Increasing your practice surface area
The difference between being good and being great isn’t talent or formal training, but the invisible practice that happens when you're just living life.
Budapest. Sometime around 1978. It's past 1am and all the lights in a high-rise apartment are out, except for one. A Hungarian girl — not yet 10 years old — sits on the cold bathroom floor balancing a chessboard on her knees.
Her father opens the door and finds her there, crying, "Sofia! Leave the pieces alone!"
The girl looks up at him. "Daddy," she says almost desperately, "they won't leave me alone!"
If you aren't familiar with this story, the girl is Sofia Polgar. In the years following the above scene in the bathroom, she'd go on to achieve one of the highest-performing ratings in chess history, playing for Hungary in four Chess Olympiads and winning two team gold medals, one team silver, three individual golds, and one individual bronze.
A lot has been written about the training regimen that Sofia went through with her two sisters: 5–6 hours of daily chess practice alongside studies in multiple languages and high-level mathematics in an apartment packed with thousands of chess books and detailed filing systems of their opponents' histories.
But not much has been written — how could it be? — about all the hidden reps Sofia got in outside of her official sessions. Like most elite performers, she had dissolved the boundaries of what counts as training and become high in something I call "practice surface area." It means what it sounds like: the total volume of time and space in your life where practice can happen.
The false dilemma of "talent vs training"
Let's say you and a friend decide to learn something new together. Guitar, chess, coding, whatever. You both sign up for the same class, practice for the same scheduled hour each day, watch the same YouTube tutorials.
Six weeks later, they’re proficient and you’re still stuttering through the basics.
We all know the standard explanation: talent. They’ve got it, you don’t. Some people are just wired for certain things. Better to cut your losses and find something that comes naturally to you.
Right?
Maybe! Usually what people mean when they call someone "talented" or a "natural" is that the person is genetically gifted. And genetics is real. But it's also not a very satisfying explanation because it's so nonspecific.
So if I may, I think what's actually taking place in most cases is a difference in practice surface area. You and your friend both officially practiced for the same "3 hours per week," but in reality your friend put in closer to 30. And they weren't even aware they were doing it.
They started hearing music differently. Every song on their commute became a lesson in chord progressions. Their fingers unconsciously worked through scales during meetings. They fell asleep running through the next day's session. They dreamed in tablature.
You began practicing guitar. They began living guitar.
High surface area is the rule, not the exception
I like studying world-class performers, and I can’t think of a single high-level pro who isn’t also high in practice surface area.
Take George Orwell. In his essay Why I Write, he reveals something that should have disqualified him from ever becoming a writer: he had a terrible time actually sitting down to write. The physical act of writing was torture for him. By his own admission, he would avoid it whenever possible.
So how did this writing-avoidant person become one of the most famous prose stylists of the 20th century?
Here’s the secret he buried in that same essay:
For fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous “story” about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind… For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a matchbox, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf,’ etc. etc.
From childhood until age twenty-five, Orwell was practicing descriptive prose every waking moment. He wasn’t "writing," he was just existing lol. But his brain was secretly logging thousands of hours of narrative practice.
This pattern shows up everywhere once you know to look for it.
Richard Feynman didn’t become a legendary teacher by practicing lectures. He became one by explaining physics to imaginary students while walking around campus. He’d work through problems out loud in empty rooms, turning every moment of solitude into a teaching rehearsal.
Bobby Fischer carried a pocket chess set everywhere and would analyze positions using ceiling tiles as boards while lying in bed. Insomnia became chess study. Waiting rooms became tournaments. His opponents thought they were facing someone with supernatural talent. They were actually facing someone who’d turned every idle moment into chess.
In fact I've found so many examples of high practice surface area that I created a companion piece to this essay filled with nothing but examples.
Here it is: The hidden training habits of 21 world-class performers.
How to increase your surface area
It should go without saying that the best way to increase your practice surface area in a given field is to be obsessed with that field. Obsession makes quick work of formal and bounded training sessions, and it doesn't need "tips" on how to do so.
So the question then becomes, "How do I increase my practice surface area if I'm not already obsessed?"
I've got a few ideas:
1. Find the “minimum viable repetition”
Identify the smallest possible practice unit that requires no equipment, setup, or specific location.
Like Bobby Fischer analyzing chess positions on ceiling tiles while lying in bed, you need a version of practice so minimal it can happen anywhere, requiring zero setup or equipment.
2. Turn idle time into mental rehearsal
Waiting periods and dead time are great opportunities for visualization sessions where you mentally simulate perfect performance.
Michael Phelps would run “mental movies” of perfect races in waiting rooms and before sleep.
3. Embed practice into routine activities
Layer your craft directly onto daily activities.
Maya Angelou composed entire poems while mopping floors. She claims to have used the rhythm of physical work as a metronome for her words.
4. Create background processing systems
Develop automatic mental habits that keep your craft running in the background of consciousness throughout the day.
Eminem can’t turn off the part of his brain that rhymes everything. Every conversation, interview, even argument becomes inadvertent freestyle practice as he generates rhyme patterns for everything he hears.
5. Use environmental constraints as creative parameters
Convert physical limitations and situational constraints into practice parameters that force innovation.
The UFC fighter Anderson Silva would practice his striking combinations disguised as dancing at Brazilian clubs. He'd throw actual combat sequences to the rhythm while everyone thought he was just getting down.
wow dude this was a solid post i would wait for your new update
Thanks! Plenty of new essays coming.
You touch a concept that's been, albeit indirectly, studied in the book Psycho-Cybernetics, by Maxwell Maltz. In that one, the writer mentions an experiment in which a basketball team is divided in 3 groups: one group shall practice only free shots for two weeks, one do nothing, and the third must not practice physically but must dedicate 5 minutes a day to "imagine" themselves doing free shots.
The results at the end where astonishing: while group two had no performance increase, group one and three improved it by almost the same amount (22% and 21%)!
I've read about that! The mind is so fascinating.
It really is! I've actually used that technique in some occasions and it does work surprisingly well.
Now if I could only visualize myself finding B2B customers to talk to, that would be great. Do you have any specific article on here you'd recommend reading? I'm just getting started and could use some guidance about the whole "find your users" thing 😅
This is a wonderful perspective.
The perspective that mastery is not simply about the number of hours you put into practice but about embedding mastery into your daily life, is powerful. It is truly about being absorbed in the practice, and allowing it to flow into your everyday life and your thinking. This perspective not only makes obtaining mastery easier, but it also connects the person to his or her craft in a greater way. It is an indication that every moment can be a moment of learning and growth.
All the examples resonate deeply but Richard Feynman is literally me.
Slim shady photo got me clicking
Glad to hear. Lots of people apparently don't know who he is and therefore didn't understand that image
This is a solid piece. Thanks for sharing your take.
Interesting takes here but I’m not sure I fully agree that “practice surface area” is always the key.
I’ve seen people surround themselves with a skill 24/7 and still make little progress — maybe because their actual practice wasn’t deliberate enough.
Like in sports, just shooting basketballs all day doesn’t make you Steph Curry.
It’s the combination of structured drills + all the hidden reps (thinking about plays, visualizing shots, analyzing games) that really compounds.
So maybe the formula is more like:
Formal practice (deliberate work) + Surface area (background reps) = Real growth.
Would love to hear how others balance this — do you lean more on structured practice or on ambient/hidden reps?
I actually agree with you, so I should've been more clear about the definition.
Surface area encompasses ALL practice. (Surface area = formal practice + background reps.)
This whole “practice surface area” concept really hit home for me.
I first noticed it when I was trying to learn a new language.
At first I thought 30 minutes of Duolingo or flashcards was enough. But progress was slow.
The real jump happened when I started surrounding myself with the language all the time — changing my phone to Spanish, listening to podcasts while cooking, even thinking in Spanish during random moments.
That’s when it stopped feeling like “practice” and
Yep, gotta immerse yourself in it.
I think “practice surface area” is something we often underestimate because it doesn’t feel like “work.”
I’ve seen it with coding too.
When I was building my first project, I used to only count the hours I was sitting in front of VS Code.
But then I realized I was solving bugs in the shower, thinking of UX flows while commuting, and even dreaming in code sometimes 😂.
Those hidden hours were probably worth more than the scheduled ones.
Love the idea of tracking this in some way — almost like a “second brain” log for invisible practice.
Has anyone here tried a method for capturing those small reps?
My intuition tells me the act of tracking informal practice would have a negative impact on it. I do lots and lots of personal tracking, and it makes you spend time/attention on overhead that you could be spending on the activity itself.
I absolutely love the concept of 'practice surface area.'
It clearly explains how "talent" is often just immersion—the difference between practicing an hour a day and living the craft 24/7. The examples of Orwell and Feynman using their mental downtime for 'invisible reps' are great proof.
Concise, actionable advice for true skill compounding. Excellent post!
Love this idea of increasing your practice surface area—it’s often the small everyday efforts that compound the most. I’ve found that trying lots of small side projects, sketching ideas, or experimenting with visuals (even basic ones) helps build confidence and skill without pressure. Thanks for sharing this—it’s a reminder to embrace imperfect practice.
First time encountering this concept, very insightful, thank you!
That’s a great way to frame it — “practice surface area.” It really comes down to creating more opportunities to fail safely and learn faster. Curious, what’s your favorite way to expand it — building new projects or improving old ones?
Great post — I really like the idea of “practice surface area.” It reminds me that so much growth happens in the tiny, hidden moments, not just during formal practice. Thanks for sharing this perspective!
Embedded practice is powerful. When something becomes part of how you live, it turns almost ‘free’ in mental cost — you’re training without draining yourself. How do you track whether these invisible reps are actually improving your skills? Feedback seems essential here — otherwise, you might just be repeating mistakes?
This is some really good stuff! I definitely agree with the concept of broadening the "practice surface area." The more we are in environments or situations where we are being challenged authentically in new ways, the better the opportunity for growth! For example, this could come from side projects, collaborating with or communicating with other people, or tinkering with new tools. The important part is to experiment – and make it a habit! Certainly, I have supportive evidence from my own experiences that have stemmed from doing things differently. I have, and still am pursuing some different methods of studying, and it is leading me to some incredible synergy outcomes, that I would have never imagined in the past. Not to divert from the post itself, but has anyone else ever intentionally stepped outside of their own comfort zone, and in turn, had significant growth from that experience?
Really like this idea of “increasing your practice surface area.” It’s such a practical way to think about growth not chasing perfection, just creating more opportunities to learn by doing. It’s amazing how consistent small reps compound over time. Thanks for sharing this!
If you’re trying to stay focused while working or studying, you should try Mixora — it’s a free focus web app where you can set timers (15, 25, or 50 mins), track streaks, and even create Spotify playlists based on your mood or favorite artists. 🎧
It also has relaxing background sounds like rain, café, or forest that you can customize.
Super simple, no signup needed → mixora . xyz
That’s such a fascinating read — it really shows how greatness often comes from those invisible hours of practice that most people never notice. It reminds me of how some gamers approach Stick War Legacy, constantly improving their strategies even outside of gameplay.
This is such a powerful perspective
I’ve noticed the same thing in my own work — the real difference often comes from all the "invisible reps" you put in outside of official sessions.
For example, I recently started experimenting with building niche content sites.
Even though I was only doing 1–2 hours of “scheduled SEO work” per day, I realized my brain kept running in the background — analyzing keywords while browsing, noticing competitors’ site structures, thinking about backlinks during idle time.
That hidden practice surface area has actually helped me grow one of my projects much faster than I expected.
Curious — how do you personally notice and track these “invisible practice hours”? Do you just let them happen or do you have a system for it?
Really like this frame: make good reps cheap, frequent, and visible so practice compounds without drama. What’s worked for me is shrinking the unit of work (15-min drills), defaulting to public artifacts (tiny write-ups, screenshots), and setting “always-on” cues (same hour, same place, same playlist) so momentum doesn’t depend on willpower.
Curious tho, of the levers you tried, which moved the needle most: smaller scopes, public streaks/accountability, or environment design that removes friction?
P.S. I’m with Buzz; we build conversion-focused Webflow sites and pragmatic SEO for product launches. Happy to share a quick 10-point GTM checklist if useful.
hi HN
Reading this reminded me of how mastery really comes from the quiet, unseen hours. The idea of “practice surface area” makes so much sense it’s not just training time, it’s mindset. Interestingly, I came across a site aftcalculator(dot)io and it applies a similar principle in fitness focusing on consistent, small improvements that build real performance over time. Both this essay and that concept show how daily micro-practice creates long-term excellence.
This is an insane deep dive into “practice surface area.” The way you traced Sofia Polgar, Bobby Fischer, Orwell, Feynman, and Phelps — especially Fischer sneaking chess on ceiling tiles — perfectly illustrates how obsession converts idle moments into exponential skill growth.
I love how you:
1. Highlighted Sofia’s informal reps outside structured practice, proving skill isn’t just scheduled hours.
2. Tied it to universal mental rehearsal, showing Orwell and Phelps’ invisible training.
3. Made the concept actionable with those 5 steps — especially the “minimum viable repetition” and embedding craft into routine activities.
Takeaway for anyone trying to level up: obsession + practice surface area > conventional grind. Even if your formal sessions are short, your brain can compound skills all day.
From a professional strategic lens: this principle is pure gold for founders and creators. For example, in promotional email copywriting, “practice surface area” could be tiny daily tests: analyzing micro-open-rate shifts, tweaking subject lines during downtime, or mentally rehearsing CTA phrasing — all invisible training that compounds into high-converting copy. Applying this can literally multiply LTV and reduce churn.
Here’s a small actionable tweak that could push this essay even further: add a mini-framework for readers to start creating their own practice surface area today — e.g., “3 Micro Reps per Idle Hour” with examples tailored to their field. This makes the concept immediately actionable and sticky.
If you want, I can map out a 1-week mental rehearsal routine for founders or creatives to embed obsession-driven micro-reps into their workflow, using the same principles as Fischer’s ceiling-tile chess strategy. DM me “Surface Area” and I’ll drop it — it’s free, high-value, and actionable enough to show measurable skill compounding.
I just opened my Fiverr gig for my Systeme io / ClickFunnels funnel service — I’m offering 50% off my first few clients to collect reviews. How to reach me +18582509952