Top-tier athletes are fanatically disciplined about improving their foundational skills—skills which transcend any sport, the same kind of agility drills you might see an army recruit do. Top-tier musicians do likewise: Lang Lang, for instance, is still working on his scales after 30 years as a concert pianist. They’re not just doing rote drills: they’re working to improve those skills critically, poring over performance videos and working with coaches.
By comparison, Knowledge work rarely involves deliberate practice. Knowledge workers seem surprisingly unserious about honing fundamental skills like reading (People seem to forget most of what they read, and they mostly don’t notice), note-taking (Note-writing practices are generally ineffective), developing ideas over time (Knowledge workers usually have no specific methods for developing ideas over time). Core practices in knowledge work are often ad-hoc, and knowledge workers generally don’t seem to pursue a serious program of improving in those core skills. I suspect that this is in large part because the possibility of improvement isn’t salient: Salience of improvement drives skill development.
Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills much more rigorously than knowledge workers do
from Andyʼs working notes
