Converting from performance to development

 

Converting from performance to development

“I am not lost, for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.” —Winnie-the-Pooh

For anyone interested, I have since continued the blog via wordpress:

https://deliberatepracticepsych.com/blog/

What the heck am I doing?

Welcome. Welcome to my blog about my dive into deliberate practice. I thought this could be a way to help me structure my deliberate practice system and give me a single place for my reflections - I'm not going to lie this is mostly for me - but I thought you, reading this, might take something from it. God speed to you if you can pull it off. It is running through my mind that the chances of that may be slim, as I have no idea what I'm doing with this - not a clue. 

In this inaugural post I thought I would share what my deliberate practice trek so far has entailed; what I am currently working on; and my reflections on the good, the bad and the ugly so far. I also want this to showcase my mistakes and struggles. I've often found myself wanting to read more about other therapist's mistakes when reading their stories, so I might as well read about my own. Maybe some successes too along the way.

So hopefully you can take something from this, I'll have an eye on ideas to help this offer something for others over time, but for now I'm just going to try and have fun with it.

The Story so far "“I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.” – Frodo

I thought I got what deliberate practice was after being introduced to it by Steve Bailey, who was my 5+1 primary internship supervisor after I moved to Sydney in 2018. Boy, was I wrong. I didn't start to fully appreciate it until becoming fully registered as a Psych over a year ago; but especially not until reading "Better Results: Using Deliberate Practice to Improve Therapeutic Effectiveness" by Daryl Chow, Mark Hubble and Scott Miller earlier this year. I've read the thing twice. Essentially everything I reference in relation to DP and what I have done to now is from this book. I realise that there was so much more to it than simply thinking a bit more about how you could improve your own clinical work.

My mind always likes to think on 'workability', "is this *insert concept* making sense to clients"; "could it be simpler"; "is it resonating or falling flat". This goes on and on and on... and on... and that's when it's being a little more on the useful side.

But sometimes it is very much not useful. I would have too many ideas at once and often a big desire to get them out or share them with others - which would overwhelm myself AND my clients.

So first priority was to make sure I'm taking things one at a time and contain the uncontained firehose of ideas that is my mind, which essentially turned into:

1. Getting on top of consistently administering the ORS and SRS in sessions (I use fitoutcome.com)
2. Improving what questions I ask clients to illicit actionable feedback from the SRS
3. Rereading 'better results'; taking notes and using the Pomodoro method in doing so
4. Completing my initial Taxonomy of DP
5. Find a coach (in progress)
6. Create my "therapy gaps" blueprint
7. Finalise a consent form for clients to record sessions
8. Finding a suitable webcam for my therapy session "blackbox" (in progress)
9. Frankenstein a blog together

Of course my overthinking mind exploded with ideas on EVERYTHING I needed to do, especially when I read 'Better Results' a second time, but the above is my main effort to narrow down my steps. Before that I was trying to write down every possible idea on getting my DP trek started. This didn't work very well, so I have learnt to let at least some of my ideas go into the wind and if they are important enough - they will come back. What I remind myself of now, is if I can pick one of those goals and focus on 1% improvements at a time, the gains will eventually come.

What's happening now

I'm at the behest of the step by step system above. Right now I'm in the midst of finding a coach, enter Nathan Castle, who has been very accommodating in sharing his experience so far and the opportunity he has offered is looking good.

 IT'S ALIVE!

I applaud and thank you if you made it this far. I'm not finished yet though. At least - I hope. I will aim to post every week or two, likely on a Friday with updates on how things are progressing (no matter how little or large), my thoughts and where to next.

I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to this paid (not really) presentation and please feel more than welcome to leave a comment with any of your own thoughts, tips or feedback!

Link to my other posts via wordpress: https://deliberatepracticepsych.com/blog/