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The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

150 points by ZephyrBlu 5y ago

koeng 5y ago
“ First, it seems improbable that in the narrow area of expert performance we find that practice dominates, whereas in everything else, we find that genetic factors have an equally large (if not greater) effect on outcomes. (This latter bit — that genes matter in determining IQ, mental health, personality traits, aptitude, and others — is so well replicated so as to not be in serious dispute any longer.” Now that’s a pretty huge claim, and I don’t think that linking Guardian articles backs up that claim as scientific consensus. Neurons + culture (aka, practice) are essentially the biological solution to DNA being too slow. It’s not “improbable” that practice dominates here, in fact, I’d say that our genetics specifically evolved for practice to be more important there.
- deleted 5y ago
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- vkk8 5y ago
  I've had similar thoughts on this. In sports, most people accept that genetics plays a huge role (if you want to play in the NBA, having tall genes certainly helps a lot). Why wouldn't they also matter for intellectual pursuits? If the effect of genes is something we can easily see with our own eyes - arm length, bone width, etc. - we have no difficulty accepting it, but if we can't see it - certain type of brain structure, certain hormone profile that favours some activites over others, etc. - we want to believe that genes don't play a role. Besides, the role of the genes can also be a second order effect. The book Sports Gene by David Eppstein tells a story of sled racing dogs that were bred for motivation to run (apparently it can be bred). Naturally dogs that like running also want to train more and become better at it. Could it be that the motivation to do things like mathematics or programming are also heavily influenced by genetics?
  - pete762 5y ago
    Well, the consequence of what you're writing is that if you're somewhere in life where you don't want to be you're pretty much out of luck 'cause genes (a little exaggerated, probably more true for future dreams).
trabant00 5y ago
> the effect sizes from deliberate practice far dominate when compared against innate talent, genetics, or other factors We won't settle this in the comments section of HN so I'm not even going to try. I'm just curious how this is percieved by ordinary pepople in your home region. I'm from Romania and generally people here see innate talent as a higher limit to performance, and practice is the way to reach it.
- skohan 5y ago
  I don't know if it's general consensus in the states, but this is my mental model as well.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Interesting, personally I view talent as being more about the effectiveness of practice than a specific higher limit. Though if the effectiveness of practice is low then that obviously places some practical limits on the maximum amount of 'mastery'.
j7ake 5y ago
“Second, the deliberate practice research makes an awfully attractive claim: that anyone, given enough determination, can become good at any skill. They merely have to do lots and lots of difficult deliberate practice.“ I am not sure if people on deliberate practice agree on precisely that claim, but perhaps they would agree on “Anyone can become better at any skill, given that one does deliberate practice”. Whether deliberate practice can make you good relative to other people is a separate question that is beyond the scope of deliberate practice. There, one factors in people with different innate and qualities and practice habits all competing with each other. The ones who are at the very top will likely have both innate qualities and good training regiments.
- threatripper 5y ago
  The thing is that self-limiting thoughts and doubt don't help you. Are you good enough? Do you have what it takes? Is this minor failure a sign that you should give up? Will you ever get there? How do you know if you could even get there? I would rephrase it: If you want to be good you need a lot of practice. The way to mastery is paved with failures. You need to invest a lot of time and energy before you can even begin to evaluate. Don't waste time on too early self-evaluation. Don't waste energy with useless doubt. Your body and brain are very adaptable much beyond what you normally experience. In the end it's a balance of doing the things right and doing the right things.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing 25 years. I would suggest reading this in addition to the submitted article, if you're interested in better understanding the "Problems with Deliberate Practice": https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02396/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0239... Edit: The author has this to say: "Is deliberate practice good enough to work? My opinion — one that’s informed by painful experience attempting to implement the results of Ericsson’s research — is that, yes, deliberate practice does work, but it’s really difficult to turn the principles into a practice program if you are in a field where no ‘highly-developed, broadly accepted training methods’ exist." Edit2: I was too harsh, edited to tone down the language!
- skmurphy 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this it's a very helpful summary on deliberate practice.
- throwawayatwork 5y ago
  Incidentally, Ericsson's 2019 paper cites a Hacker News comment. We've come full circle. '10,000 h' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of genius. It’s not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things if they want to, by practicing enough Hacker news, (2017). Hacker News Post by "Paulpauper". Available at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855422 (accesseed March 4, 2019).
- shadowsun7 5y ago
  I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post. In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Well, has there been a few decades of pedagogical development in your field so that you can be coached like with chess or math or tennis? NO? Ok, you're tough out of luck. No DP for you! So the real question is: if you are working in marketing or management or leadership or computer programming, all of which are domains that matter to our careers, these domains do not have good pedagogical development — so how do you get good? The answer to this, at least from one branch of expertise research, is to extract mental models of expertise from the heads of domain experts, and then turn those into training programs. This is a far more tractable training approach. See: https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ for a summary (note: Paul Feltovich is one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson; he's one of the authors of the book). For a full survey of the approach, see the Oxford Handbook of Expertise https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198795872.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198795872 https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019... (as opposed to the Cambridge Handbook, which is the Ericsson school.)
skohan 5y ago
I think there's obviously a confluence of nature and nurture which is going to lead to the final outcome in terms of skill attainment. I think the extent to which genetics varies probably varies a lot depending on the domain. For instance, something like long-distance running depends a lot on physics and biology: how efficient you can be at moving your body through space depends a lot on how tall you are, how long your limbs are, and things like the width of your pelvis. You will still need a lot of practice to reach your full potential, but what level you reach, and how fast you reach it will be heavily influenced by genetic factors. However, that being said, practice is still absolutely magic. In the spirit of the 80/20 rule, it's amazing how much a little bit of deliberate practice can improve an untrained skill. Especially when developing a skill from absolute zero, a few weeks of deliberate practice can often take me from the realm of absolute failure, to the point where I can actually enjoy practicing it. I've also sometimes reflected on the fact that skill attainment through practice seems more difficult as one gets older. I think this is almost certainly true to some extent, as neuroplasticity is real, and for instance a 40 year old will never have as easy a time learning a language as a 5 year old. However I think it's also a bit overstated. When you are a kid, every thing you are learning is relatively new, so when practicing a new skill you have a more uniform point of comparison in terms of how fast you learn things. As an adult, you have certain skills you might have been practicing daily for 20 years and have completely mastered. So when you sit down and manage to play Für Elise for the first time at a piano it seems absolutely rudimentary in comparison, even if you are making real progress, which can be demoralizing. There's also the factor that adults tend to be more subconscious about failing in public. We've spent years learning how to avoid situations where we look bad, or can't do what we set out to do, unlike kids who aren't expected to be able to do much. It's an approach which is really self-defeating if your goal is to actually learn something new.
- sireat 5y ago
  Age factor is absolutely real in well studied skills such as chess. There are no instances of people starting to play chess after say age 25 and becoming a grandmaster say after 20 years at 45. Plenty of people who start at 10 or earlier and become grandmasters before 25. Lack of deliberate practice is surely not the only explanation. Starting at age 15 is already considered very late for chess. (Anecdata: I started at 10 and peaked at FM coming close to IM norm once) Internet is awash with late bloomer examples in various fields (such as writing). However when you look closer you see that the persons in question had serious related practice at an earlier age.. I am yet to find an example of someone taking up a completely new skill after 40 and achieving notable greatness. Like champion of your city at tennis or master in chess, etc. So my formula is skill = STARTING_AGE X coef1 + GENETICS X coef2+ DP X coef3 Only questions is what values to give coef1, coef2 and coef3
rsync 5y ago
One word: play. I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. Similarly, I have mediocre results when my schedule only allows BJJ classes but markedly better results when I can just go “play” Jiu jitsu with others. Just go get reps doing something you love, in an experimental and playful manner.
- borroka 5y ago
  The standard BJJ classes (warm-up, technique of the day, sparring) are pedagogical black holes (BB here), anything else decent enough is better.
  - Pamar 5y ago
    Can you provide some suggestions on improving (or just pointing out what makes these pedagogical black holes)? I am a MA practitioner myself (Aikido, 32 years and counting) and while I am always interested in the pedagogical aspect even if I rarely held a lesson myself. (And yes, I know that BJJ is very different from Aikido, but at the end of the day, I see lots of other arts - including Karate, Judo... Aikido etc. - being taught as warm-up/a handful of techniques from the curriculum/sparring...).
    - elbows 5y ago
      A lot of martial arts training is focused on practicing techniques in isolation and developing "perfect" form (punches/kicks in the air, doing the same throw repeatedly against a cooperative partner). The problem is that any technique you want to apply against an opponent in a competition (or self-defense situation) also has a significant tactical/decision-making component, which is not really trained by that approach. You have to learn when to do a technique, how to set it up, and how to adapt the movement to your specific opponent. You can learn the tactical skills in sparring but it's difficult because there's so much going on. So when you try to jump from isolated technique practice to sparring, there's a disconnect because you haven't built the tactical skills. Even worse, the movement you practiced in isolation may be different from what works in sparring, so all that isolated practice can actually be counterproductive. You can see this pretty clearly in combat sports like kendo and fencing which have a strong component of tradition -- the movements of high-level competitors tend to be very different from the "correct" form taught in class. I'm not sure how much this would apply to aikido, which as I understand it is not particularly focused on competitive or self-defense applications. If you're interested in pedagogy for martial arts (or sports in general), I highly recommend "Development of Technique and Tactical Skill" by Luis Preto and Spyridon Katisgiannis. "Principles-Based Instruction for Self Defense" by Rory Miller is also pretty good, if a bit rambling.
deleted 5y ago
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shadowsun7 5y ago
If you want alternatives to DP that work much better, it might be worth it to take a look at: 1. The Tacit Knowledge Series (which argues that methods from Naturalistic Decision Making are more useful when you are in a skill domain with no good pedagogical development) https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ 2. Accelerated Expertise — which covers methods from the military to accelerate expertise acquisition (and, yes, some of it uses DP principles, but it isn't really DP) https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/
- skohan 5y ago
  Not to bring politics into a HN discussion, but based on their recent outcome in Afghanistan, I'm not sure if the US military is an organization I would currently turn to for insight.
  - shadowsun7 5y ago
    Most of these techniques are co-developed in industry applications, and are seeping out from military research into business. In tech, John Allspaw has done a huge amount to take these training methods and skill-extraction techniques and adopted/applied it to resilience engineering. (https://twitter.com/allspaw https://twitter.com/allspaw and https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/ https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/) Not paying attention to research with military provenance seems rather silly. What matters more are the questions: does this work? Where has it been tried? And can I apply it to my company or career?
  - necovek 5y ago
    Military itself should seldom be judged by the decisions of the government. The entire mission in Afghanistan has long stopped being military oriented, and military was present to preserve some semblance of US control. One could argue that there is sufficient proof now that US application of military in attempting to "democratize" nations has so far failed, but that should not come as a surprise since military is, by definition, not "democratic". Democracies deploy military exclusively to preserve peace (by discouraging invasion, for instance). This is still not a slight against US military, but against US foreign policy instead. Whether that makes it a net win in other (economic, geopolitical) measures for USA is another matter altogether. As such, I do not think you should discount US military as a top-notch organization with a lot of know-how in building up expertise.
endymi0n 5y ago
> Can you become a brilliant theoretical physicist with an average IQ (95-105)? > [...] > I have an IQ below 105. > I also graduated with a degree in Mathematics and received Highest Honours. > [...] > And the answer is ‘No'! https://www.quora.com/Can-you-become-a-brilliant-theoretical-physicist-with-an-average-IQ-95-105?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Can-you-become-a-brilliant-theoretical...
zhdc1 5y ago
I think that a second part of the issue comes from achieving mastery in creative fields, where there are no clear evaluative goal posts for what success looks like. Talent certainly differentiates the top levels competitive environments when everything else is held equal. However, in these environments, I can see where deliberate practice can move someone who is less talented into the top nth percent of performers. They may not be among the best, buy they're close enough that someone who is untrained or less disciplined doesn't stand a chance against them. Given that the distribution of material rewards generally doesn't follow a winner takes all model, like what you see with sports, deliberate practice can should eventually create significant competitive and material advantages. What happens, though, in creative fields such as writing, where engaging in deliberate practice doesn't necessarily improve your craft or your end product? A part of me questions whether the deliberate practice that many prospective writers, such as MFA students, do on a daily basis really helps them write a best seller - or even a quality literary work. The same could also apply to tech startups. Would it be a good idea for early-stage entrepreneurs to do daily coding challenges? Or, over a long period of time, would they be better off trying to consistently create something that they then test on the market?
deleted 5y ago
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HPsquared 5y ago
I always had an inkling that the "talent is overrated" argument (that a certain amount deliberate practice is sufficient to achieve mastery) is something of a tautology: only those talented individuals, who are capable of such a rigorous training routine, will achieve mastery.
- teorema 5y ago
  On the other hand, critics of natural talent explanations often point out that too is tautological: someone is talented if they're successful and vice versa. Clearly there aren't proteins for violin bow control, so something happens in between.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    Talent doesn't have to be "natural", just uncontrolled factors. Something that is "in the person" at the time of training. This could have come from past experiences, genetic, even things like diet, who knows. The point is, it's still not understood and not controllable.
closed 5y ago
> What I’m willing to bet, however, is that you’ve heard of deliberate practice in the context of Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘10,000 hour rule’ — the mistaken notion that 10,000 hours of practice would turn anyone, at any age, for any skill, into a master practitioner. Ericsson spent a lot of time and page space trying to distance himself from this "rule", but it's clear from his writing that he introduced it. See his 2007 HBR article (which lists it as a necessary condition): > By now it will be clear that it takes time to become an expert. Our research shows that even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training before they win international competitions. It's a confusing enough situation that Macnamara et al review the many places he discusses 10k hours (or 10 years) in their book chapter The Deliberate Practice View.
- stonemetal12 5y ago
  Note he says "a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours)" That is it might be 20K, 30K or more hours of practice. So 10k hours is more like the starting line, not the finish line that Gladwell proclaims.
bo1024 5y ago
I see people talking past each other here and I suspect it has to do with the level of achievement one is picturing. Many smart (and talented) people work really hard at chess with good methods for many years and don’t become grandmasters. Talent must play a role. On the other hand, probably anyone can become much, much better than the average person on the street. So people saying talent matters, and people saying deliberate practice alone can ensure success, can both be correct for slightly different measures of success. As the article says, the very top levels of any prestigious competitive field have people with both talent and good training methods. Talent can separate people at the very top. That doesn’t mean that becoming very good is out of reach for less talented people.
baron_harkonnen 5y ago
> That anyone, given enough determination, can become good at any skill. That "given enough determination" part is glossed over a bit too easily. Plus, even if it's just an approximation, people radically underestimate how much 10k hours of practice is. I've learned a wide range of skills throughout my life so far, to various levels of proficiency. One or two things I've been able to achieve what I feel most others would considers an expert level, and have learned a very large number of things ranging from beginner to intermediate. Anecdotally the confirmation I've found about 10,000 hours is that my area of expertise is something that for years I thought I was naturally bad at. But I got tremendously interested in it, and began studying and practice literally every day for years, and to this day continue to practice and study this area. As far as beginner/intermediate skills, two typically talent based things I've been able to teach myself are life drawing and juggling. I have awful hand eye coordination, and still learned enough juggling to impress people at parties when the occasion comes up. My hand writing is illegible, I also have awful fine motor skills and I've still been able to create surprisingly realistic sketches. Of course I'll never be an expert at these things because I'm just not interested enough in them to get anywhere near the 10,000 hour mark. Four ball juggling will likely remain my threshold indefinitely. The number of things I've gained proficiency in that I had a prior belief and initial experience that they were impossible for me to do is just to high for me to throw out the wisdom of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice might be hard to define, but at the very least it means "practice that is not easy". In order to do something every day with a reasonably high frustration/failure rate means that you have to have an incredible drive to continue. Most people I've known simply can't endure finishing a day of work to go sit down and struggle with something for 1/2 hour a day. If you want 10k hours you have to do this without cessation, and no end in sight. In my experience no amount of will power can force this to happen either. You can force yourself past the beginner and into the intermediate stage, but expertise can only come from an insatiable drive. It's also important to realize that expert and world famous are not the same thing. There are many true experts in guitar who are unknown, 10k hours doesn't get you to being John Frusciante.
- kingdomcome50 5y ago
  I agree that 10k hours is often severely underestimated. Maybe if we all collectively phrased it as "2 hours a day for 14 years" the pedagogy surrounding the above might take a different tone.
thejackgoode 5y ago
I'd like to share a view on this that I found for myself, I am curious if anyone finds it interesting. For years I thought of talent as an effort multiplier. "Intelligence is speed" etc. I recently remapped it in my head slightly and migrated to a definition that talent is a degree of competence and productivity which you can achieve in a given field "effortlessly". Let's say you are a top 5% software engineer off high school, because of your specific circumstances of nature and nurture. You will still need hard deliberate work, introspection and patience in overcoming plateaus if you want to climb the remaining 5% and become better or the best. So, some people have a head start, some have a very big one, but true improvement in a field is only possible through deep work, and if you can organise yourself to do it, that's a meta-skill for 21st century.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  That reminds me a lot of the story of the manager explaining the best engineers superiority in terms of dividends on a higher percentage of time dedicated to work.. I don't really buy into this theory since in my observation a lot of people get sidetracked and get their dividends on skills that cease to have meaning or otherwise miss the important pieces. I.e. they become convinced of a particular paradigm and use it as the wrong hammer on many nails. In authors they become obsessed with what amounts to retelling the same story to the bored audience. Also, people seem to ignore the net zero nature of being the best or even a pro. If you choose some paths every other amateur ends up as a pro by the standards of when you started, with others you spend years training alone only to suddenly be very relevant due to some shift.
nurbl 5y ago
The article seems to mix up "expert" with "world class" a bit. I do think that becoming one of the best in the world in any popular field probably requires suitable genes. But, to me, "expert" is more like someone who's usually the best person in the room at something. Quite different goals.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  10,000 hours is enough for someone having extraordinary talent to be able to realize a small portion of that and have it come out completely astonishing. It's also enough for a mediocre performer to reach a plateau early then end up becoming somewhat of an authority without anything astonishing, and with no talent to spare. It takes a lot of perseverance either way which can truly blur the lines but these are two opposite ends of the spectrum.
mikkergp 5y ago
How do you measure this? You can't take a group of 100 people and randomly assign half to 10,000 hours of deliberate practices. I always felt like this conversation had different connotations at different levels. Not everyone can be Simone Biles, but we can all probably learn to do a backflip. Or more to the point, I think the average person thinks they could never be good enough to impress their friends, and this is probably wrong. With much less than 10,000 hours of deliberate practice you can probably impress people. Write music that satisfies your own soul. You won't be Mozart, but how many of us in the modern world want to be Mozart?

150 points by ZephyrBlu 5y ago

“ First, it seems improbable that in the narrow area of expert performance we find that practice dominates, whereas in everything else, we find that genetic factors have an equally large (if not greater) effect on outcomes. (This latter bit — that genes matter in determining IQ, mental health, personality traits, aptitude, and others — is so well replicated so as to not be in serious dispute any longer.” Now that’s a pretty huge claim, and I don’t think that linking Guardian articles backs up that claim as scientific consensus. Neurons + culture (aka, practice) are essentially the biological solution to DNA being too slow. It’s not “improbable” that practice dominates here, in fact, I’d say that our genetics specifically evolved for practice to be more important there.

deleted 5y ago
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vkk8 5y ago
I've had similar thoughts on this. In sports, most people accept that genetics plays a huge role (if you want to play in the NBA, having tall genes certainly helps a lot). Why wouldn't they also matter for intellectual pursuits? If the effect of genes is something we can easily see with our own eyes - arm length, bone width, etc. - we have no difficulty accepting it, but if we can't see it - certain type of brain structure, certain hormone profile that favours some activites over others, etc. - we want to believe that genes don't play a role. Besides, the role of the genes can also be a second order effect. The book Sports Gene by David Eppstein tells a story of sled racing dogs that were bred for motivation to run (apparently it can be bred). Naturally dogs that like running also want to train more and become better at it. Could it be that the motivation to do things like mathematics or programming are also heavily influenced by genetics?
- pete762 5y ago
  Well, the consequence of what you're writing is that if you're somewhere in life where you don't want to be you're pretty much out of luck 'cause genes (a little exaggerated, probably more true for future dreams).

trabant00 5y ago

> the effect sizes from deliberate practice far dominate when compared against innate talent, genetics, or other factors We won't settle this in the comments section of HN so I'm not even going to try. I'm just curious how this is percieved by ordinary pepople in your home region. I'm from Romania and generally people here see innate talent as a higher limit to performance, and practice is the way to reach it.

skohan 5y ago
I don't know if it's general consensus in the states, but this is my mental model as well.
contravariant 5y ago
Interesting, personally I view talent as being more about the effectiveness of practice than a specific higher limit. Though if the effectiveness of practice is low then that obviously places some practical limits on the maximum amount of 'mastery'.

j7ake 5y ago

“Second, the deliberate practice research makes an awfully attractive claim: that anyone, given enough determination, can become good at any skill. They merely have to do lots and lots of difficult deliberate practice.“ I am not sure if people on deliberate practice agree on precisely that claim, but perhaps they would agree on “Anyone can become better at any skill, given that one does deliberate practice”. Whether deliberate practice can make you good relative to other people is a separate question that is beyond the scope of deliberate practice. There, one factors in people with different innate and qualities and practice habits all competing with each other. The ones who are at the very top will likely have both innate qualities and good training regiments.

threatripper 5y ago
The thing is that self-limiting thoughts and doubt don't help you. Are you good enough? Do you have what it takes? Is this minor failure a sign that you should give up? Will you ever get there? How do you know if you could even get there? I would rephrase it: If you want to be good you need a lot of practice. The way to mastery is paved with failures. You need to invest a lot of time and energy before you can even begin to evaluate. Don't waste time on too early self-evaluation. Don't waste energy with useless doubt. Your body and brain are very adaptable much beyond what you normally experience. In the end it's a balance of doing the things right and doing the right things.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing 25 years. I would suggest reading this in addition to the submitted article, if you're interested in better understanding the "Problems with Deliberate Practice": https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02396/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.0239... Edit: The author has this to say: "Is deliberate practice good enough to work? My opinion — one that’s informed by painful experience attempting to implement the results of Ericsson’s research — is that, yes, deliberate practice does work, but it’s really difficult to turn the principles into a practice program if you are in a field where no ‘highly-developed, broadly accepted training methods’ exist." Edit2: I was too harsh, edited to tone down the language!

skmurphy 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this it's a very helpful summary on deliberate practice.
throwawayatwork 5y ago
Incidentally, Ericsson's 2019 paper cites a Hacker News comment. We've come full circle. '10,000 h' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of genius. It’s not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things if they want to, by practicing enough Hacker news, (2017). Hacker News Post by "Paulpauper". Available at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855422 (accesseed March 4, 2019).
shadowsun7 5y ago
I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post. In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Well, has there been a few decades of pedagogical development in your field so that you can be coached like with chess or math or tennis? NO? Ok, you're tough out of luck. No DP for you! So the real question is: if you are working in marketing or management or leadership or computer programming, all of which are domains that matter to our careers, these domains do not have good pedagogical development — so how do you get good? The answer to this, at least from one branch of expertise research, is to extract mental models of expertise from the heads of domain experts, and then turn those into training programs. This is a far more tractable training approach. See: https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ for a summary (note: Paul Feltovich is one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson; he's one of the authors of the book). For a full survey of the approach, see the Oxford Handbook of Expertise https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198795872.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198795872 https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019... (as opposed to the Cambridge Handbook, which is the Ericsson school.)

skohan 5y ago

I think there's obviously a confluence of nature and nurture which is going to lead to the final outcome in terms of skill attainment. I think the extent to which genetics varies probably varies a lot depending on the domain. For instance, something like long-distance running depends a lot on physics and biology: how efficient you can be at moving your body through space depends a lot on how tall you are, how long your limbs are, and things like the width of your pelvis. You will still need a lot of practice to reach your full potential, but what level you reach, and how fast you reach it will be heavily influenced by genetic factors. However, that being said, practice is still absolutely magic. In the spirit of the 80/20 rule, it's amazing how much a little bit of deliberate practice can improve an untrained skill. Especially when developing a skill from absolute zero, a few weeks of deliberate practice can often take me from the realm of absolute failure, to the point where I can actually enjoy practicing it. I've also sometimes reflected on the fact that skill attainment through practice seems more difficult as one gets older. I think this is almost certainly true to some extent, as neuroplasticity is real, and for instance a 40 year old will never have as easy a time learning a language as a 5 year old. However I think it's also a bit overstated. When you are a kid, every thing you are learning is relatively new, so when practicing a new skill you have a more uniform point of comparison in terms of how fast you learn things. As an adult, you have certain skills you might have been practicing daily for 20 years and have completely mastered. So when you sit down and manage to play Für Elise for the first time at a piano it seems absolutely rudimentary in comparison, even if you are making real progress, which can be demoralizing. There's also the factor that adults tend to be more subconscious about failing in public. We've spent years learning how to avoid situations where we look bad, or can't do what we set out to do, unlike kids who aren't expected to be able to do much. It's an approach which is really self-defeating if your goal is to actually learn something new.

sireat 5y ago
Age factor is absolutely real in well studied skills such as chess. There are no instances of people starting to play chess after say age 25 and becoming a grandmaster say after 20 years at 45. Plenty of people who start at 10 or earlier and become grandmasters before 25. Lack of deliberate practice is surely not the only explanation. Starting at age 15 is already considered very late for chess. (Anecdata: I started at 10 and peaked at FM coming close to IM norm once) Internet is awash with late bloomer examples in various fields (such as writing). However when you look closer you see that the persons in question had serious related practice at an earlier age.. I am yet to find an example of someone taking up a completely new skill after 40 and achieving notable greatness. Like champion of your city at tennis or master in chess, etc. So my formula is skill = STARTING_AGE X coef1 + GENETICS X coef2+ DP X coef3 Only questions is what values to give coef1, coef2 and coef3

rsync 5y ago

One word: play. I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. Similarly, I have mediocre results when my schedule only allows BJJ classes but markedly better results when I can just go “play” Jiu jitsu with others. Just go get reps doing something you love, in an experimental and playful manner.

borroka 5y ago
The standard BJJ classes (warm-up, technique of the day, sparring) are pedagogical black holes (BB here), anything else decent enough is better.
- Pamar 5y ago
  Can you provide some suggestions on improving (or just pointing out what makes these pedagogical black holes)? I am a MA practitioner myself (Aikido, 32 years and counting) and while I am always interested in the pedagogical aspect even if I rarely held a lesson myself. (And yes, I know that BJJ is very different from Aikido, but at the end of the day, I see lots of other arts - including Karate, Judo... Aikido etc. - being taught as warm-up/a handful of techniques from the curriculum/sparring...).
  - elbows 5y ago
    A lot of martial arts training is focused on practicing techniques in isolation and developing "perfect" form (punches/kicks in the air, doing the same throw repeatedly against a cooperative partner). The problem is that any technique you want to apply against an opponent in a competition (or self-defense situation) also has a significant tactical/decision-making component, which is not really trained by that approach. You have to learn when to do a technique, how to set it up, and how to adapt the movement to your specific opponent. You can learn the tactical skills in sparring but it's difficult because there's so much going on. So when you try to jump from isolated technique practice to sparring, there's a disconnect because you haven't built the tactical skills. Even worse, the movement you practiced in isolation may be different from what works in sparring, so all that isolated practice can actually be counterproductive. You can see this pretty clearly in combat sports like kendo and fencing which have a strong component of tradition -- the movements of high-level competitors tend to be very different from the "correct" form taught in class. I'm not sure how much this would apply to aikido, which as I understand it is not particularly focused on competitive or self-defense applications. If you're interested in pedagogy for martial arts (or sports in general), I highly recommend "Development of Technique and Tactical Skill" by Luis Preto and Spyridon Katisgiannis. "Principles-Based Instruction for Self Defense" by Rory Miller is also pretty good, if a bit rambling.

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shadowsun7 5y ago

If you want alternatives to DP that work much better, it might be worth it to take a look at: 1. The Tacit Knowledge Series (which argues that methods from Naturalistic Decision Making are more useful when you are in a skill domain with no good pedagogical development) https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ 2. Accelerated Expertise — which covers methods from the military to accelerate expertise acquisition (and, yes, some of it uses DP principles, but it isn't really DP) https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/

skohan 5y ago
Not to bring politics into a HN discussion, but based on their recent outcome in Afghanistan, I'm not sure if the US military is an organization I would currently turn to for insight.
- shadowsun7 5y ago
  Most of these techniques are co-developed in industry applications, and are seeping out from military research into business. In tech, John Allspaw has done a huge amount to take these training methods and skill-extraction techniques and adopted/applied it to resilience engineering. (https://twitter.com/allspaw https://twitter.com/allspaw and https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/ https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/) Not paying attention to research with military provenance seems rather silly. What matters more are the questions: does this work? Where has it been tried? And can I apply it to my company or career?
- necovek 5y ago
  Military itself should seldom be judged by the decisions of the government. The entire mission in Afghanistan has long stopped being military oriented, and military was present to preserve some semblance of US control. One could argue that there is sufficient proof now that US application of military in attempting to "democratize" nations has so far failed, but that should not come as a surprise since military is, by definition, not "democratic". Democracies deploy military exclusively to preserve peace (by discouraging invasion, for instance). This is still not a slight against US military, but against US foreign policy instead. Whether that makes it a net win in other (economic, geopolitical) measures for USA is another matter altogether. As such, I do not think you should discount US military as a top-notch organization with a lot of know-how in building up expertise.

endymi0n 5y ago

> Can you become a brilliant theoretical physicist with an average IQ (95-105)? > [...] > I have an IQ below 105. > I also graduated with a degree in Mathematics and received Highest Honours. > [...] > And the answer is ‘No'! https://www.quora.com/Can-you-become-a-brilliant-theoretical-physicist-with-an-average-IQ-95-105?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Can-you-become-a-brilliant-theoretical...

zhdc1 5y ago

I think that a second part of the issue comes from achieving mastery in creative fields, where there are no clear evaluative goal posts for what success looks like. Talent certainly differentiates the top levels competitive environments when everything else is held equal. However, in these environments, I can see where deliberate practice can move someone who is less talented into the top nth percent of performers. They may not be among the best, buy they're close enough that someone who is untrained or less disciplined doesn't stand a chance against them. Given that the distribution of material rewards generally doesn't follow a winner takes all model, like what you see with sports, deliberate practice can should eventually create significant competitive and material advantages. What happens, though, in creative fields such as writing, where engaging in deliberate practice doesn't necessarily improve your craft or your end product? A part of me questions whether the deliberate practice that many prospective writers, such as MFA students, do on a daily basis really helps them write a best seller - or even a quality literary work. The same could also apply to tech startups. Would it be a good idea for early-stage entrepreneurs to do daily coding challenges? Or, over a long period of time, would they be better off trying to consistently create something that they then test on the market?

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HPsquared 5y ago

I always had an inkling that the "talent is overrated" argument (that a certain amount deliberate practice is sufficient to achieve mastery) is something of a tautology: only those talented individuals, who are capable of such a rigorous training routine, will achieve mastery.

teorema 5y ago
On the other hand, critics of natural talent explanations often point out that too is tautological: someone is talented if they're successful and vice versa. Clearly there aren't proteins for violin bow control, so something happens in between.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Talent doesn't have to be "natural", just uncontrolled factors. Something that is "in the person" at the time of training. This could have come from past experiences, genetic, even things like diet, who knows. The point is, it's still not understood and not controllable.

closed 5y ago

> What I’m willing to bet, however, is that you’ve heard of deliberate practice in the context of Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘10,000 hour rule’ — the mistaken notion that 10,000 hours of practice would turn anyone, at any age, for any skill, into a master practitioner. Ericsson spent a lot of time and page space trying to distance himself from this "rule", but it's clear from his writing that he introduced it. See his 2007 HBR article (which lists it as a necessary condition): > By now it will be clear that it takes time to become an expert. Our research shows that even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training before they win international competitions. It's a confusing enough situation that Macnamara et al review the many places he discusses 10k hours (or 10 years) in their book chapter The Deliberate Practice View.

stonemetal12 5y ago
Note he says "a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours)" That is it might be 20K, 30K or more hours of practice. So 10k hours is more like the starting line, not the finish line that Gladwell proclaims.

bo1024 5y ago

I see people talking past each other here and I suspect it has to do with the level of achievement one is picturing. Many smart (and talented) people work really hard at chess with good methods for many years and don’t become grandmasters. Talent must play a role. On the other hand, probably anyone can become much, much better than the average person on the street. So people saying talent matters, and people saying deliberate practice alone can ensure success, can both be correct for slightly different measures of success. As the article says, the very top levels of any prestigious competitive field have people with both talent and good training methods. Talent can separate people at the very top. That doesn’t mean that becoming very good is out of reach for less talented people.

baron_harkonnen 5y ago

> That anyone, given enough determination, can become good at any skill. That "given enough determination" part is glossed over a bit too easily. Plus, even if it's just an approximation, people radically underestimate how much 10k hours of practice is. I've learned a wide range of skills throughout my life so far, to various levels of proficiency. One or two things I've been able to achieve what I feel most others would considers an expert level, and have learned a very large number of things ranging from beginner to intermediate. Anecdotally the confirmation I've found about 10,000 hours is that my area of expertise is something that for years I thought I was naturally bad at. But I got tremendously interested in it, and began studying and practice literally every day for years, and to this day continue to practice and study this area. As far as beginner/intermediate skills, two typically talent based things I've been able to teach myself are life drawing and juggling. I have awful hand eye coordination, and still learned enough juggling to impress people at parties when the occasion comes up. My hand writing is illegible, I also have awful fine motor skills and I've still been able to create surprisingly realistic sketches. Of course I'll never be an expert at these things because I'm just not interested enough in them to get anywhere near the 10,000 hour mark. Four ball juggling will likely remain my threshold indefinitely. The number of things I've gained proficiency in that I had a prior belief and initial experience that they were impossible for me to do is just to high for me to throw out the wisdom of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice might be hard to define, but at the very least it means "practice that is not easy". In order to do something every day with a reasonably high frustration/failure rate means that you have to have an incredible drive to continue. Most people I've known simply can't endure finishing a day of work to go sit down and struggle with something for 1/2 hour a day. If you want 10k hours you have to do this without cessation, and no end in sight. In my experience no amount of will power can force this to happen either. You can force yourself past the beginner and into the intermediate stage, but expertise can only come from an insatiable drive. It's also important to realize that expert and world famous are not the same thing. There are many true experts in guitar who are unknown, 10k hours doesn't get you to being John Frusciante.

kingdomcome50 5y ago
I agree that 10k hours is often severely underestimated. Maybe if we all collectively phrased it as "2 hours a day for 14 years" the pedagogy surrounding the above might take a different tone.

thejackgoode 5y ago

I'd like to share a view on this that I found for myself, I am curious if anyone finds it interesting. For years I thought of talent as an effort multiplier. "Intelligence is speed" etc. I recently remapped it in my head slightly and migrated to a definition that talent is a degree of competence and productivity which you can achieve in a given field "effortlessly". Let's say you are a top 5% software engineer off high school, because of your specific circumstances of nature and nurture. You will still need hard deliberate work, introspection and patience in overcoming plateaus if you want to climb the remaining 5% and become better or the best. So, some people have a head start, some have a very big one, but true improvement in a field is only possible through deep work, and if you can organise yourself to do it, that's a meta-skill for 21st century.

smorgusofborg 5y ago
That reminds me a lot of the story of the manager explaining the best engineers superiority in terms of dividends on a higher percentage of time dedicated to work.. I don't really buy into this theory since in my observation a lot of people get sidetracked and get their dividends on skills that cease to have meaning or otherwise miss the important pieces. I.e. they become convinced of a particular paradigm and use it as the wrong hammer on many nails. In authors they become obsessed with what amounts to retelling the same story to the bored audience. Also, people seem to ignore the net zero nature of being the best or even a pro. If you choose some paths every other amateur ends up as a pro by the standards of when you started, with others you spend years training alone only to suddenly be very relevant due to some shift.

nurbl 5y ago

The article seems to mix up "expert" with "world class" a bit. I do think that becoming one of the best in the world in any popular field probably requires suitable genes. But, to me, "expert" is more like someone who's usually the best person in the room at something. Quite different goals.

fuzzfactor 5y ago
10,000 hours is enough for someone having extraordinary talent to be able to realize a small portion of that and have it come out completely astonishing. It's also enough for a mediocre performer to reach a plateau early then end up becoming somewhat of an authority without anything astonishing, and with no talent to spare. It takes a lot of perseverance either way which can truly blur the lines but these are two opposite ends of the spectrum.

mikkergp 5y ago

How do you measure this? You can't take a group of 100 people and randomly assign half to 10,000 hours of deliberate practices. I always felt like this conversation had different connotations at different levels. Not everyone can be Simone Biles, but we can all probably learn to do a backflip. Or more to the point, I think the average person thinks they could never be good enough to impress their friends, and this is probably wrong. With much less than 10,000 hours of deliberate practice you can probably impress people. Write music that satisfies your own soul. You won't be Mozart, but how many of us in the modern world want to be Mozart?