If I could distill everything I’ve learned about practice into a single sentence, it would be this: the best way to get better at something is to practice something harder.
Not harder at random. Not harder in a different domain. Harder in the same skill family — a technique that uses the same fundamental abilities but demands more of them. Practice that technique, and the easier one improves on its own.
This principle is the most counterintuitive thing I’ve encountered in my entire journey with magic. It violates every instinct about learning. It contradicts the conventional wisdom of “master the basics before moving on.” And it works so reliably that I now consider it the single most important insight in practice methodology.
The Mechanism
Practicing more difficult tasks inherently involves all the skills required for simpler tasks. I first encountered this idea in “Practice Like a Pro,” and it’s the key to everything.
When you practice a technique that’s ten to fifteen percent harder than one you’ve already learned, you’re not just working on the harder technique. You’re working on everything below it simultaneously. The harder technique contains the easier technique as a subset — it requires all the same fundamental skills, just at a higher level of demand.
This means that every repetition of the harder technique is also a repetition of the easier technique’s component skills — but under greater stress. And it’s the stress that drives adaptation.
The easier technique, when practiced in isolation, no longer provides enough stress to trigger adaptation. It’s at ninety percent, within the comfort zone, neurologically familiar. But when the same component skills are engaged as part of a harder technique, they’re operating at maximum capacity. The stress is back. The adaptation signal is reactivated. And the improvement transfers when you return to the easier context.
The Figure Skater Confirmation
Research on elite athletes confirmed this principle through direct observation. Studies of figure skaters showed that the best skaters spent more time attempting jumps they frequently failed at, while average skaters spent more time on jumps they could already land.
The counterintuitive result: the elite skaters’ mastered jumps were also better. Not just the new jumps they were working on — the old, established jumps too. By pushing beyond their current level, they were inadvertently strengthening everything below.
The average skaters, by spending their time on established jumps, maintained those jumps without improving them. Their practice was the equivalent of lifting the same weight every day — maintenance without growth.
The parallel to my experience was exact. When I practiced only the techniques I could already do, they stayed at their current level. When I pushed to harder techniques, the established ones got better despite receiving less direct attention.
The Guitar Speed Lesson
Shawn Lane’s approach to guitar practice provided the most vivid illustration of this principle.
Lane’s method was extreme: he would play scales significantly faster than he could play them cleanly. The result was messy — missed notes, timing errors, imprecise finger placement. By conventional standards, this was terrible practice. You’re supposed to play slowly and cleanly, then gradually increase speed.
But when Lane pulled back to his normal speed after these intense sessions, it felt easy. His normal speed had improved without being directly practiced. The stress of the extreme speed had forced adaptation that transferred to all lower speeds.
I tried this with a card technique. Instead of performing the sleight at my normal pace, I attempted it at roughly one and a half times my usual speed. The results were ugly. Cards fumbled, timing was off, the technique fell apart more often than it succeeded.
But when I returned to normal speed, the improvement was immediate and obvious. The technique that had been at eighty-eight percent was suddenly at ninety-three percent. The speed practice had forced my hands to find micro-efficiencies that normal-speed practice couldn’t have revealed, because at normal speed there was no pressure to find them.
Why People Resist This
People often make the mistake of not moving on to something more difficult before mastering the last ten percent, out of the seemingly logical assumption of, “Why would I go for something more difficult if I can’t even master this level?”
This resistance is logical. It feels responsible. It aligns with how we think about most other endeavors — finish what you started before starting something new.
But practice isn’t like most other endeavors. Practice is governed by adaptation, and adaptation has its own logic. The logic of adaptation says: the stimulus must exceed the current capacity to trigger growth. Once a technique is within your comfort zone, it is no longer a sufficient stimulus, regardless of whether it’s at ninety percent or ninety-nine percent.
The fear behind the resistance is loss. If I move on before mastering this technique, won’t I lose it? Won’t it deteriorate while I’m focusing elsewhere?
The somersault test answered this definitively for me. If a gymnast learns a single somersault and then begins training double somersaults, does anyone seriously believe the single somersault will be lost? The double contains the single. Training the double maintains and strengthens the single automatically.
The same applies to any skill hierarchy where the harder version contains the easier version. Card techniques, musical passages, athletic movements — if the harder skill uses the same fundamental abilities as the easier skill, training the harder one maintains the easier one.
My Evidence
Over six months of applying this principle, I documented the following pattern repeatedly:
Technique at approximately ninety percent. Attempts to grind the remaining ten percent through direct practice — failure. Weeks of work with minimal improvement.
Shift to a harder technique in the same skill family. Two to three weeks of focused work on the harder technique, reaching roughly seventy to eighty percent proficiency.
Return to the original technique. Proficiency now at ninety-three to ninety-seven percent. Minimal direct practice needed to polish the remaining few points.
This pattern repeated with every skill I applied it to. Not once. Not twice. Every time. The reliability was what converted me from skeptic to evangelist.
The hardest part was the faith. Each time I moved on from a stuck technique, a voice said: you’re giving up. You’re abandoning it. It’ll get worse. And each time I came back to find it better, the voice got a little quieter.
After about the fifth cycle, the voice went silent. The evidence was overwhelming. Moving to harder material fixes the easier material. Not sometimes. Not usually. Reliably.
The Practical Application
For anyone wanting to apply this principle, here are the specific criteria I use:
The harder skill must be similar in nature. Same type of technique, same fundamental movements, same skill family. A harder card sleight, not a rope trick.
The harder skill should be roughly ten to fifteen percent beyond current ability. Enough to create meaningful adaptation pressure, not so much that productive practice is impossible.
Spend at least two weeks on the harder skill before stepping back. The adaptation needs time to develop. A few days isn’t sufficient.
When you step back, approach with curiosity. Don’t anxiously test whether the old skill improved. Just perform it naturally and observe the result.
Don’t be surprised when it works. It will feel almost like cheating. A skill that was stuck for weeks is suddenly smooth and reliable, and you didn’t directly practice it at all. This is normal. This is how adaptation works.
The fastest road to mastering a skill runs through the skill above it. Always has. Always will. The only thing standing in the way is the perfectly logical, completely wrong instinct that tells you to stay put until you’ve finished what you started.