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Related - "Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis" - http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/u

Related - "Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis" - http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Macnamara-et-al.-2014.pdf http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Macn... Gives some context for the kinds of fields where deliberate practice improves performance.

GregBuchholz 9y ago
Your mention of deliberate practice prompted me reinvestigate the guy who was doing the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a golf pro. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, he did get to 10,000 hours, but it doesn't seem like it panned out. Anyone have further sources of information? http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer)
- tunesmith 9y ago
  There was a recent HN discussion on it, I believe - I think he got to around 6,000 hours, and was doing really well at golf actually, but then injuries started happening.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    Maybe a slightly different topic.. but from what a lot in the running field think, its all about how fast your body recovers. There are 10,000 amazing marathoners in the world. If you gave them all the same training, they would all be absurdly good, as they got better and better. But 9,990 or so of them would get injured and wash out. So it seems at least in some sports, your limiter is not how genetically gifted you are the SPORT, but how genetically gifted you are at recovering from training so that you can train more. So perhaps this guy has the genetics to be a pro golfer, but his body can't take the strain and recover between sessions.. so he would never quite make it.
    - jtuente 9y ago
      If his body cannot take the strain and recover between sessions then wouldn't that suggest that he does not have the genetics to be a pro golfer, but merely a good one?
    - jinfiesto 9y ago
      I'm not convinced that the recovery is genetic (well it is, but that's not the point.) People give themselves repetitive motion injuries in music all the time. It causes tons of otherwise amazing musicians to wash out. It's become such a problem, that it's basically become the biggest issue the pedagogy community as a whole is actively trying to address. This is interesting, because there has been a lot of progress made in injury-preventive technique. Even in running, a quick Google search revealed that injury preventive techniques exist. So I guess, I'm not convinced that injury isn't technique related and that not being injured doesn't have more to do with luck (in terms of natural technique) than genetics.
      - bsder 9y ago
        > It's become such a problem, that it's basically become the biggest issue the pedagogy community as a whole is actively trying to address. This is interesting, because there has been a lot of progress made in injury-preventive technique. Could you please give me some references for this? Guitar has loads of famous people who encourage people to do things that will cause injuries. Having some actual research to fight against this would be really useful. An egregiously bad example: Paul Gilbert (who is like 6'5" and has enormously long arms and fingers) actually SELLS an especially long guitar strap that is practically guaranteed to give you RSI. I wish I were joking: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+gilbert+guitar+strap https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+gilbert+gu... Side note: this made me hugely disappointed in Paul Gilbert. Prior to this, I thought of him as an amazing guitar player with a very wry/dry sense of humor who was simply making fun of the guitar stereotype crowd. Actually encouraging something which is damaging in order to profit from it crosses the line whether he is serious or joking--too many people will listen and believe him.
        9y ago
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    Well compared to where he started or the average golf player but still very far away from a anything resembling a pro. Which in general is the scientific consensus. Which is you can get a lot better at things by practicing but being that best is always a matter of talent.
- rednum 9y ago
  He did not get to the 10,000 hours, he had to quit after 6,000 due to back injury. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-plan/536592/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-p...
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Survivor bias seems to be a thing in Pro Sports Not everybody can get to 10k hours without getting hurt and/or managing to work through it
  - coldtea 9y ago
    6000 seem like just totally close to 10K for all practical purposes...
    - dEnigma 9y ago
      What do you mean? It's barely more than half of the goal.
- danblick 9y ago
  Since you mentioned both deliberate practice and 10,000 hours: are you familiar with Anders Ericsson's criticism of the 10,000 hours idea? Do you think it's still a concept worth talking about?
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    I liked Gladwell's response, that 10,000 hours was never intended as the goal it turned into. Rather, it was intended as an order of magnitude. More than that however, it was intended to call attention to the support structure being expert requires. I.E. nobody can get 10,000 hours in on their own.
    - swsieber 9y ago
      This. I'm listening to Outliers right now (where he builds up that concept). I can understand how people think Gladwell is a load of crap... if you focus on his points out of context. It was never "get 10,000 hrs and you'll be an expert", but instead "once you get to a certain level of talent/innate ability, it's deliberate practice that makes the difference."
      - posterboy 9y ago
        like the constant factors usually omitted in complexity analysis
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      Academia has put its nose up far in the air, it's become a career-crime to write anything for the public, so it falls to journalists to explain scientific results. Gladwell did a good job, then got manure tossed at him from scientists for daring to speak their results; and laypeople who flatly misunderstood what he said, or never read the articles/books and imagined what he said. But the root problem is inequality - science has begun to see itself as an immaculate priesthood that mustn't mix with the plebs. Scientists should have been presenting their results to the public, but snobbishness now prevents this.
danharaj 9y ago
I'm having a bit of trouble interpreting these numbers. If I look at deliberate practice in musical proficiency amongst the general populace, it'll look like deliberate practice is responsible for almost all of the proficiency. However, if I look at the top 100 musicians in the world, they would have all practiced thousands of hours and I expect practice to have diminishing returns, so it should be responsible for very little of the variation in their ability. I would expect also that in more multifactorial activities which are often the basis of professions that it is both A) difficult to ascertain what expertise is (often reducing to an empty social credential) B) difficult to evaluate what good deliberate practice is. The meta-analysis talks about such factors as the predictability of the environment correlating with the effect size of deliberate practice. I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- jtmarmon 9y ago
  The top 100 didn't all practice the same way, have the same experiences
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  I think you're right. What separates the average from the good is practice. What separates the good from the great is something different.
  - roceasta 9y ago
    My guess is that 'low-latent inhibition' plus a great memory plus long practice make for mastery. http://www.lowlatentinhibition.org/what-is-lli/ http://www.lowlatentinhibition.org/what-is-lli/ (And those who force themselves to practice are going to get injuries like repetitive strain which are really a kind of 'inner rebellion' against this forcing.)
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      Never heard of LLI as lying on a spectrum that includes OCD, ADHD etc so thank you for that link.
- 9y ago

GregBuchholz 9y ago

Your mention of deliberate practice prompted me reinvestigate the guy who was doing the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a golf pro. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, he did get to 10,000 hours, but it doesn't seem like it panned out. Anyone have further sources of information? http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer)

tunesmith 9y ago
There was a recent HN discussion on it, I believe - I think he got to around 6,000 hours, and was doing really well at golf actually, but then injuries started happening.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  Maybe a slightly different topic.. but from what a lot in the running field think, its all about how fast your body recovers. There are 10,000 amazing marathoners in the world. If you gave them all the same training, they would all be absurdly good, as they got better and better. But 9,990 or so of them would get injured and wash out. So it seems at least in some sports, your limiter is not how genetically gifted you are the SPORT, but how genetically gifted you are at recovering from training so that you can train more. So perhaps this guy has the genetics to be a pro golfer, but his body can't take the strain and recover between sessions.. so he would never quite make it.
  - jtuente 9y ago
    If his body cannot take the strain and recover between sessions then wouldn't that suggest that he does not have the genetics to be a pro golfer, but merely a good one?
  - jinfiesto 9y ago
    I'm not convinced that the recovery is genetic (well it is, but that's not the point.) People give themselves repetitive motion injuries in music all the time. It causes tons of otherwise amazing musicians to wash out. It's become such a problem, that it's basically become the biggest issue the pedagogy community as a whole is actively trying to address. This is interesting, because there has been a lot of progress made in injury-preventive technique. Even in running, a quick Google search revealed that injury preventive techniques exist. So I guess, I'm not convinced that injury isn't technique related and that not being injured doesn't have more to do with luck (in terms of natural technique) than genetics.
    - bsder 9y ago
      > It's become such a problem, that it's basically become the biggest issue the pedagogy community as a whole is actively trying to address. This is interesting, because there has been a lot of progress made in injury-preventive technique. Could you please give me some references for this? Guitar has loads of famous people who encourage people to do things that will cause injuries. Having some actual research to fight against this would be really useful. An egregiously bad example: Paul Gilbert (who is like 6'5" and has enormously long arms and fingers) actually SELLS an especially long guitar strap that is practically guaranteed to give you RSI. I wish I were joking: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+gilbert+guitar+strap https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+gilbert+gu... Side note: this made me hugely disappointed in Paul Gilbert. Prior to this, I thought of him as an amazing guitar player with a very wry/dry sense of humor who was simply making fun of the guitar stereotype crowd. Actually encouraging something which is damaging in order to profit from it crosses the line whether he is serious or joking--too many people will listen and believe him.
      - 9y ago
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Well compared to where he started or the average golf player but still very far away from a anything resembling a pro. Which in general is the scientific consensus. Which is you can get a lot better at things by practicing but being that best is always a matter of talent.
rednum 9y ago
He did not get to the 10,000 hours, he had to quit after 6,000 due to back injury. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-plan/536592/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-p...
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Survivor bias seems to be a thing in Pro Sports Not everybody can get to 10k hours without getting hurt and/or managing to work through it
- coldtea 9y ago
  6000 seem like just totally close to 10K for all practical purposes...
  - dEnigma 9y ago
    What do you mean? It's barely more than half of the goal.
danblick 9y ago
Since you mentioned both deliberate practice and 10,000 hours: are you familiar with Anders Ericsson's criticism of the 10,000 hours idea? Do you think it's still a concept worth talking about?
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  I liked Gladwell's response, that 10,000 hours was never intended as the goal it turned into. Rather, it was intended as an order of magnitude. More than that however, it was intended to call attention to the support structure being expert requires. I.E. nobody can get 10,000 hours in on their own.
  - swsieber 9y ago
    This. I'm listening to Outliers right now (where he builds up that concept). I can understand how people think Gladwell is a load of crap... if you focus on his points out of context. It was never "get 10,000 hrs and you'll be an expert", but instead "once you get to a certain level of talent/innate ability, it's deliberate practice that makes the difference."
    - posterboy 9y ago
      like the constant factors usually omitted in complexity analysis
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    Academia has put its nose up far in the air, it's become a career-crime to write anything for the public, so it falls to journalists to explain scientific results. Gladwell did a good job, then got manure tossed at him from scientists for daring to speak their results; and laypeople who flatly misunderstood what he said, or never read the articles/books and imagined what he said. But the root problem is inequality - science has begun to see itself as an immaculate priesthood that mustn't mix with the plebs. Scientists should have been presenting their results to the public, but snobbishness now prevents this.

danharaj 9y ago

I'm having a bit of trouble interpreting these numbers. If I look at deliberate practice in musical proficiency amongst the general populace, it'll look like deliberate practice is responsible for almost all of the proficiency. However, if I look at the top 100 musicians in the world, they would have all practiced thousands of hours and I expect practice to have diminishing returns, so it should be responsible for very little of the variation in their ability. I would expect also that in more multifactorial activities which are often the basis of professions that it is both A) difficult to ascertain what expertise is (often reducing to an empty social credential) B) difficult to evaluate what good deliberate practice is. The meta-analysis talks about such factors as the predictability of the environment correlating with the effect size of deliberate practice. I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.

jtmarmon 9y ago
The top 100 didn't all practice the same way, have the same experiences
JamesBarney 9y ago
I think you're right. What separates the average from the good is practice. What separates the good from the great is something different.
- roceasta 9y ago
  My guess is that 'low-latent inhibition' plus a great memory plus long practice make for mastery. http://www.lowlatentinhibition.org/what-is-lli/ http://www.lowlatentinhibition.org/what-is-lli/ (And those who force themselves to practice are going to get injuries like repetitive strain which are really a kind of 'inner rebellion' against this forcing.)
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    Never heard of LLI as lying on a spectrum that includes OCD, ADHD etc so thank you for that link.
9y ago