skills to reach their level.
The ideal way is to push yourself to the limit of your current capabilities, and then figure out activities which will keep you in a flow state near that limit.
Time spent in that flow state will help drive the desire to keep pushing the limits.
This is how you achieve peak creative performance.
Nick Skillicorn
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