It takes more than practice to excel
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
"Intent on becoming a theoretical physicist and following the likes of Einstein and Hawking, he discovered that although he was one of the top 25 students in his honors physics program, he wasn't smart enough to compete with the handful of real geniuses around him. 'I looked around the room,' Bezos recalls, 'and it was clear to me that there were three people in the class who were much, much better at it than I was, and it was much, much easier for them. It was really sort of a startling insight, that there were these people whose brains were wired differently.' The pragmatic Bezos switched his major to computer science and committed himself to starting and running his own business." [1]
[1] http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html
Just because I may not have the intrinsic gift that allows me to become the best physicist or investor in the world doesn't mean that I couldn't get pretty damn good at it if I put the time in, though. It doesn't necessarily mean that I would enjoy what I was doing any less.
I remember hearing about a study that I think was by Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck[1] that basically found that praising kids for being smart (i.e. having an intrinsic gift) was far less effective than praising them for putting in a good effort (i.e. putting in the time and practice). While it is incontrovertable that some people do indeed have an intrinsic gift for certain activities, I think we should not lose sight of the apparent fact that just about anyone will do better when this view is at least not assigned greater importance than the need to put in a good effort. Lest we unintentionally start sending messages something like "Oh, well you're obviously not as gifted as Michael Jordan at Basketball, so you should probably not even bother learning the game at all." That's an intentionally exaggerated example to get my point across, but particularly when it comes to early childhood development I believe we should not underestimate the effect of even a stray word of encouragement/discouragement. I know that such words had a definite effect on me at an early age if they were from the right person - e.g. an authority figure - and often more of an effect than the authority figure assumed their words had at the time.
On the other hand, I think that we underestimate childrens ability to get up again after failure or isolated stray word of discouragement. Telling children they sux one too many times will lower their self-esteem, sure. However, most of them will recover from hearing something slightly discouraging once in a while just fine.
For sure, I would even go so far as to say discouragement is a normal part of life and if one was to shelter a child from all forms of discouragement - assuming that's even possible - then that child would probably not be very well equipped for life generally. This is an interesting issue as well, but I think it's orthogonal to the main point I was trying to make.
Or maybe not. Quite often, a mediocre competency on something (or several things) is necessary for applying your incredibly good competence in anotehr thing.
The only criticism there is self-criticism, which is a lot harder to escape.
The logical conclusion for me therefore always has been to believe that more work will result in way better results. Maybe the "obvious" part is where your own confidence/talent comes into play.
I personally think one can excel from hard work alone. Maybe you can't excel to the degree of a Hawking or a Jordan in their relevant fields, but does that necessarily invalidate anything you have achieved? There's always going to be someone better at X than you are, for some value of X, at some particular time and place. I see an unfortunate possibility of unrealised potential if people - particularly young people - get it in their heads that if they can't be the absolute best at something then they may as well not even try.
Additionally, even Hawking or Jordan don't operate in a vacuum. What about all the people that have supported them over their lives, all the people they learned from, who - in isolation - the world might consider to be "lesser" people. Would Hawking/Jordan have been able to do what they've done without all that support?
How so? Maybe some extreme cases, like being tall qualifies you for being a basketball player. But in general?
Whether your body can sustain extensive training or whether it will break depends partly on your genetics too. If you are low on red cells in blood, you will be at disadvantage too.
Bigger hands are an advantage in swimming, longer hands in climbing. Some people learn technique easier then others although I do not know what is the difference there. Your sensitivity to pain is not only a question of will power, it depends on genetics too - lower pain sensibility is advantage too.
There are plenty of individual variances that make difference between who can succeed in professional sport and who not.
That part makes a lot of sense: practice and correcting errors only matters when you will be doing something basically the same next time and you have a fixed target of what "good" looks like to shoot for. It also explains a big question I had with the original study: what constitutes a "field"? Does 10,000 hours get me mastery of "software software", or "frontend software engineering", or "web-based frontend software engineering", or "web-based frontend software engineering using Angular.js"?
I think a better explanation is that practice is indeed the key to mastery - of fixed, seldom-changing skills where the goalposts are known and widely agreed upon. But most "fields" rely on combinations of many individual skills, along with a good number of exogenous factors. I may be a master at Chrome Javascript & rendering performance because I've spent a lot of team with the Chrome team understanding exactly how the rendering engine works. This makes me great at building a weekend-long demo or acing an interview, but is only a small component of being an effective frontend engineer. And then when I scale that up from "being an effective frontend engineer" to "founding a successful business", there's also all sorts of luck involved, like who I meet, what industry I target, how popular my initial customers are, what the rest of the technology industry does, etc.
But there are people with gifts and the 10k hours. Those are the Newtons and Feynmans.
But even among the set of mutable attributes, there are clearly individuals who can improve much faster than others, or who can reach further extremes. And sometimes these qualities align in a way that makes a given person extremely capable at a given task. All other factors and external variables being equal, they just have a natural advantage.
This seems painfully obvious; our bodies are diverse, our minds are diverse, and so should be our capabilities. And this is good, as it leads to a well-rounded population. Some people are well-suited for lifting very heavy things, others for running very quickly, yet others for thinking about abstract mathematics, or organizing people, while most are well-suited for doing a wide variety of things reasonably well.
But despite evidence to the contrary, it's enchanting to believe that we could all be the best in the world at something, if we just put in enough time and effort.
People get hung up on the slight variations that make the difference between first and second place, completely ignoring the fact that there are plenty of extremely high levels of achievement aside from being "the best". To think that you shouldn't practice something you love just because it's easier for the guy above you is absurd.
That's not saying everybody could do that. Maybe it takes some special inclination to be able to spend so much time on one thing.
I realized pretty quickly that there were people who were wired very, very differently than myself.
I think Mathematics is different from other fields, in that the top performers can reach "Expert" levels with much less effort than the experts in other fields.
Might be the case in physics as well.
Is it possible that those top 1-2 people just knew so much more than you, going into the class, and had such a strong foundation in closely related material, that they picked it up more quickly? I mean, if the scenario was "my twin brother and I went into a math class with the same level of math knowledge, and he didn't study and got an A, while I studied 15-20 hr/wk and got a B" then I would find that much stronger evidence to conclude that these differences may be innate. But to me it seems likely that the 1-2 people who vastly outperformed everyone else may have just been setting themselves up to do that for the previous 10 years. By which I mean, they were intensively studying math throughout high school (and likely before), so that although they may not have known the course material going in, after seeing it once they think, "oh, yes, that's an obvious result based on x, y, z things that I already know. And it's a very nice way of thinking about w." Whereas you, not knowing x, y, z, or w, don't have any of that intuition. So they can make connections and learn by analogy "effortlessly" while you have to study much more to understand these concepts.
Thoughts?
Ed Witten (of M-Theory fame) famously did the entire undergrad physics syllabus in his own time one summer after completing a different degree. Then he applied as a postgrad, aced his interviews, and got in.
The tragic thing about the 10k myth is that it makes people who aren't the best of the best underestimate just how good the really talented people are.
Most people simply cannot do what Witten did. No amount of personal tutoring or practice time is going to give them that kind of cognitive ability.
The reality is that you can take them a random selection of kids, hothouse them in any subject, and most of them will turn out to be good at best. Not brilliant, not geniuses - just good.
There's certainly an argument to be made that a lot of talent is wasted, and education is much better at destroying ability than nurturing it. But that's a different point.
The bottom line is some people just get it - whatever it is - and they're outstanding.
I'd guess most people here get technology like that to an extent that most of the population can't imagine. I'm certainly not brilliant, but I'm much better at getting technology to work than my friends and neighbors.
Take an aptitude like that, level up ten times or so, apply it to math or physics or music, and you get some idea what 'brilliant' might mean.
It's possible the people you saw had already mastered the subject even before you took the lecture. Or it had so much similarity to something else they had already mastered that it became easy for them.
I had plenty of schoolmates that learned them much faster then me. We all started with no previous foreign language skills. We did the same set of exercises in school and they ended up knowing most of the material while I had to study a lot just to keep up.
But before learning about 'deliberate practice', I had first heard a saying that "practice makes permanent". You have to practice with the actual intention of getting better and perfecting your technique, otherwise you're just strengthening the old habits.
Some context for the rest of the text: my hobbies are aikido and an old Japanese sword art, so I practice sword cuts a lot (wooden sword, no target -- yet).
Deliberate practice is hard, it's taxing, both physically but also mentally. It requires not only that you focus on what you're doing but also consciously focusing on how you're doing it. By focusing on what and how simultaneously, you can draw a causal connection between the result (what) and how you achieved it. If you're not satisfied with the result, then you try to modify the "how" in a variety of ways until you feel the result has gotten better.
This is mentally taxing and absolutely not fun. You're watching yourself making mistakes in real time, the mind wants but the body cannot (yet). Sometimes you even need to get a fundamentally new idea about "what" or "how" in order to break the (current) barrier. Suddenly an advice that you got from a teacher a year ago, and which didn't make sense then, makes sense NOW.
And after having practiced for a while (usually up to 50 min; different exercises), I notice that I have reverted to "blind" practice, that I can no longer focus on "how", regardless how much I try. That's when I stop, regardless of how much "real time" has elapsed.
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Trying to write ten thousand different sentences will make you a better writer than writing the same sentence ten thousand times.
In (slight) contrast to your ending quote, I offer Bruce Lee (un-verified, but interesting nonetheless):
":I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
The last sentence of your comment sums up my thoughts exactly.
> She hopes to investigate such factors as basic abilities, age when starting to learn the skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation and the ability to take risks.
This doesn't seem to cover the introspective / deliberate part of practice.
Though, I asked myself: if practice is not deliberate, is it "practice" at all? If not, what should we call it?
Or a difference between just playing songs you like and between playing 30 seconds of some difficult song over and over not because you like it, but because you need to learn that kind of notes sequence to progress.
In my field I see a lot of people coming into CS just because it's trendy and they will sure have a job after graduation. But they lack the motivation to do something in that field. A lot are just in it because the pay is great and you can around computers all day..
I remember when I was 9 I had a goal, I wanted to make a game. I didn't even have a computer back then, but I knew I wanted to make a game so others could play it. I remember spending afternoons drawing level design, characters and how the game would work once I had my own computer. I never actually made a game but I loved the idea of creating something for other to use.
When I was 14 (now with a Pentium 100mhz good times) I wanted to be an hacker (hehe), so I learned C, Socket programming, I wet my feet into Linux, I started messing around deamons like email, web server.
When I was 18 I needed money, my parents couldn't afford to pay my tuition. So I created an app, to add my empty Resume and got hired by a software company to develop web apps.
Tens years fast-forward and here I am today, still making apps that people can use and still learning everyday, working for an awesome company, having my own small software-shop on the side and doing what I love to do.
I may not excel in my field, I may not be disruptive (haha), but I truly love what I do and can't honestly see myself doing anything else.
I just wanted to say that's fine not to excel or to be in the top 10. If that's your goal, go for it, but as long as you love what you do and have something that motivate you I'm pretty sure you will do just fine.
An iconic example is the team (Na`Vi) that won the first big DotA2 tournament. The game was in closed beta and professional DotA1 teams got a key at different times. Navi got their key just 1 month before the tournament while other teams got theirs way before. Still, 1 month was enough to beat all other professional teams.
There's a lot of interesting things that one can learn from esports, even just from the sheer amount of data generated (dota2 has almost 10M unique monthly players).
(Remains to determine whether intellectual capacity genetic trait varies like "has two arms," or like "height," and of course to try to pin down how to measure it, and count how many "its" there may be.)
Or what I'm trying to say is that there's no gene for "smart", just like there's no gene for "has two arms".
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2160625...
This state of mind, 'conscious unconsciousness', trains your Self 2 to execute. I don't know why it takes so long for the subconscious to learn, but muscle memory does develop.
Most people think these people are training their Self 1, as if studying music theory will guide their hand, unconsciously, up the scales. It doesn't work that way. You can't memorize a compound bend on guitar, you can't memorize a double stop on a violin. Self 1, as important as it imagines itself, cannot play music all by itself. There are far too many notes in any song to consciously focus on each one as it passes. You have to rely on muscle memory to get you through.
Keeping that feedback loop open is about as hard as maintaining averted vision in the night sky. Or staring into a Magic Eye. You've got to relax and focus.
[1] you'll have to read the book. Self 1 observes & directs, Self 2 executes. Roughly, Self 1 is conscious, Self 2 is subconscious.
This is just stupid. Suppose I take a test to see how many pairs of three digit numbers I can multiply correctly in one minute. Then I practice multiplying three digit numbers for one hour twice a day for two weeks. Then I take the test again. How much will I improve? 100%, 200%, 1,000%? How close will I be to having “mastered” the skill of multiplying three digit numbers? Is 28 hours enough? Maybe I am just not able to master a skill that is so difficult to master. Let’s suppose I’ve got the right stuff and I am able to master this particular skill. Now convince me that practice explains only 12 percent of my success!
> Her next step is to find out what factors contribute to being an expert on an instrument, playing field, in the classroom or at work. She hopes to investigate such factors as basic abilities, age when starting to learn the skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation and the ability to take risks.
I think the whole nature vs nurture discussion in relation to intellectual aptitude is shaped to much by peoples own biases which leads them to ignore the overwhelming evidence for the importance of nurture/culture/eduction/...
Maybe it's easier to believe some people are born smart.
Sports are a great example of this. A great athlete is often...
One part genetic gifts - if you are tall basketball might work well for you, if you're short maybe a horse jockey would be a more sensible sport.
One part intuitive skill or affinity - some people naturally are good at throwing a baseball fast or really love to kick a soccer ball. Some people just aren't.
One part opportunity - I've never had an opportunity to do curling, but I've played football and basketball. If my parents were world class martial artists, I'd probably be pretty good at martial arts.
One part practice and experience - a good amount of skill acquisition can only come from doing and refining that skill. You can read about how to run long distances, but at some point you just have to put in the miles. The more you do, the more you learn.
One part obsession - to be the best in the world, you have to have a ridiculous amount of determination. Most people don't have that for most of what they do. The ones who reach the highest levels tend to go beyond determination to obsession. Read about how Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan practiced and prepared and you realize that they weren't just doing "deliberate practice", they were obsessed with greatness and that obsession drove them beyond what anyone else was willing to do.
One part luck - even if everything else aligns you can get hurt, something else could sideline your career, you might fight a drug addiction or have family problems or an illness. Also, being lucky enough to get certain opportunities come your way at the right time often plays a big factor.
When you have all of those things come together you have something special. We can all recognize it simply because it's rare.
When we try and reduce everything down to a simple idea like "deliberate practice" that might sell a lot of books, or make for interesting papers, it really doesn't tell the whole story.
I think the human mind wants to reduce complexity to simple things because it makes the story we tell ourselves about the world easier to understand, but it's the complexity that makes it all so fascinating in the first place.
To exercise free will one must decide which "choices" are deterministic (i.e. not actually choices) and which are open to imaginative innovation. It is the definition of greatness which is personal, not its achievement.
In the words of Heinz von Foerster, http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html
"Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide."
Hell, even the ability to commit to extended periods of practice requires certain genetic ability. Most people are not born with the ability to hyperfocus like Bill Gates and work for 24 hours straight like he was able to do during the early days of Microsoft.
We accept ADHD has genetic components, and so the ability to focus for extended periods of time (which is what practice entails) is inherently easier for certain people.
But, in defense of this reality rejection, you never know until you try. If you follow the nonsense kindergarten line of "You can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough and dream!" you likely are going to be better off than if you give up early because others are better than you are.
But yes... far too many people wind up in areas they don't belong, and they struggle, meanwhile they have real gifts in other areas that remain unused.
The ability to sync your natural talents with your efforts are probably one of the unspoken keys to success.
An average person has one real chance: work their butt off at something they actually like doing (so they don't get discouraged so fast) and get better than average. So I call it good advice to follow your dream. Beats following someone else's dream anyway.
Good points... but it's not optimism. It's kindness.
See, I feel everyone is special in their own unique way...
(ok, maybe some people really aren't special in any way, but we can't shoot them, so lets just pretend they have a special gift if its alright)
From the article:
Her next step is to find out what factors contribute to being an expert on an instrument, playing field, in the classroom or at work. She hopes to investigate such factors as basic abilities, age when starting to learn the skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation and the ability to take risks.
A great practice musician could freeze up in front of an audience, she said. Yet someone less skilled but with more confidence could shine.
Because throughout all of world history there are many examples of people taking that logic too far in order to consider certain races, certain sexes, and people from certain lands as inherently mentally inferior, and in the worst case, exterminating them in the form of a proposed "solution" to the "problem".
People strongly hesitate around this sort of talk for a reason.
Feelings and ideology trumping reality may work for a while, but it can't last forever when faced with competition from groups and nations that harbor no such illusions, such as the Chinese, who are investing in their genetic research labs to investigate the genetic origins of intelligence so as to benefit their own population generations hence. We, on the other hand, are too frightened to even talk about such investigations. Much to the detriment of our own future.
I have problems starting and switching tasks. In fact, my inability to switch contexts delays the task stoppage, allowing me to focus longer!
Many ADHD patients don't have problems attaining focus, but actually only directing it.
Not related to your point and probably supports it (I'm a good programmer because I hyperfocus, what some people call being in the zone). I just wanted to point it out.
I don't mean pedestrian caring. I mean a deep, rich relationship between you and what it is you practice. That caring translates into focus, attention, deliberation etc.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." - Albert Einstein
(PS - I'm hinting at Heideggers phenomenology here. You can watch a great documentary introduction to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-rmGy9gWvE)