When I was a child, my parents enlisted me in piano class for the better half of a decade. Those were long years. Every day, I was tasked with practicing two or three songs six times. During exam season, I would need to practice my exam songs ten times perfectly—which meant that if I made a mistake, that time wouldn’t count. My parents held me accountable every day.
It sucked. I didn’t like the classical songs my teachers assigned me, so I would often rush through them. I’d experience surges of anger when I made a mistake and had to re-do the song during exam practice. I yelled, threatened, and begged my parents to allow me to quit—which they didn’t. Many days I would wake up with the feeling of dread that I had to practice. Occasionally, my teacher would get so upset that she would say nasty things or even grab my hands in a bid to force me to play the right keys. I felt like I hated piano and my parents hated me. This was the story that I behaved my way into and couldn’t find a way out of.
After I found the excuse to quit—an increasing workload in high school—and I spent a long time away from practice and exams, I started doing something weird.
I played piano in my own free time. There were no more exams or external rewards to aim for. Instead, I came across songs that I enjoyed and wanted to learn them to play them myself. I would watch people on YouTube play it out, or I’d print out sheet music, and I would sit at the piano and practice. That was probably one of the first times I experienced the power of deliberate play.
In his book Hidden Potential, Adam Grant tells the story of a girl who lost interest in practicing the violin after going through a series of exams. The girl’s mother approached solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie hoping that Evelyn would motivate the girl to grind it out and continue her practice. Adam writes:
“Instead, Evelyn improvised some deliberate play. She challenged the girl to play pieces backward, to come up with ten ways not to play the violin, and to incorporate sounds from her favorite TV show and her favorite animal. The girl left the session beaming. Before, her practice time was focused on ‘an outcome of being judged,’ Evelyn says. Deliberate play taught her that ‘the real outcome is her enjoyment.’ Without enjoyment, potential stays hidden.”
I didn’t become a professional pianist or anything like that, but I did learn that I didn’t hate practicing or playing piano. If I had been taught and encouraged to play songs that I liked, in a way that energized me, then I would have been able to approach my piano practice with a lot more momentum. My heart would have been in it.
I practice a lot of other crafts now, and I know better than to just enforce deliberate practice. It’s just as important to inject energy and play into the craft, and it’s something I consider and do very often.
P.S., Noting that during my tenure at Figma, the company added its fifth core value—play. As Figma describes it, “Playing is learning. We embrace spontaneous, unstructured exploration—because that’s where we find our best ideas.”