Welcome everyone.
Today I'm really thrilled to be having this conversation with Luka Delana.
Luka is a management consultant and he brings with him many years of experience working for various different multinational companies and today we are discussing with Luka the topic of MetaPractice which is something Luka wrote about in his book A Hundred Truths You Will Learn Too Luka,
Welcome.
Could you share with our listeners a little bit more about what got you thinking about MetaPractice,
How you came up with the term MetaPractice and how we might be able to incorporate MetaPractice in our lives?
As part of my work I coach executives and I've noticed that there are some who progress very fast and keep progressing for their work careers whereas there are other people who progress fast at the beginning of their career but then seem to stall and don't progress anymore.
And I ask myself what is causing them to plateau and the reason usually is that they are not learning anymore because they are not able to see what they need to change,
They're not able to see what was working,
What is not working,
What they should do differently and if they try to do something differently whether it brings anything good to them.
And this is why I coined the term MetaPractice which means practice your practice.
If you think about it all great athletes when they practice they do not only practice their skill but they also practice their practice which is they tweak the way in which they practice so that they can learn more.
They always ask themselves at the end of a practice session am I learning anything out of it and if the answer is no or not enough then they tweak the way that they are practicing so that they get more feedback out of it so that they can learn more.
And this might involve things such as hiring a coach,
Recording themselves,
Taking notes,
Setting themselves learning objectives before the practice but in general it's just about asking yourself what do I need to do so that I get more feedback out of my practice.
Thanks Luca that's such a really great and clear explanation.
I was wondering because many of us on Insight Timer we are meditating so I wonder if we apply MetaPractice to meditating what you are saying is that each time when we meditate we not just put in the time to meditate but we also attempt to improve how we meditate by adjusting our environment by making small changes by how we practice.
What are some possible ways we might be able to go about doing a MetaPractice for meditation?
So the number one question is whether you're getting feedback out of your practice.
So whether at the end of the practice you are able to say whether it went well,
Whether it didn't go well and what do you need to change out of it.
If at the end of your practice you notice that it didn't go well but you don't know what to change about it then it's a sign that maybe you should set some objectives before the practice or maybe you even just think such as during the practice I will pay attention to whether my posture is comfortable for example and that will give you good ideas at the end of the practice on what you should improve for the next time.
Okay that's great.
So it sounds like for a meditation practice what's really important is to understand whether the practice went well or not,
To understand the possible barriers or factors that led to a good practice or led to a not so great practice and to then tweak these different factors so that the next practice can be better.
Is that right?
Exactly.
It's the idea that it doesn't matter how much time you put in your practice if you are not doing it well and in the right conditions.
So of course putting time in your practice is important but that should be subordinate to using your practice time well and what you want to do is to iterate on how you practice so that when you practice you use your time well.
And I was wondering because probably many of our listeners also have a similar thought or question like when we iterate something how do we know whether or not to do it consistently for a certain period of time and how long we should try this new iteration because as you know whenever we try something new sometimes it's just because we are new to it and we just need time to familiarize ourselves with the technique or with you know getting comfortable with sitting in stillness for a long period of time and in other cases it's something that we should change quickly and have this feedback loop and adjust the environment so that we can find the optimal conditions for a good meditation practice or even a good basketball practice or even a good report that we can write.
So how do we know how long we should be maintaining this practice after we've made a small adjustment or change?
So the question again is whether you're seeing progress after your practice and not necessarily outside progress but whether you end the practice and you know more about your craft than what you did before the practice.
For example you learn something about some technique or maybe you learn how to practice better so that you get better results.
If you see these improvements then it's likely that the practice is bringing good effect and if you keep doing it you will achieve greater and greater results.
But if on the other hand you don't see progress you don't progress you don't end the practice with a better understanding of what you should do next time then it means that the practice wasn't very useful and you should focus on changing the way you practice so that it's more useful and that could include even hiring a coach or again taking some notes reading about the specific obstacle that you have because maybe other people had the same obstacle in the past.
Knowing what to look for.
Sometimes we practice and we don't really know what to look for and therefore we cannot improve and sometimes it's just about asking an expert or a long-time practitioner what they are looking for improvement when they were in your position.
I wondered if on this topic if you could also leave us with some parting comments on this idea of intention.
Also because when we come to a specific practice or whenever we are trying to learn something new many of us have many different motivations or intentions that may cause us to practice something.
How important do you think understanding why you're doing something is to the actual practice of doing it and in this case metapractice?
I think that setting the right intention can really help you get feedback on what you should improve and I give you an example.
I played basketball for a very long time and if you if your intention during practice is to make as many baskets as possible you will really not get much information about what you should do different because if a basket goes in because you were focused on the outcome you don't know whether it went in because you did the right thing or because you were lucky.
Instead to progress in basketball one of the keys is to set yourself intentions about your practice such as today I will practice the movement of my arm and then when you shoot you look at whether the movement of your arm was correct not at whether the ball went in and that will help you learn much more about how to improve your shooting technique and I'm sure that you can find a parallel to whatever your practice is so don't set an intention only on the outcome that you want to achieve out of the practice but also set an intention about what you want to improve about your practice today and that focus will help you notice the smaller variations understanding more what's working and what's not working and generally direct you towards better improvements.
Thanks so much Luca this has been such an illuminating conversation.
Thank you Waline.
