volume

I had my blood drawn at the Mayo Clinic earlier this week and it was probably the most efficient blood draw I’ve ever had. 

Everything from how the technician sanitized my arm, located the vein, inserted the needle, removed the needle, and bandaged the area afterward was characterized by a precise notchiness — a sense of extreme efficiency — that you can’t fully appreciate until you see it for yourself.

You could conclude that maybe the technician was just naturally gifted, sure. But I think the more likely explanation is that the technician had more experience — after all the Mayo Clinic serves 1.3 million patients a year. That’s a lot of blood to draw or, in the case of the technician, a lot of practice. 

The same principle seems to apply to surgery as well. A 2016 paper that systematically reviewed the relationship between how many procedures a surgeon has performed and the outcomes of the patients they performed on found a positive volume-outcome relationship for most procedures and conditions. In other words, the patients of doctors with more surgery experience tended to have better clinical outcomes.

More often than not, performing your craft over and over again and learning from each trial seems to be the key to proficiency. 

And to be clear, experience is not the same thing as time. 

You can gain a lot of experience in little time; you can gain little experience over a lot of time. 

Look for or create a context where you can maximize the number of trials per day. 

This could mean finding a place that gives you more interesting problems to solve per day. 

If you’re an aspiring musician or comedian, this could mean finding a place where you can perform in front of others more often per week. 

If you’re a student, this could mean picking up extracurricular activities that test the skills you’re trying to acquire. 

Maximizing the number of trials per unit of time and learning from each trial. That’s the way.