What are the two secrets to training like an expert?

It’s no different than in sports: you need both drills and scrimmages.

Drills emphasize learning perfect technique. Scrimmages give you a taste of the noise inherent in a real event.

Via Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better:

• Drills strive to maximize the amount of mental energy focused on a skill. They increase density, the number of productive iterations of a skill per minute of practice… 

• A scrimmage, by contrast, is designed not to distort the game but to replicate its complexity and uncertainty. 

• …drills focus on skill development and scrimmages on evaluation and final preparation. You use the former to focus maximum attention on the thing you want to learn, and the latter to answer questions: Are you ready to play the game or run the meeting? Which members of your team are prepared? Whose mindset responds best to the pressure of performance?

They can both be used effectively to improve everything from basketball skills to, in this case, important meetings at work.

Via Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better:

In preparation for the meeting, he completes two activities, allowing him to practice in important, but different ways. First, working on his own, he goes through the meeting agenda and, for each segment where he will ask for input or comments, writes out possible responses from faculty members, each response on a note card. He then flips through them, reading them one at a time out loud and practicing responding with active listening skillsâ restating the comment or highlighting some part of it to show that he took it seriously, even if he disagreed. When his tone feels off or his comments poor, he immediately doubles back and answers the card a second time. He goes through the stack of cards several times, drilling himself until active listening feels natural.

Next, George enlists Carly, the principal of a nearby school, to help. She asks him to run through the whole meeting from top to bottom, pretending that itâs the real thing. She plays the part of different meeting participants, chiming in during the participatory moments with a variety of commentsâ some from Georgeâs note cards and others of her own. She varies the tenor and tone: sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes skeptical, sometimes feigning confusion. In this practice, however, she discourages George from stopping midstream to revise a response. George has to practice implementing all of the skills heâs been working on in real, sustained time, with all of the unpredictability of participantsâ moods and all of the distractions of following the agenda and running the meeting. Itâs a sort of rehearsal.