Practice makes perfect

stevenf.tumblr.com

27 points·amilr··6 comments

Not exactly correct... "Perfect" practice makes perfect. You have to consciously try to improve and slowly correct yourself, otherwise you'll just become more and more efficient at making the same mistakes.

> "Perfect" practice makes perfect.

- Vince Lombardi

Depends on what you're practicing.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that movement variability is caused by muscle activity, Churchland's team found that neural activity accounts for about half the variations. In other words, training muscles to perform a certain way through practice, such as countless hours teeing off or shooting a basketball, will not produce the same shot every time because the brain's behaviour is inconsistent.

After an initial training period, the monkeys' reach accuracy did not improve over time, suggesting that lots of practice can only improve movement control so much, says team member Krishna Shenoy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10844-practice-may-not...

I prefer most of the "then" comics.

After a few years, the members of REM all changed instruments. This was because they thought they sounded too "polished", and wanted to get back to the sound they had when they were still struggling to master their instruments.

I wonder if you could make a similar case for hacking - switch tools every few years to recapture some magic earlier perspective on your work? Or just to avoid a rut? Is sounding too polished the equivalent of thinking everything's a nail?

Practice makes permanent.

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