How to do deliberate practice
thetalentcode.com
thetalentcode.com
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.)
But yeah. The problem isn't that learning is unenjoyable, but that we don't enjoy it enough.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842948/ref=as_li_tf_tl?...
(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)
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.
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.
Maybe less time on couches and more time with coaches would change your perspective?
With that said, there is a guy, Dan, who is testing this theory with golf. We still have a few more years to see if it works.
"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.
:) 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.
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:
http://www.ida.liu.se/~nilda/Anders_Ericsson/Ericsson_delib_...
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.
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.
For more detail I highly recommend "The Perfect Wrong Note" by William Westney.
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.
Really? How many?
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?
Coached practicing / Competitive performance evaluation / Transparent Scores / Winning opportunities / Final Awards.
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?
Folks here on HN - Any words of advice?
After about 20-25 problems, I found myself reaching for the Python docs way less.
So much of programming is working with large complex systems that it isn't that amenable to small drilling techniques.