I’ve been an avid rock climber for about 20 years. I’m at the climbing gym at least twice a week. I also get outside on real rock whenever the weather and my schedule permit, and have climbed up and down the west coast of North America and throughout Europe. In short, I’ve put in a lot of time and a lot of practice over the last two decades. You’d think by now I’d be an advanced climber, scaling impressively hard routes.

Sadly, you’d be wrong.

Until recently, I wasn’t a particularly good climber, despite all the experience I’d accumulated. I had plateaued at around 11a, an intermediate level, while I watched friends much newer to the sport excel far beyond my level. Why, I wondered with frustration, was all that practice not paying off in becoming a better climber?

As it happens, my experience isn’t all that unusual. In fact, it turns out that practice alone doesn’t necessarily lead to improvement, let alone mastery. That’s true across a wide variety of domains and activities.

Simply put, more experience, by itself, doesn’t equate to better skill or greater expertise. This is true of musicians, athletes, chess players, and even psychotherapists. You might be surprised to learn that greater therapist experience doesn’t predict better outcomes in psychotherapy (my own profession). Many psychotherapists are certainly surprised by this rather unsettling but

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