18/06/2026
25 Years of Practice
Looking through old photographs recently, I realised something.
Over the last 25 years I've worked with people of different ages, backgrounds and abilities. Through sport, business, workshops, retreats, coaching and education, thousands of conversations, observations and experiences have accumulated into something that is difficult to describe.
It's easy to look at experience as simply "time served."
But experience isn't really about time.
It's about pattern recognition.
There is an old story about an engineer who was called to fix a machine that had stopped an entire factory. After examining it for a few minutes, he took out a small hammer and tapped one spot. The machine immediately sprang back to life.
His invoice was substantial.
The factory owner protested. "How can you charge that much for one tap of a hammer?"
The engineer replied:
"One pound for the tap. The rest for knowing where to tap."
That is the value of practice.
Over time, knowledge becomes something more than information. You begin to recognise patterns before they fully emerge. You notice what others overlook. Solutions arrive more quickly, not because you're working harder, but because you've travelled similar terrain many times before.
What fascinates me is that much of this expertise becomes invisible to the person who possesses it.
You forget how much you've learned.
You forget the mistakes you've already made.
You forget the thousands of interactions, decisions, successes and failures that quietly shaped your understanding.
It's as though you develop a series of internal maps. At first, every situation requires conscious thought. Eventually, experience allows you to navigate both cognitively and intuitively. You still think carefully, but you are also drawing upon years of accumulated observation and practice.
Education is important. It provides foundations.
Practice turns foundations into capability.
And capability, developed over years of real-world experience, often appears effortless from the outside.
The photographs in this collage represent only moments in time. What they don't show are the years of preparation, reflection, learning, adaptation and practice behind them.
Twenty-five years later, I am still learning.
But I am increasingly aware that some of the most valuable things I've learned were not found in books or classrooms alone. They were learned through doing, observing, failing, adjusting and returning to practice again and again.
Experience doesn't replace learning.
It is what learning becomes when it is lived.
