One of the best books I've read and with one of the largest impacts
on how I go to day to day work. Essential for anyone looking to get
better at anything.
Hierarchy of practice
Naive Practice := Trying things until base competency is reached,
followed by plateau
Purposeful Practice := Well defined practice with specific goals
e.g. "play the piece three times in a row without a mistake"
Deliberate Practice := The gold standard. Only applicable to
well-established, well-defined fields such as music, maths, ballet.
Characteristics of Purposeful Practice
Breaks long-term goals into short-term ones e.g. "5 strokes off of
golf handicap" → "increase number of drives in the fairway" →
"reduce tendency to hook"
Relies upon tight feedback loops Must be outside of your comfort
zone (although you mostly accomplish this through technique
modification, not trying harder)
Characteristics of Deliberate Practice
Works in fields where:
There is objective feedback
Competition: gives incentive to improve
Well established
Clear training techniques which have been developed
Specific focus needs to be given on weak points. The fundamentals
must be hit
There must be very clear, incremental goals with clear criteria for
success
Deliberate practice differs from other forms of purposeful practice:
Needs a well developed field. Experts in the field need to be
very different from beginners
You need teachers who can assign effective practice measures
Deliberate practice is informed; deliberate practice is
purposeful practice which knows where I is going.
Painful. Even the best violinists rate practice time as painful.
You probably don't have deliberate practice, but you can try and get
as close as you can
Feedback often occurs in the form of self-monitoring which requires
effective mental-representations. This is a positive,
self-reinforcing cycle: better representations give better self
feedback which gives better performance which gives better mental
representations....
Staying Motivated
Maximise positive reasons e.g. external positive feedback from peers
Minimise negative reasons e.g. accept that deliberate practice is
hard, set up regular schedules, stay on top of health, build up the
practice muscle
Getting better is intrinsically motivating and fun.
Belief is important, not just that you can be good but the best.
Pick groups with very high levels of motivation and similar goals.
Breaking long-term goals down into short-term ones is more
motivating.
Deliberate Practice at Work
Focus on one specific skill e.g. if giving a presentation then focus
on fewer 'umms' only.
Seek specific, timely feedback wherever possible.
Teachers
It is very hard to find a good teacher who does not have a certain
aptitude in doing.
They must also be great teachers, not just doers
Be careful of biases. Skip personality and fun: look for progress
You may need to switch teachers at various levels when you plateau.
Keep moving forward!
How to practice without a teacher
Manufacture your own exercises that emulate dedicated practice. Be
creative!
FFF: Focus, feedback, fix it
Study the work of the excellent and then try to replicate, focusing
on where you came short e.g. Chess players study great games,
Benjamin Franklin tried to recreate great writing from the
spectator.
Misc
‘Fulfilling your potential’ implies a limit to potential. This is
not the case. There is no limit to how much deliberate/purposeful
practice can improve your skills. If done right, you can improve
forever.
Increasing one skill may come at the cost of others. Cause of this
is unknown
Nothing is a good replacement for focused time alone, working on
your weaknesses.
Always be at 100%. If below this, you need more rest
Set skills as goals, not knowledge
You will get stuck at various points. It is very rare to reach
immutable peaks. Instead, these points of getting stuck are an
opportunity to mix things up and look for different techniques If
you plateau, you can make practice harder to expose weaknesses e.g.
type faster to expose which keys you are slowest at typing.