We covered preparation in the last post, and now I want to move directly into the chapter that belongs right alongside it: embracing practice. 

These two ideas are partners. 

Preparation gets you positioned correctly. 

Practice is what actually builds the capability to perform when it counts.

And Maxwell opens this section with something simple but worth repeating: you play at the level you practice. 

That's it. 

Whatever level your practice operates at, that is the level you're going to show up at on eval day. 

No more, no less.

At the Academy, especially in non-radar, the person sitting across from you watching you run through a practice scenario has to function as your toughest instructor. 

I mean that sincerely — the most detail-oriented, the most exacting, the least willing to let things slide. Because that is the only way the practice is genuinely going to benefit you.

Consistently good practice leads to consistently good performance. And consistently good practice sharpens your talent in a way that nothing else does. 

The students who succeed at the Academy are the ones who understand that practice isn't just about putting in reps — it's about getting better. 

Those are not the same thing. 

You can run practice scenarios all day and not improve if you're not holding yourself and each other to the real standard.

Now — this does not mean practice can't be enjoyable. 

Please make it enjoyable. 

Having fun makes learning easier, and some of the best lab environments I was part of as an instructor were ones where students were genuinely engaged and even laughing sometimes. 

When I was coaching soccer, I worked hard to make practice worth showing up for while still making it impactful. 

I tried to do the same thing at the Academy. 

But the fun has to live inside the standard, not replace it. 

The details still have to be there, because the evaluators are going to be looking at the details. 

If you've been skipping them in practice, you're going to be surprised on eval day — and that's not a surprise you can afford.

Maxwell identifies three core things that practice accomplishes, and all three matter for where you're headed.

Done correctly, practice keeps making you better than you were yesterday. That's the standard — not better than your classmate, not better than some external benchmark. Better than yesterday you. Small gains compound. 

At the beginning, your improvements are going to be incremental and sometimes almost invisible. But they're building. And then at some point — and I've watched this happen more times than I can count, both in the lab and on the soccer field — something clicks. 

The light comes on. 

And when it does, it is one of the most beautiful things you will ever watch. 

The student's entire face changes. Their whole body changes. You can see the moment they realize what just happened. 

Keep persevering through the slow stretch, because you never know which practice session is the one where everything suddenly connects.

Practice leads to discovery. 

When you commit to genuine practice, you learn things about yourself and your performance that you simply cannot learn any other way. 

One of those things is that your performance can always be improved — even when you think you've done well. Even the golfer who shoots a 59 knows he left shots out there. 

The point isn't perfection. The point is that there's always another level, and practice is the only path to it. 

There's also real value in starting small and building from there. 

You cannot get to day 60 without going through day one, day two, day three. 

Every day matters. 

Every small thing you learn on day seven becomes part of what makes day 30 possible. 

Don't skip steps.

Practice demands discipline. 

Aristotle — and yes, I'm going way back — said "we are what we repeatedly do." He also said "excellence is not an act but a habit." 

I want you to think about that the next time you sit down for a practice session. 

You're not just running through a scenario. 

You're building a habit. 

You're building excellence, one rep at a time. 

When you reframe practice that way — not as a necessary chore but as the actual process of becoming excellent — it takes on a completely different character. Call your practice groups excellence groups if you want. 

Seriously. 

The name matters. 

Walk in with the mindset that you're building something, not just getting through something.

Maxwell identifies five pillars that separate effective practice from time spent going through the motions.

Get an excellent teacher or coach. 

Look at the best performers in any field — athletics, business, performing arts, you name it — and you will find coaches and mentors. Tiger Woods has a coach. LeBron James has a coach. Rafael Nadal has a coach. These are people who have reached the absolute top of what they do, and they still have someone outside themselves who can watch what they're doing and identify small things that can be improved. 

Sometimes a coach is there to sharpen your technique. And sometimes a coach is just there to make sure you don't fall when things get hard. 

Everyone needs that. 

If you're at the Academy, lean on your instructors when you can. If you're preparing before you get there, find a mentor. 

Don't try to figure all of this out by yourself.

Give your best effort. 

You cannot sleepwalk through a practice session and expect to get better. You just can't. 

I've seen thousands of students come through the Academy over the five years I was there, and the ones who improve are consistently the ones who show up and give their best — even when they're tired, even when they're frustrated, even when nothing seems to be clicking. 

If you give your best effort, you will improve. 

I will guarantee that without hesitation.

Have a clear purpose going in. 

The overarching purpose of every practice session is improvement leading to excellence. 

Go in knowing that. 

Make excellence your target, not just completion. 

Walk into each session asking yourself: how am I going to be better coming out of this than I was going in? 

If you do that consistently, there's genuinely no ceiling on what you can accomplish.

Maxwell makes this point in a way that really stuck with me. 

Your standards for yourself should be higher than other people's standards for you. 

At the Academy, you know what the FAA standard is. You know what the evaluators are looking for. Don't settle for that. Hold yourself to a higher bar. Expect more from yourself than the minimum required to pass. 

When you do that — and I've watched this happen — the people around you notice. 

Your instructors notice. 

Your evaluators notice. 

Holding yourself to a higher standard is one of the things that makes a student genuinely stand out.

This one is practical but important. 

For non-radar en route practice, you need a strip board and a way to actually move strips around. 

For tower, build your own tabletop if you have to — you've got a dining room table in your apartment. 

Use it. 

You cannot practice effectively without the actual tools of the trade, and the FAA has given you the setup; it's on you to replicate it as closely as you can outside the lab.

Maxwell wraps up this chapter with what he calls the extra that makes people successful, and I want to give you these three things because they're worth carrying with you.

A little extra effort. 

Maxwell says the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is the extra. 

Think about that word. 

Extra-ordinary. It literally has "extra" in it. 

Don't let anyone in your class — or any other class — outwork you. 

You beat a large portion of the field just by working hard. You beat another large portion by showing up with integrity and doing things the right way. The last piece is a competitive fight, and the ones who win it are the ones who give the little bit more when everyone else is satisfied with where they are.

A little extra time. 

Successful people practice harder and longer than unsuccessful people do. And this requires something beyond just persistence — it requires patience. 

You're going to have stretches where you're putting in the extra time and things are just not clicking. 

Keep going. 

You genuinely don't know which session is the one where everything suddenly makes sense. 

Keep persevering, because when that moment arrives — and I have watched it happen over and over — it is extraordinary to witness. 

Don't quit before your breakthrough.

A little extra help. 

Alex Haley, who wrote Roots, said something that has stuck with me: "If you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you know he had help getting there." 

Nobody gets there alone. 

As a class, help each other — you all have different strengths, you all have gaps. Learn from each other. And don't let the controller mentality of feeling like you should already know everything get in the way of asking for help. 

I still ask for help. I'm still learning after 37 years in this business. If you see something I'm doing with traffic and you don't understand it or you wonder if there's a better way — say something. 

Everyone with something to offer can still be helped by someone else.

I want to close with something William Johnson said that I think deserves to be posted somewhere you'll see it every day: "Quality is a race with no finish line."

You never arrive at your potential. 

You can only continue to strive toward it. 

When you finish your radar evals and look at your score — whatever it is — take a moment to celebrate it. 

Genuinely. 

You earned that. 

And then take another moment to recognize that you could have been better, and that the race continues.

Because here's the progression I've watched happen to people who stop striving: excellent becomes acceptable, acceptable becomes mediocre, and nobody is going to pay for mediocre. 

Not the FAA, not the flying public, not anyone.

Don't settle for average. 

Don't settle for acceptable. 

Keep practicing with excellence as the standard, keep giving the extra effort and the extra time, and keep asking for help when you need it. 

That is the path to becoming not just an air traffic controller, but one of the best ones who has ever sat down at a position.

That's available to every one of you. 

But it only comes through practice — real practice, intentional practice, practice that treats every session as another step toward excellent.

Start that today.