Deliberate Practices – Reference Card
Deliberate Practices are the path to mastery.
Deliberate Practices are the path to mastery. And mastery matters, because it is the path to intrinsic motivation for the individual, and then agency, and to organizational excellence, for the group.
Distinction Between Work, Play, and Deliberate Practices
There are three types of activities: Work, Play, and Deliberate Practices.
Work is motivated extrinsically. Stability and predictability of performance are paramount (the goal is to get the work done), while growth in performance is not.
Play is motivated intrinsically and enjoyable, but not goal-oriented, and not structured to improve performance.
Deliberate practice is:
structured,
requires effort,
is generally not enjoyable,
and is specifically focused on improving performance by working on bottlenecks to performance
Not All Practices Are Deliberate
Ericsson distinguishes three types of practices:
1- Natural or Naïve Practices, e.g., Just playing tennis
Naïve practice is:
– Doing the same thing, to the best of one’s ability, over and over.
– Not trying to change a specific aspect.
– Repetitions in a mindless manner.
2- Purposeful Practices, e.g., practicing one’s serve, forehand, backhand …
In purposeful practice, there is an intention
to change one aspect at a time
to recognize the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Ideally, measure it.
There is feedback
There is reflection on what can now be accomplished (after the practices) that couldn’t be done before (i.e. what has been learned).
3- Deliberate Practices, e.g., a tennis camp, a masterclass…
Step out of your comfort zone
Be focused, attentive, vigilant, aware.
Build a mental representation (instead of relying solely on intuition or senses) to discriminate between where you are and where you want to be
Feedback from a coach/teacher (someone who has already reached the highest level in that domain7)
this to stop guessing or experimenting to find the best way to improve
Objectives are well-defined and precise
Max 4/5 hours per day8, or potentially 1-2 hours in the morning
Mental Representations
The main goal of deliberate practice is to develop effective mental representations, and, as we will see soon, mental representations play a key role in deliberate practice.
The key change that occurs in our adaptable brains in response to deliberate practice is the development of better mental representations, which in turn open up new possibilities for better performance. (P.75)
Excerpts and Quotes from Various Interviews
ericsson_peak_2016
Deliberate practice is a purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there.
The training regimen should be designed and supervised by a teacher or coach who knows the capabilities of the best experts and who knows the best way to develop them.
Deliberate practice requires stepping out of the comfort zone and demands that the student constantly try things to exceed their current capabilities. Thus, it requires near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable.
Deliberate practice involves specific and well-defined objectives; it often involves improving the target performance aspect by aspect; it does not aim for vague overall improvement. Once the overall objective has been set, a teacher or coach will develop a plan consisting of a series of small changes that, when added together, contribute to the larger desired change. Improving the target performance also allows the performer to see that their performance has been enhanced by the training.
Deliberate practice is “deliberate,” meaning it requires a person’s complete attention and conscious actions. It is not enough to simply follow a teacher’s or coach’s instructions. The student must focus on the specific goal of the practiced activity so that adjustments can be made to control the practice.
Deliberate practice involves feedback and modification of efforts in response to that feedback. At the beginning of the training process, most feedback will come from the teacher or coach, who will track progress, point out problems, and offer ways to fix those problems. Over time and with experience, students must learn to monitor themselves, spot errors, and adapt accordingly. Such self-monitoring requires effective mental representations.
Deliberate practice both produces and depends on effective mental representations. Improvement in performance goes hand in hand with improvement in mental representations; as performance improves, representations become more detailed and more effective, allowing further improvement in turn. Mental representations enable monitoring how one is doing, both in practice and in the actual act. They show the right way to do something and allow noticing when something is done incorrectly and correcting it.
(incremental / iterative). Deliberate practice almost always involves building or modifying already acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically. Over time, this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead to expert performance. Because of the way new skills are built on existing ones, it is important for teachers to provide beginners with the correct fundamental skills to minimize the chances that the student will have to relearn those fundamentals later, when at a more advanced level.
Ericsson, Anders. Peak: Secrets of the New Science of Expertise (p.99) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
On Mental Representations
Basically, in the same way that musicians, when they read a piece of music, can hear it in their head, and now think “Well, if I do this, it will sound a bit like that.” So, fundamentally, this ability to mentally not depend on immediate experience and to essentially rely on intuition.
We argue that these representations seem to be the key to identifying people who improve because once they fail, they can now try to understand what they need to change. If you only rely on your intuition and you fail, what do you do? There’s really nothing for you to actively manipulate.
[maxhug]
Deliberate Practice: A Guide to Mastery
Define what success would look like and train deliberately
Plan, reflect, and take notes
Go slowly
Limit session duration to maintain focus
Maximize practice time
Track improvement in small intervals (small steps)
Emulate practice, not performance
Repetition makes perfect
Routinizing is the key to success
Find a coach
Interview in BusinessInsider
In general, according to Ericsson, deliberate practice involves stepping out of your comfort zone and trying activities beyond your current capabilities. While repeating a skill you already master can be satisfying, it is not enough to help you improve. Moreover, simply wanting to get better is not enough – people also need well-defined goals and help from a teacher who prepares a plan to achieve them.
More specifically, Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice formed the basis of the “10,000-hour rule” described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers”: About 10,000 hours of practice, and you will become an expert.
Unfortunately, Ericsson says that Gladwell misinterpreted his research and that 10,000 hours of repeating the same activity is not enough to catapult someone to the top of their field.
When I spoke to Ericsson by phone in May, he told me that people who think that simple practice (naïve or purposeful) can take you as far are not talking about the same kind of practice as he is.
Mastery Is Not About IQ
Even intelligence, Ericsson said, is not directly related to expert performance. In “Peak,” he cites a study by British researchers who found that intelligence did predict chess skills in children. But when those researchers looked only at children who were elite players, a higher IQ was, in fact, related to poorer skills.
Children with high IQs learn to play chess faster – but once their peers catch up, they no longer have an advantage.
The Only Limit Is You
“I’ve spent 30 years trying to find limits that would prevent certain people from succeeding in certain fields,” Ericsson told me. “And I’m surprised not to have really found such limits.”
Deliberate Practices Are Not Just About Effort
Unless you are performing exercises assigned to you by a coach to help you progress in a particular field, Ericsson believes you are not practicing deliberately. Many practice activities are completely ineffective and will not lead to improvement, he told me when we spoke again in June.
Beyond the controversy over whether deliberate practice directly leads to expertise, the idea that struck me most in “Peak” was this: To become an expert, you must be willing to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term success. A key principle of deliberate practice is that it is generally not enjoyable.
Instead, it is about doing things that do not come naturally or easily, which can be difficult. “Practicing really involves failing a lot until you reach your goal,” Ericsson told me.
Dedication
So, what is the downside of becoming an expert? Perhaps you need to fully dedicate yourself to one field – and while one door opens wide, others slowly close, creaking. Ericsson told me he doesn’t know anyone who has become a world-class expert in more than one skill.
That’s why, he said, becoming an expert in anything and focusing 100% on becoming the best in one field “may not be the best thing for the majority of people.”
Main Reference:
Ericsson, Karl Anders and Robert Pool. 2016. Peak: Secrets of the New Science of Expertise. Boston New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
The Original Eriksson Paper from 1993 Online
Other References
Novak, Joseph D., D. Bob Gowin, and Jane Butler Kahle. 1984. Learning How to Learn. 1 edition. Cambridge Cambridgeshire; New York: Cambridge University Press.
businessinsider: http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/anders-ericsson-how-to-become-an-expert-at-anything-2016-6
https://www.infoq.com/articles/drive-productive-workplace
Maxhug: https://www.maxhug.com/interview-anders-ericsson-on-deliberate-practice-the-10000-heure-rule/
Deliberate Practice: Guide to Mastery:
vivekhaldar: http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3881908748/tldr-summary-the-role-of-deliberate-practice-in