Something I recently discovered: the secret to deliberate practice is to consciously enjoy it by entering more deeply into the experience. This approach is the opposite of enforced drill. Thus, when you are bored and enjoyment starts to flag, you stop immediately (nothing is lost by this).
Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorising a phrase in a foreign language, you revel in the fruity sounds you are making and in the delicate dance your lips and teeth and tongue are performing; you marvel at the pattern of connections between the meaning of the phrase and other ideas you have learnt.
It goes against the grain because one of the legacies of schooling is the assumption that learning is difficult and painful. (Paradoxically, by continuing to believe this one makes it so.)
This sounds like a great idea! I'll try to in incorporate it into my practice. I can also draw many interesting parallels between this and mindfullness.
I actually disagree with the 'play perfectly' example. It emphasizes the beginning of the practice and de-emphasizes the end. If playing the whole thing 20 times is boring, imagine how boring it is to play the beginning over and over until you get the whole thing perfect 5 times?
Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.
I once had a teacher that took offense at the statement "Practice makes perfect." They always changed it to be "Perfect practice makes perfect." I think it's more in line with the article's meaning, too.
As another anecdote, I've been studying Japanese lately. Never before have I been so acutely aware that the only way to improve a skill is to use it. Reading English for me is -very- easy and enjoyable. Japanese started out extremely difficult, time-consuming and painful. A few years later, and I'm much better at it... But my listening skill (for Japanese) has hardly changed at all. Why? Because I almost never use it.
>Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.
I guess maybe we understood him differently, because I thought that was the point he was getting at.
Regardless, I agree with the idea of "targeted practice" of each section. It's been awhile since I've done any serious piano playing, but my strategy for perfecting a piece was always to nail the final 4-8 bars 5x in a row. Then I would keep adding another 4-8 bars to the beginning of that and repeat the process until I could play the whole thing through.
I found working from the end to be much more effective than from the start. My guess is that it's less tedious since the new part is at the beginning, so if you're restarting after each mistake, you end up focusing on the new material instead of racing through the old boring material to get to the new stuff.
Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake.
This makes it really, really awful if you're playing a recital and slip up just a tiny bit (obviously, you should practice it so you don't slip up /at all/, but let's be realistic here. Even people studying to be performance majors make mistakes in their recitals) - your first instinct would be to start the passage over, which is the /last/ thing you want to be doing.
It also makes it nearly impossible to play with a group.
Yeah. My experience with playing (long long ago), as well as while practicing wrestling moves is that you need to do a mix of isolated, and complete practice. The mix depends on your proficiency, length involved, complexity, and some other contextual stuff. I could tell when I practiced just isolated elements too much because then my transitions would be obvious. In fact, having that mix will increase your engagement (which was his original point anyways).
But in my experience, the 4th criteria is by far the most important. Not only is it more effective, it's a hell lot more enjoyable.
> Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake.
The key is not making mistakes in the first place! Do slow practice on short passages. If you make a mistake then decrease the tempo (or play a shorter passage) until you can play it correctly. Repeat it until you can't do it wrong. Then increase the tempo.
That's a good point, since the author was also making the point that practice should mirror the skill as closely as possible. In a real orchestra, if you make a mistake, you do NOT hesitate. You keep playing and hope not to make another. If all your practice has depended on being perfect, you have neglected a needed skill.
> Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.
That's exactly what he's saying: "a violin student trying to perfect a short, tough passage in a song". Passage, not the whole piece. To practice the whole piece, you divide it in overlapping passages and master each passage. It's "boring" but it works.
He does say "passage" to refer to a small part of a composition, not the whole thing. Your thinking is spot on though -- the length of the segment needs to be considered.
You need to adjust the segment length to reflect your current success/failure. Either that, or you need to slow down. I'm viewing this from a musician's perspective, but those are the two basic tools in my practice toolbox:
1) slow down until comfortable
2) isolate the thing that is giving you the actual trouble, and fix that before attempting the bigger challenge
The thing to avoid is practicing mistakes. These two basic principles attempt to minimize that.
Principal Skinner: Here's a whole box of unsealed envelopes for the PTA!
Bart: You're making me lick envelopes?
P.S.: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
P.S.: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
P.S.: Yes, well... Get started.
What works for one child/person may not for any other. Whilst we've seen game-ification take off for many activities, it doesn't mean it's the only way to learn things. If the core activity isn't enjoyable, building a game around it may only encourage someone temporarily.
Here's a good piece by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson on Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice, he's the guy who's pretty much behind all this research on deliberate practice and the making of outliers - http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...
I read this book and although I enjoyed it and found it interesting, I think that the author undervalues the importance of innate talent. According to the author, almost everybody can become great at anything given the right motivation, hard-work, and coaching. I find this principle wrong, based on what I've heard experienced coaches say, and my own experience through 19 years of schooling. In other words, a lot of (non-scientific) evidence suggests that great performers have above average innate abilities in what they do. These abilities are common in the population but in no way general to most people. So, those born with the "extra" in a particular field, paired with great couches, family support, and an emotional fabric that keeps them focused for a long time, will have the chance of making it to the highest.
(I have a friend that thinks otherwise and I tell him: "Remember when you were in first grade, try to remember your classmates, what percentage of them could have become Nobel Prize winners in Physics given the right nurturing conditions?". According to the author of this book, almost all of them)
"Remember when you were in first grade, try to remember your classmates, what percentage of them could have become Nobel Prize winners in Physics given the right nurturing conditions?". According to the author of this book, almost all of them
I haven't read the book, but have read articles. I thought the goal was "expert level", not Nobel Prize level. There's a pretty big gap between being a Chem expert and winning the Nobel prize in it.
>>Maybe less time on couches and more time with coaches would change your perspective?
:) funny... (fixed the typo, thanks.)
>>there is a guy, Dan...
Is this Daniel Coyle? I read his "Talent Code" book too. Similar to "Talent is Overrated" but doesn't neglect innate talent as much as the other.
>>I thought the goal was "expert level", not Nobel Prize level.
Expert level in the book is as good as one can get after 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" with great coaching. The author doesn't make any distinction between expert level and super high achievers.
Not the same Dan. This is just some guy who read about the 10,000 hour thing and decided to test it on himself.
Regarding how good can one get -- the term used by the research is expert. But, at least in the papers I read, they don't make it clear what expert is. For example read:
But in my own personal theory... you become Michael Jordan by doing the 10,000 hours+ and having innate gifts. You get a basketball scholarship (D1-D3) by doing the 10,000 hours.
Thanks for the pointers. I'll read it later tonight...
My own personal theory is similar to yours: among the genetically very tall males, there is a lot of people with the innate abilities of Michael Jordan (let's make it 40% of the original set). From that subset, those that put the 10,000 hours with great teachers plus other things will become the likes of Michael Jordan.
> I think that the author undervalues the importance of innate talent.
Several recent books are doing that. But I think the common claim is that people who have become great have done so through training, and the effect of innate talent seems to be secondary at best.
They don't claim the opposite - that with the right training anyone will be great. Only that greatness is primarily due to the right training. It implies that a person of normal natural abilities has a shot at becoming world-class, but it's not a guarantee.
>>It implies that a person of normal natural abilities has a shot at becoming world-class
The key lies in the definition of normal. Does it mean no less than 1 standard deviation below average? Does it mean above average? Above 1 standard deviation and less than 2? See, people in all those ranges are normal, and just by reducing a little the scope of "normal" a lot of people are filtered out.
My conjecture is that at least above average innate abilities are required, which by definition leaves out half the population.
For me the most important part deliberate practice losing all embarrassment about making mistakes. Practice should give a chance stumble at the edge of your ability and take chances you wouldn't in a live performance.
For more detail I highly recommend "The Perfect Wrong Note" by William Westney.
It's interesting that each of those practice scenarios he recommends are fairly dangerous from the point of view of the ego. I would be very apprehensive about learning the multiplication tables in a public fashion.
All education works best when customized for the learner. In your case (and mine!) you prefer to learn without the possibility that someone will ridicule you for making a mistake. Many people actually learn faster/better when the threat of ridicule is on the table, though.
Assigning homework actually has the same effect as the in-class quiz, since it forces each student to reach in the same way and would be another example.
The teacher would need to try and make the students understand that it is all right -- scrap that, necessary -- to fail when you learn. Learning to perform surgery is not the same thing as performing it.
Out of curiosity, how do you think it would affect your motivation to practice in private if you knew you would be tested in public?
Part of what these suggestion contains are the basis for the emerging field of game learning. While the wiki is surprisingly weak on the matter -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_based_learning -- the idea is that structured conditions of gaming/sports success can be applied to teaching and knowledge acquisition. Some of these ideas include:
I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I am not quite sure how to apply it, to say learning a new (programming) language (I have been playing with Clojure for a while now but am nowhere near productive in it).
I guess the part that confuses me is the first step - "R stands for Reaching/Repeating" - How exactly would you apply this to learning a new language, framework, algorithm?
When I wanted to get better at Python, I started working through the problems at Project Euler[0], because they were novel and interesting. Also, many of them needed non-trivial optimizations to produce an answer in a reasonable amount of time.
After about 20-25 problems, I found myself reaching for the Python docs way less.
Similar to what teach said you could apply some of it by trying to code without using the docs as much as possible. But I agree that it's hard to "practice" programming, versus "doing" programming.
So much of programming is working with large complex systems that it isn't that amenable to small drilling techniques.
Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorising a phrase in a foreign language, you revel in the fruity sounds you are making and in the delicate dance your lips and teeth and tongue are performing; you marvel at the pattern of connections between the meaning of the phrase and other ideas you have learnt.
It goes against the grain because one of the legacies of schooling is the assumption that learning is difficult and painful. (Paradoxically, by continuing to believe this one makes it so.)