Regret has a very specific sound. Usually, it’s the sound of a heavy sigh right after you mess something up that you know you could have nailed if you’d just put in the work months ago. It’s that sinking feeling in your gut when you’re standing on a stage, or sitting at a piano, or looking at a half-finished coding project, and the phrase i wish i'd been practicing starts looping in your brain like a broken record.
We’ve all been there.
Honestly, it’s a universal human experience. You see someone else perform with effortless grace—maybe it’s a colleague delivering a flawless presentation or a friend playing a killer guitar solo—and you realize the gap between you and them isn't talent. It’s time. It’s the hours they spent in the "boring" zone while you were scrolling through your phone or telling yourself you’d start tomorrow. Tomorrow is a liar.
The psychology of practice is actually pretty messy. We often think of it as a linear path, but it’s more like a series of frustrating plateaus punctuated by tiny, sudden breakthroughs. When we look back and wish we’d started earlier, we aren't just wishing for the skill; we’re wishing for the discipline we didn't have.
Why the I Wish I'd Been Practicing Loop Happens
Most people think they lack motivation. That's usually wrong. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are flighty as hell. What most of us actually lack is a system that accounts for how much we hate being bad at things.
The "i wish i'd been practicing" sentiment usually hits hardest during what researchers call the "Valley of Despair." This is a concept often tied to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where you finally know enough about a subject to realize exactly how terrible you are at it. It's a painful realization. In the beginning, you’re blissfully ignorant. But once you hit that middle ground, the distance between your taste and your ability becomes a chasm.
Think about the famous Ira Glass quote on the "Gap." He basically says that for the first couple of years you’re making stuff, your work isn’t that good. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition, but it falls short. Your taste—the thing that got you into the game—is still killer. Your taste is why your work disappoints you.
- You know what good music sounds like.
- Your hands just can't make it yet.
- So you quit.
- Then, three years later, you see someone else who didn't quit, and the "i wish i'd been practicing" thought creeps back in to haunt you.
The Myth of the Natural
We love the idea of the "natural." It’s a great excuse, isn't it? If someone is just "born with it," then it’s not your fault that you aren't as good as them. But if you look at the data—real, hard data from people like Anders Ericsson, the psychologist who basically pioneered the study of peak performance—the "natural" is largely a myth.
Ericsson’s research, which was later popularized (and somewhat oversimplified) as the 10,000-hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell, showed that top-tier performers in violin, chess, and sports all had one thing in common: Deliberate Practice. This isn't just "doing the thing." It’s doing the thing while being incredibly uncomfortable. It’s focusing specifically on the parts you’re bad at. If you’re a basketball player who can’t dribble with your left hand, deliberate practice means spending the next two hours only using your left hand until you want to scream. Most people just go to the gym and shoot around. That’s not practice; that’s play. Play is fine, but play doesn't stop you from saying "i wish i'd been practicing" later on.
The Cognitive Cost of Starting Late
Let’s talk about neuroplasticity for a second. It’s a buzzword, sure, but it matters. Your brain is essentially a giant ball of electrical wiring. When you practice a skill, you’re wrapping those wires in a fatty substance called myelin.
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Myelin is like insulation on a copper wire. The more you practice, the thicker the myelin gets, and the faster the electrical signals travel. This is how "muscle memory" works, even though it’s actually "brain memory."
When you say i wish i'd been practicing, what you’re really saying is: "I wish I had started insulating those neural pathways years ago." Because once those pathways are myelinated, the skill becomes automatic. It becomes "free." You don't have to think about where your fingers go on the keyboard or how to balance on a bike. You just do it.
Starting late isn't impossible, but it’s harder. As we age, our brains become less "plastic." We can still learn—absolutely—but we have to fight harder for it. We have to be more intentional. The frustration of adult learning is often just the feeling of your brain resisting new wiring.
Social Media and the Comparison Trap
Instagram is the enemy of the "practicing" mindset. Honestly. You see a 15-second reel of a kid shredding a guitar or a 19-year-old making $10k a month in day trading, and you feel like a failure.
You’re seeing the "front of house." You aren't seeing the thousands of hours of garbage work that came before it. This creates a false sense of reality where skills look like they’re acquired overnight. When they don't happen that fast for you, you assume you’re doing it wrong. Or you assume you’ve missed the boat.
The "i wish i'd been practicing" thought is often triggered by these snapshots of perfection. We compare our "behind the scenes" footage with everyone else’s "highlight reel." It’s a losing game every single time.
How to Stop Wishing and Start Doing (Finally)
If you're tired of the regret, you have to change the way you view the "suck." Being bad at something is the prerequisite for being good at it. There is no shortcut around the "suck."
Stop trying to practice for three hours a day. You won’t do it. You’ll do it for two days, get exhausted, and then quit for six months.
Tiny habits are the only way out. B.J. Fogg and James Clear have written extensively about this, and the science holds up. If you want to practice the piano, tell yourself you will sit at the bench for two minutes. That’s it. Two minutes. Most days, once you’re there, you’ll stay for thirty. But on the days you really don't want to be there, you do your two minutes and you leave. You kept the streak alive. You kept the identity of "someone who practices" intact.
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Forget the Goal, Focus on the System
Goals are actually kinda dangerous. If you have a goal to "run a marathon," what happens after you run it? Usually, people stop running. Their "why" is gone.
Instead of a goal, you need a system. A system is: "I am a runner." Runners run. It doesn't matter if it’s a mile or ten miles; they just go out the door. When you shift your identity, the i wish i'd been practicing thought starts to fade because you are currently practicing. The present tense kills the regret of the past tense.
The Role of Feedback Loops
You can practice for twenty years and never get better if you don't have a feedback loop. This is a common trap. You see it in people who have been playing golf for decades but still have a 25-handicap. They aren't practicing; they’re just repeating their mistakes.
To truly master something—to avoid that future regret—you need:
- Immediate Feedback: You need to know exactly what you did wrong the second you do it. This is why teachers and coaches are worth their weight in gold.
- Specific Targets: Don't "practice coding." Try to build a specific navigation bar that works on mobile.
- Variable Environments: Once you get good at something in your room, go do it in a park. If you can only do it in "perfect" conditions, you haven't mastered it.
Forgiving Your Past Self
Here’s the part most "hustle culture" experts won't tell you: you have to forgive the version of you that didn't practice.
Beating yourself up for not starting five years ago is just another way of wasting time. It’s a sophisticated form of procrastination. If you spend an hour moping about how much better you’d be if you’d started in 2021, that’s an hour you didn't spend getting better now.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is right now. It’s a cliché because it’s true.
The "i wish i'd been practicing" feeling is actually a gift. It’s your internal compass telling you that this thing—whatever it is—actually matters to you. You don't feel regret about things you don't care about. You don't lay awake at night wishing you'd practiced competitive underwater welding if you have no interest in it. The regret is a signal. Listen to it.
Real World Examples of Late Bloomers
Sometimes we need proof that the clock hasn't run out.
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Take Julia Child. She didn't even start learning to cook until she was in her late 30s. She didn't have a TV show until she was 50. Imagine if she’d sat around saying "i wish i'd been practicing" in her 20s and just given up.
Vera Wang didn't enter the fashion industry until she was 40. Before that, she was a figure skater and an editor. She didn't "practice" fashion design in the way we think of it for the first half of her life. But when she started, she went all in.
The "i wish i'd been practicing" narrative assumes that life is a race with a single finish line. It isn't. It’s a series of different races, and you can join a new one whenever you want. The only requirement is that you stop looking at the other runners and start moving your feet.
Practical Steps to Take Right Now
Stop reading this and do five minutes of the thing. Seriously.
If you wish you’d been practicing Spanish, open Duolingo or pick up a book. If you wish you’d been practicing drawing, grab a napkin and a pen. The barrier to entry is almost always in your head, not in your environment.
- Identify the "Micro-Skill": Don't try to learn "Music." Learn how to play a C-major scale.
- Set a "Low Bar" Daily Goal: Make it so easy it’s embarrassing to miss. Five minutes. One paragraph. One pushup.
- Track the Streak, Not the Result: Use a physical calendar and put an X on every day you practice. The goal isn't to be good; the goal is to not "break the chain," as Jerry Seinfeld famously put it.
- Embrace the Garbage Phase: Expect your work to be bad. Welcome it. Every piece of junk you produce is just clearing the pipes for the good stuff to eventually come out.
The "i wish i'd been practicing" internal monologue doesn't have to be your permanent soundtrack. You can change the tune starting today. Not tomorrow. Today.
The weight of regret is much heavier than the weight of a five-minute practice session. Choose your weight. If you start now, a year from today, you’ll be looking back with a very different feeling. You’ll be looking back and thanking yourself for finally showing up.
Actionable Insight:
Pick the one thing you regret not practicing. Set a timer for exactly four minutes. Do that thing until the timer goes off. If you want to stop then, stop. But you’ll find that the hardest part was just opening the door. Do this every day for the next seven days, regardless of how "bad" the results are. Priority is frequency, not quality. Once frequency is a habit, quality becomes inevitable.