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The Deliberate Practice Guide (2021)

280 points by rzk 3y ago

lordofuniverse 3y ago
I didn't go through the article completely, but I know it's seriously underrated. One of the things the article probably didn't mention is it's ability to reduce stress. Quite often I've noticed that i get stressed as I make no progress on my goals. With deliberate practice / deep work, i see myself making progress on a daily basis. Slowly, but definitely.
- ehnto 3y ago
  There is reassurance in knowing you did what you could in a day, especially when you give yourself boundries to make sure it's sustainable. Such boundries should make sure you have space to do the work, but also that you are happy and not wearing yourself down, have good balance on other things in life. Long term goals take time, burning yourself out is pretty rapid.
scastiel 3y ago
I just read the first paragraphs, and added it to my reading list! I heard about deliberate practice for the first time in Cal Newport’s “Deep Work”. I’m a developer and coding is a perfect discipline where deliberate practice can apply.
- nuclearnice1 3y ago
  I agree coding is a great discipline for both deep work and deliberate practice. I would draw a distinction between the two. Deep work is about achieving the focus and attention to do serious work. Deliberate practice is about the motivation and effort to focus on improving your skill set. You probably know this from Cal Newport’s excellent book, but for others. Two great but distinct mental tools to add to your kit.
  - OldManRyan 3y ago
    Feedback is a requirement for deliberate practice and I have a damn hard time finding a place to get good coding feedback.
    - nuclearnice1 3y ago
      Great point. Code review gives some commentary on result, but process wise it’s a solitary activity. Perhaps this was some of the benefit of the mostly abandoned practice of pair programming?
  - scastiel 3y ago
    Agree, deep work !== deliberate practice, but it turns out they play very well together :)
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
It's so strange that there's this whole realm of technical terms and scientism for what amounts to something so simple: In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that thing. >Ah, yes, but Deliberate Practice aims to scientifically deconstruct each skill into some identifiable set of particular components Yeah, whatever. Most knowledge is tacit, but go ahead and try to impose reductionism onto everything. If all you have is a hammer... >Do you have a citation for most knowledge being tacit? Nope, I'm just a skilled fool. Probably learned my skill in the most inefficient way possible - by just diving in and doing it. Go ahead and keep appealing to Dr. Doctorson. Amongst all his academizing, I'm sure he's formulated the most scientifically sound way to acquire a skill. Trust the science.
- konschubert 3y ago
  I think you’re missing the point. The point is that you can get much more out of every hour of practice if that practice is deliberate. If you’re paying attention to what you are doing and you are checking yourself.
- kmac_ 3y ago
  Let's make this simpler: if you want to become an athlete, you need a training plan.
- Lewton 3y ago
  > In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that thing. Doing the thing is not enough to get good at it I’ve played guitar for 25 years and I’m shit at it, because I thought “just doing the thing” was enough
  - selykg 3y ago
    Likewise. Had I taken it seriously at 16 when I started I'd be a significantly better guitarist. Instead of noodling actually practicing important concepts in a fundamental way that matters to improving. Music theory like keys and chord progressions, triads, scales (to some extent), timing and rhythm, etc. You can certainly "practice" this stuff, but if you sit down, even for 10 minutes with a real deliberate intention it'll matter way more than noodling. Present me is kicking myself for being stupid when I was younger.
greyman 3y ago
I was always intrigued about this concept, but when I wanted to try it in some specific area, let's say programming in specific language, or writing blog posts, I couldn't find more specific info how exactly would the training performed. Is there some template, which I can use to design deliberate practice training for X?
kingkongjaffa 3y ago
This article mostly rehashes what others have said about deliberate practice spending 80% on describing what it is and not how to do it. The final 20% is just do spaced repetition and something about 10,000 hours by Gladwell. There doesn’t seem to be anything of value here that hasn’t already been said. I was waiting for the “how” the whole time. So, dear reader, how do you do deliberate practice?
- greyman 3y ago
  Yes, exactly. How to design such training for some specific area, that's still an uncovered topic.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Or just some guides for some topics, even a few examples of how deliberate practice for X might look like is already much better information to start your own practice than these aloof principles. It's great to know the principles if you're also aware on how to apply them, if there's no path to application it becomes mostly noise...
    - galleywest200 3y ago
      This is why "self help" books are so rarely helpful. They often lack concrete, actionable steps that you can take and simply provide faux-epiphanies. I do not doubt this author's words, but they did not provide much "concreteness" here.
- thatoneguytoo 3y ago
  Sorry for kinda hijacking this, but it is the main reason I am building trydeepwork.com, to actually put deep work or deliberate practice into actual "practice".
  - criddell 3y ago
    Do you think of deep work (as described by Cal Newport) and deliberate practice as being similar or connected? I could see deliberate practice being deep work, but deep work doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with deliberate practice.
daviddaviddavid 3y ago
I think the key here is that you only deliberately practice things that you really, really want. Things that you want so bad that you obsess over them and you wake up realizing you've been dreaming about them. I quit a comfortable software job to take about 9 months off to devote to piano recently. Every free moment I get, I'm throwing myself in the waters. It's really hard to push through the painful points of learning stuff if you're not obsessed.
- pyrale 3y ago
  I deliberately practice a lot of things that I'm not obsessed with, it's really useful when I'm overwhelmed with a new field (e.g. learning a new framework), to isolate a small bit I want to master and try several different ways of doing it, and document my findings. That allows me to not see what I'm trying to learn as an obstacle to what I'm trying to achieve. It removes a lot of frustration, since that shifts my view of the task from being an obstacle to being the goal itself. I'm not sure I would say that I focus on deliberately practicing the same few skills as often as the author of the article does, though. Usually, even for the few skills that I have deliberately practiced for a long time, my focus has been on exploring variations or adaptation to new context. That is because I aim for adaptability rather than having muscle memory of a skill.
- danvayn 3y ago
  I think the real key to top performance is to learn to get over the aches of practicing and training yourself to get engrossed in a range of subjects. Piano is good practice but I usually recommend something more dopamine efficient.
awb 3y ago
For those interested in an alternative view, check out Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein > Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. https://davidepstein.com/the-range/ https://davidepstein.com/the-range/
- weakfish 3y ago
  It could just be me self-soothing, but as a verified ADHDer who switches hobbies like I switch clothes, this book helped me feel less… bad? I guess? About my lack of specialization. But it’s fun that I have enough knowledge on lots of subjects to speak competently on them. The ones that surprise folks the most are usually photography and audio engineering/production, which I dabbled in for a long time.
- mahathu 3y ago
  >But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. As another commenter has pointed out, this is a more comforting and maybe also more realistic stance when it comes to professional/scientific achievement. Unfortunately, however, early specialisation is definitely the rule nowadays in professional football ("soccer"). I'm assuming it's the same for Basketball/Football/Baseball/... in the US and elsewhere. Pretty much every player who's playing in the top leagues now grew up in an academy, where their education and social lives revolved around their football practice routine, not the other way around. That is not only the top leagues like Premier League or La Liga, but also the leagues that come below it. Players like Brinkmann, Scholl, Bernd Schneider, ... are celebrated as the exception to the rule. I used to "play" in the fifth league in Germany (Oberliga BaWü) for 2 seasons (barely got any time on the pitch) and even there, almost every player was in some sort of specialised training since they were 5 or 6, either in the youth programmes of local clubs or private academies their parents paid a lot of money for. Everyone is dreaming of playing in the Bundesliga and the academy owners know that. Players coming from a different sport later in their childhood were the exception.
agentultra 3y ago
For deliberately practising programming problems, I keep a spreadsheet and a journal. The spreadsheet tracks the problem, the difficulty level, the time it took me to solve it, the algorithm I used to solve it, and notes. I use the journal to dive in deep by explaining my solutions to someone who has never encountered the problem before. I'll often re-test on problems I've solved before and see if I can get a better time, use a different algorithm, or something else. I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on the card and the algorithm to solve it on the back. This is to train me to read through lengthy, puffy, problem descriptions and get straight to the point. ... but I usually only do this when I'm preparing for interviews or feel like I need to sharpen up. Deliberate practice is one of those things where you can turn up the heat for a while but you'll need to take a break at some point and let it sink in to your subconscious.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
  > I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on the card and the algorithm to solve it on the back. Have you used space repetition software (SRS) before? You’re 90%+ there already. You build up a deck of cards with a “memory prompt” on the front and the “memory” on the back. The software tests you on the deck and passes your results through an SRS algorithm that estimates your “forgetting curve” that predicts when you’ll forget a memory. Then, right before you forget, it’ll reprompt you to refresh the memory. I use Anki off-and-on and love it.
  - agentultra 3y ago
    Yes, I use Anki for these for sure. It's great!
adamgordonbell 3y ago
Cedric Chin changed my mind on deliberate practice. Or maybe he pointed out the obvious to anyone who has tried to apply it to a mushy domain. DP is premised upon having a teacher and pedological method that you can hit hard. Otherwise, you have to do something not quite DP. But that's ok, because in a mushy domain just acquiring the tacit knowledge that the experts have will put your far ahead ( because the pedological method and real coaches don't exist yet). But yeah, it's not deliberate practice and reading books on deliberate practice might not help you much. https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/ https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/ Here is my random programming take on it: https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/ https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/
- aliasxneo 3y ago
  Anders Ericsson, in his book Peak, states that having a coach is not optional. It's a core piece of the puzzle and people will plateau fairly quickly without one. It's a very interesting problem for software engineering since it's not typically an area I see a lot of coaching in.
  - inadequatespace 3y ago
    PhD training teaches people how to not plateau, as (1) it teaches one how to focus on the unknowns (in that context, in the entire field, so one can dig into them; more easily applicable to one’s own knowledge) and (2) teaches one how to learn without professors / classes, which mostly consists of evaluating the quality of textbooks and/ or research papers in a field, and also how to skim at just the right level so as to learn what one needs to know.
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    That depends on the domain. For technical skills where rapid feedback is required during performance, coaching is critical and even reviewing video of yourself immediately after the fact is much worse. For non-technical things where skill involves knowing the correct combination of simpler actions to take to achieve a complex objective, coaching is helpful but not required. Nobody is going to succeed at gymnastics without a coach, but you can totally reach a high level in a game like chess just by reviewing your games afterwards, reading theory and studying the games of past masters.
raincole 3y ago
You can tell this is a self-help article without substance or actionable guidance from the title alone. (I read it and yes, the "title gut feeling" is spot on)
phazy 3y ago
At least for me, another element of deliberate practice holds true: Deliberate practice scales nonlinearily with time and effort.
Mimmy 3y ago
Having had a few years of intensive, classical-trained piano lessons at a young age, the notion of "deliberate practice" has also just meant "practice" to me: break down what you're learning into its separate parts, figure out which part you're weakest at, try to further isolate that specific thing into its own exercise, then do it slowly, gradually increase the pace, gradually re-incorporate the aspects you removed, play that part with the preceding music, play that part with the postceding music, play it without the sheet music, etc. Each step should feel uncomfortable at first, and once you get comfortable with it you move on to the next step until you can play it perfectly without any thought. Kahneman has already touched on this, but obviously not all skills are predisposed to this type of practice. IIRC, this method of learning is useful for skills with shorter feedback loops (e.g. music, dance, gymnastics, some aspects of sports, etc.) and neutral to practically useless for skills with longer feedback loops or that can't be clearly broken down into its constituent parts (e.g. investing, science, entrepreneurship & innovation, etc.) I wish all skills could be learned this way—it's the method of learning I'm most comfortable with. But of course, life is not always so easy.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  IMO, those things you listed where deliberate practice doesn't work aren't technical, nor really "skills" so much as acquired "wisdom"
garyfirestorm 3y ago
Why do people reference the ‘10,000 hour’? It instantly reduces your credibility because that number was made up.
- Sakos 3y ago
  > Why do people reference the ‘10,000 hour’? It instantly reduces your credibility because that number was made up. It's just short-hand so we're on the same page and we all know that we're talking about the same thing. Shared knowledge is an important place to start from in order to communicate. As for the exact number? Who cares? The number itself is irrelevant. Whatever the number is or what it might actually be (as if there could ever be one single number for it), it doesn't invalidate the ideas that it's associated with. This tired criticism is tired. The article even addresses the number directly: > Although the backlash against Gladwell’s calculation has arguably been exaggerated, it’s important to stress that research into deliberate practice emphasizes quality of practice, not quantity. It’s all too possible to spend 10,000 hours engaging in a skill without serious improvements. For example, most of us spend hours per day typing, yet we don’t see continuous improvements in speed and quality because we’re not using deliberate practice. > The useful takeaway from the “10,000 hours rule” is simply that it takes a lot of work to become the best. There’s no magic number of practice sessions, and everyone’s path will look different. Just because successful people in a given field have spent around 10,000 hours practicing their key skill, that doesn’t mean every person who practices that skill for 10,000 hours will become successful. But you probably didn't even read it before coming here to complain, did you?
  - garyfirestorm 3y ago
    You’re right! I didn’t read it in entirety.
butterNaN 3y ago
I don't know where I got this from, but in my old notebook I found the following notes I made for myself. To be an expert, you need 4 things: 1. A suitable environment 2. Lots of iterations (which is what I think the parent post is about, but it isn't the 100% story) 3. Timely feedback 4. Always being just at the edge of your comfort zone, "the goldilocks zone" of comfort
julianh65 3y ago
I wonder how one would apply this to programming, I'd like to continuously improve my programming but not sure how to apply the ideas from this to it. I could see it being a thing for something very measurable like competitive programming, yet if I wanted to deliberately practice different aspects of software engineering is there anything specific to do besides building larger and more ambitious projects? Perhaps purposefully creating small toy projects with "harder" aspects like concurrency, graphics, compilers etc... would help?
tasuki 3y ago
> Deliberate practice is what turns amateurs into professionals. No, charging money is what turns amateurs into professionals. Amateurs do a thing because they love it, professionals do it to get paid. In my experience, amateurs are often more capable than professionals.
throwaway918243 3y ago
You want a all-knowing, well, relatively all-knowing, body, the master, to design what to be practiced. It is sometimes in direct conflict with another management fad - let people do their stuff. It is not specifically related to DP, but training in general. Just wanted to point it out
louissan 3y ago
Reminds me (somewhat?) of the principles by Ray Dalio. "If we want to improve a skill, we need to know what exactly has to change and what might get us there."
nazgulnarsil 3y ago
A lot of frustration around the vagueness of online guides to DP. Here are the chapter headings from the Practiceopedia, an out of print guide to using deliberate practice principles in music training, with much broader applicability for most of them. This should give some idea of the detailed resolution you're looking for with DP. Chapter guide Beginners: curing your addiction to the start of your peace Blinkers: shutting out the things you shouldn't be working on Boot camp: where you need to send passages that won't behave Breakthroughs diary: keeping track of your progress Bridging: smoothing the bumps between sections Bug spotting: because you can't fix what you don't know about Campaigns: connecting your daily practice to the big picture Cementing: locking in the version you want to keep Chaining: getting to full speed one segment at a time Clearing obstacles: finding what causes tricky bits to be tricky Clock Watchers: curing the unhealthy obsession with time Closure: knowing when you can safely stop practicing something Color coding: a whole new dimension to marking your score Coral reef mistakes: detecting invisible trouble spots Cosmetics: minimizing the impact of weak capacities on concert day Countdown charts: factoring your deadlines into your practice Designer scales: choosing technical work to support your pieces Details trawl: ensuring you know what's really in the score Dress rehearsals: setting up your own concert simulator Engaging autopilot: the dangers of practicing without thinking Exaggerating: overstating key ideas to embed them Excuses and ruses: why you'll never really fool your teacher if you haven't practiced Experimenting: testing different interpretation options Fire drills: training to cope gracefully with onstage mistakes Fitness training: behind the scenes practice to help all your pieces Fresh photocopies: creating your own custom scores tailored for practicing Horizontal versus vertical: knowing when to change your practice Direction Isolating: stopping problems from interfering with each other Lesson agenda: setting aside issues to raise at your next lesson Lesson pre-flight check: finding out if you're on track for next lesson Lesson review: ensuring last lesson is fresh in your mind while you work Level system: the astonishing power of Tiny Steps Marathon week: pushing yourself to find out what's really possible Metronome method: sneaking up on full tempo Not wanting to practice: how to manage the biggest practice crisis of all One Way doors: eliminating the need for constant revision Openings and endings: VIP attention for the most important parts of any performance Painting the scene: giving your performances a cinematic Edge Practice Buddies: using the power of competition and cooperation Practice traps: bad habits that waste your time and wreck your playing Pressure testing: ensuring you can produce your best playing when it counts most Randomizing: the ultimate way to end the practice ho hums Prototypes: building a model of the ideal performance Recording yourself: finding out and responding to what you really sound like Recordings: using existing performances to supercharge your preparation Reflecting: why the best practice sometimes makes no sound at all Restoration: relearning old pieces without regressing Rogue cells: when the smallest unit of practice goes bad Scouting: getting to know your new piece before you start practicing it Session agenda: creating and working with daily practice to do lists Shooting the movies: a smarter way to work out what's next Speeding: the hidden damage caused by practicing too fast Stalling: what to do when a piece gets stuck Thematic practice: a powerful alternative to practicing in sections Tightening: making the leap from good enough to excellent Triage: when there's too much to do and not enough time to do it Triggers: setting up cues that get you practicing in the first place Turn around time: mastering new pieces in weeks instead of months Varying your diet: freeing yourself from dull repetitive practice Visualizing: the most important practice you'll ever do Your practice sweet spot: setting up the ultimate practice space
isaacfrond 3y ago
I’m sorry to be a spoilsport, but is there any evidence that deliberate practice rather than ordinary practice is any good? I happily believe that one can easily convince how good you are doing—really killing that practicing—-but how do I know it is any better than dumb practise. It all sounds like a cargo cult to me. What is really happening is that some people have talent, but rather than accepting that genetic reality we are telling ourselves this fairy tale that they must do something different. I just saw the schwarzenegger documentary on netflix. n-time world champion in body building. Do you want to know his secret? 3 sets per day, of 7 hours total, for years on end. Nothing deliberate about it.
MichaelRo 3y ago
It's great to apply "deliberate practice" "10,000 hours" and what else into domains that are strongly stable across time like mathematics, music, some foreign NATURAL language. You get to use the skill in which you invested so much of your time. It sucks to apply even the least of effort into vaporware fashions like programming languages, tools and techniques. You don't even get to complete half of the 10,000 hours of effort to acquire the skill that the whole thing is already antiquated and thrown into the garbage can of history. You wasted a vast amount of time for next to nothing.
- hughcrt 3y ago
  I feel you. That's why I try to limit my learnings as much as possible to "foundational" subjects. You can't go wrong by learning SQL in depth for example.
simonw 3y ago
Decided to use this to try out the new gpt-3.5-turbo-16k model: curl -s 'https://fs.blog/deliberate-practice-guide/' | \ strip-tags -m | \ llm --system 'Turn into a step by step guide' \ -m gpt-3.5-turbo-16k Here's the result: https://gist.github.com/simonw/d065b356c59eb76ab7c2166bef0c2f65 https://gist.github.com/simonw/d065b356c59eb76ab7c2166bef0c2... More on the tools I used here: - https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/larger-context-openai-models-llm https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/larger-context-openai-mod... - https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/
- mark_l_watson 3y ago
  That is cool Simon! I have had a TODO, for a while, to try your command line tools.
archwiki 3y ago
s/pedological/pedagogical/g

280 points by rzk 3y ago

I didn't go through the article completely, but I know it's seriously underrated. One of the things the article probably didn't mention is it's ability to reduce stress. Quite often I've noticed that i get stressed as I make no progress on my goals. With deliberate practice / deep work, i see myself making progress on a daily basis. Slowly, but definitely.

ehnto 3y ago
There is reassurance in knowing you did what you could in a day, especially when you give yourself boundries to make sure it's sustainable. Such boundries should make sure you have space to do the work, but also that you are happy and not wearing yourself down, have good balance on other things in life. Long term goals take time, burning yourself out is pretty rapid.

scastiel 3y ago

I just read the first paragraphs, and added it to my reading list! I heard about deliberate practice for the first time in Cal Newport’s “Deep Work”. I’m a developer and coding is a perfect discipline where deliberate practice can apply.

nuclearnice1 3y ago
I agree coding is a great discipline for both deep work and deliberate practice. I would draw a distinction between the two. Deep work is about achieving the focus and attention to do serious work. Deliberate practice is about the motivation and effort to focus on improving your skill set. You probably know this from Cal Newport’s excellent book, but for others. Two great but distinct mental tools to add to your kit.
- OldManRyan 3y ago
  Feedback is a requirement for deliberate practice and I have a damn hard time finding a place to get good coding feedback.
  - nuclearnice1 3y ago
    Great point. Code review gives some commentary on result, but process wise it’s a solitary activity. Perhaps this was some of the benefit of the mostly abandoned practice of pair programming?
- scastiel 3y ago
  Agree, deep work !== deliberate practice, but it turns out they play very well together :)

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

It's so strange that there's this whole realm of technical terms and scientism for what amounts to something so simple: In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that thing. >Ah, yes, but Deliberate Practice aims to scientifically deconstruct each skill into some identifiable set of particular components Yeah, whatever. Most knowledge is tacit, but go ahead and try to impose reductionism onto everything. If all you have is a hammer... >Do you have a citation for most knowledge being tacit? Nope, I'm just a skilled fool. Probably learned my skill in the most inefficient way possible - by just diving in and doing it. Go ahead and keep appealing to Dr. Doctorson. Amongst all his academizing, I'm sure he's formulated the most scientifically sound way to acquire a skill. Trust the science.

konschubert 3y ago
I think you’re missing the point. The point is that you can get much more out of every hour of practice if that practice is deliberate. If you’re paying attention to what you are doing and you are checking yourself.
kmac_ 3y ago
Let's make this simpler: if you want to become an athlete, you need a training plan.
Lewton 3y ago
> In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that thing. Doing the thing is not enough to get good at it I’ve played guitar for 25 years and I’m shit at it, because I thought “just doing the thing” was enough
- selykg 3y ago
  Likewise. Had I taken it seriously at 16 when I started I'd be a significantly better guitarist. Instead of noodling actually practicing important concepts in a fundamental way that matters to improving. Music theory like keys and chord progressions, triads, scales (to some extent), timing and rhythm, etc. You can certainly "practice" this stuff, but if you sit down, even for 10 minutes with a real deliberate intention it'll matter way more than noodling. Present me is kicking myself for being stupid when I was younger.

greyman 3y ago

I was always intrigued about this concept, but when I wanted to try it in some specific area, let's say programming in specific language, or writing blog posts, I couldn't find more specific info how exactly would the training performed. Is there some template, which I can use to design deliberate practice training for X?

kingkongjaffa 3y ago

This article mostly rehashes what others have said about deliberate practice spending 80% on describing what it is and not how to do it. The final 20% is just do spaced repetition and something about 10,000 hours by Gladwell. There doesn’t seem to be anything of value here that hasn’t already been said. I was waiting for the “how” the whole time. So, dear reader, how do you do deliberate practice?

greyman 3y ago
Yes, exactly. How to design such training for some specific area, that's still an uncovered topic.
- piva00 3y ago
  Or just some guides for some topics, even a few examples of how deliberate practice for X might look like is already much better information to start your own practice than these aloof principles. It's great to know the principles if you're also aware on how to apply them, if there's no path to application it becomes mostly noise...
  - galleywest200 3y ago
    This is why "self help" books are so rarely helpful. They often lack concrete, actionable steps that you can take and simply provide faux-epiphanies. I do not doubt this author's words, but they did not provide much "concreteness" here.
thatoneguytoo 3y ago
Sorry for kinda hijacking this, but it is the main reason I am building trydeepwork.com, to actually put deep work or deliberate practice into actual "practice".
- criddell 3y ago
  Do you think of deep work (as described by Cal Newport) and deliberate practice as being similar or connected? I could see deliberate practice being deep work, but deep work doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with deliberate practice.

daviddaviddavid 3y ago

I think the key here is that you only deliberately practice things that you really, really want. Things that you want so bad that you obsess over them and you wake up realizing you've been dreaming about them. I quit a comfortable software job to take about 9 months off to devote to piano recently. Every free moment I get, I'm throwing myself in the waters. It's really hard to push through the painful points of learning stuff if you're not obsessed.

pyrale 3y ago
I deliberately practice a lot of things that I'm not obsessed with, it's really useful when I'm overwhelmed with a new field (e.g. learning a new framework), to isolate a small bit I want to master and try several different ways of doing it, and document my findings. That allows me to not see what I'm trying to learn as an obstacle to what I'm trying to achieve. It removes a lot of frustration, since that shifts my view of the task from being an obstacle to being the goal itself. I'm not sure I would say that I focus on deliberately practicing the same few skills as often as the author of the article does, though. Usually, even for the few skills that I have deliberately practiced for a long time, my focus has been on exploring variations or adaptation to new context. That is because I aim for adaptability rather than having muscle memory of a skill.
danvayn 3y ago
I think the real key to top performance is to learn to get over the aches of practicing and training yourself to get engrossed in a range of subjects. Piano is good practice but I usually recommend something more dopamine efficient.

awb 3y ago

For those interested in an alternative view, check out Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein > Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. https://davidepstein.com/the-range/ https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

weakfish 3y ago
It could just be me self-soothing, but as a verified ADHDer who switches hobbies like I switch clothes, this book helped me feel less… bad? I guess? About my lack of specialization. But it’s fun that I have enough knowledge on lots of subjects to speak competently on them. The ones that surprise folks the most are usually photography and audio engineering/production, which I dabbled in for a long time.
mahathu 3y ago
>But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. As another commenter has pointed out, this is a more comforting and maybe also more realistic stance when it comes to professional/scientific achievement. Unfortunately, however, early specialisation is definitely the rule nowadays in professional football ("soccer"). I'm assuming it's the same for Basketball/Football/Baseball/... in the US and elsewhere. Pretty much every player who's playing in the top leagues now grew up in an academy, where their education and social lives revolved around their football practice routine, not the other way around. That is not only the top leagues like Premier League or La Liga, but also the leagues that come below it. Players like Brinkmann, Scholl, Bernd Schneider, ... are celebrated as the exception to the rule. I used to "play" in the fifth league in Germany (Oberliga BaWü) for 2 seasons (barely got any time on the pitch) and even there, almost every player was in some sort of specialised training since they were 5 or 6, either in the youth programmes of local clubs or private academies their parents paid a lot of money for. Everyone is dreaming of playing in the Bundesliga and the academy owners know that. Players coming from a different sport later in their childhood were the exception.

agentultra 3y ago

For deliberately practising programming problems, I keep a spreadsheet and a journal. The spreadsheet tracks the problem, the difficulty level, the time it took me to solve it, the algorithm I used to solve it, and notes. I use the journal to dive in deep by explaining my solutions to someone who has never encountered the problem before. I'll often re-test on problems I've solved before and see if I can get a better time, use a different algorithm, or something else. I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on the card and the algorithm to solve it on the back. This is to train me to read through lengthy, puffy, problem descriptions and get straight to the point. ... but I usually only do this when I'm preparing for interviews or feel like I need to sharpen up. Deliberate practice is one of those things where you can turn up the heat for a while but you'll need to take a break at some point and let it sink in to your subconscious.

r3trohack3r 3y ago
> I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on the card and the algorithm to solve it on the back. Have you used space repetition software (SRS) before? You’re 90%+ there already. You build up a deck of cards with a “memory prompt” on the front and the “memory” on the back. The software tests you on the deck and passes your results through an SRS algorithm that estimates your “forgetting curve” that predicts when you’ll forget a memory. Then, right before you forget, it’ll reprompt you to refresh the memory. I use Anki off-and-on and love it.
- agentultra 3y ago
  Yes, I use Anki for these for sure. It's great!

adamgordonbell 3y ago

Cedric Chin changed my mind on deliberate practice. Or maybe he pointed out the obvious to anyone who has tried to apply it to a mushy domain. DP is premised upon having a teacher and pedological method that you can hit hard. Otherwise, you have to do something not quite DP. But that's ok, because in a mushy domain just acquiring the tacit knowledge that the experts have will put your far ahead ( because the pedological method and real coaches don't exist yet). But yeah, it's not deliberate practice and reading books on deliberate practice might not help you much. https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/ https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/ Here is my random programming take on it: https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/ https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/

aliasxneo 3y ago
Anders Ericsson, in his book Peak, states that having a coach is not optional. It's a core piece of the puzzle and people will plateau fairly quickly without one. It's a very interesting problem for software engineering since it's not typically an area I see a lot of coaching in.
- inadequatespace 3y ago
  PhD training teaches people how to not plateau, as (1) it teaches one how to focus on the unknowns (in that context, in the entire field, so one can dig into them; more easily applicable to one’s own knowledge) and (2) teaches one how to learn without professors / classes, which mostly consists of evaluating the quality of textbooks and/ or research papers in a field, and also how to skim at just the right level so as to learn what one needs to know.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  That depends on the domain. For technical skills where rapid feedback is required during performance, coaching is critical and even reviewing video of yourself immediately after the fact is much worse. For non-technical things where skill involves knowing the correct combination of simpler actions to take to achieve a complex objective, coaching is helpful but not required. Nobody is going to succeed at gymnastics without a coach, but you can totally reach a high level in a game like chess just by reviewing your games afterwards, reading theory and studying the games of past masters.

raincole 3y ago

You can tell this is a self-help article without substance or actionable guidance from the title alone. (I read it and yes, the "title gut feeling" is spot on)

phazy 3y ago

At least for me, another element of deliberate practice holds true: Deliberate practice scales nonlinearily with time and effort.

Mimmy 3y ago

Having had a few years of intensive, classical-trained piano lessons at a young age, the notion of "deliberate practice" has also just meant "practice" to me: break down what you're learning into its separate parts, figure out which part you're weakest at, try to further isolate that specific thing into its own exercise, then do it slowly, gradually increase the pace, gradually re-incorporate the aspects you removed, play that part with the preceding music, play that part with the postceding music, play it without the sheet music, etc. Each step should feel uncomfortable at first, and once you get comfortable with it you move on to the next step until you can play it perfectly without any thought. Kahneman has already touched on this, but obviously not all skills are predisposed to this type of practice. IIRC, this method of learning is useful for skills with shorter feedback loops (e.g. music, dance, gymnastics, some aspects of sports, etc.) and neutral to practically useless for skills with longer feedback loops or that can't be clearly broken down into its constituent parts (e.g. investing, science, entrepreneurship & innovation, etc.) I wish all skills could be learned this way—it's the method of learning I'm most comfortable with. But of course, life is not always so easy.

CuriouslyC 3y ago
IMO, those things you listed where deliberate practice doesn't work aren't technical, nor really "skills" so much as acquired "wisdom"

garyfirestorm 3y ago

Why do people reference the ‘10,000 hour’? It instantly reduces your credibility because that number was made up.

Sakos 3y ago
> Why do people reference the ‘10,000 hour’? It instantly reduces your credibility because that number was made up. It's just short-hand so we're on the same page and we all know that we're talking about the same thing. Shared knowledge is an important place to start from in order to communicate. As for the exact number? Who cares? The number itself is irrelevant. Whatever the number is or what it might actually be (as if there could ever be one single number for it), it doesn't invalidate the ideas that it's associated with. This tired criticism is tired. The article even addresses the number directly: > Although the backlash against Gladwell’s calculation has arguably been exaggerated, it’s important to stress that research into deliberate practice emphasizes quality of practice, not quantity. It’s all too possible to spend 10,000 hours engaging in a skill without serious improvements. For example, most of us spend hours per day typing, yet we don’t see continuous improvements in speed and quality because we’re not using deliberate practice. > The useful takeaway from the “10,000 hours rule” is simply that it takes a lot of work to become the best. There’s no magic number of practice sessions, and everyone’s path will look different. Just because successful people in a given field have spent around 10,000 hours practicing their key skill, that doesn’t mean every person who practices that skill for 10,000 hours will become successful. But you probably didn't even read it before coming here to complain, did you?
- garyfirestorm 3y ago
  You’re right! I didn’t read it in entirety.

butterNaN 3y ago

I don't know where I got this from, but in my old notebook I found the following notes I made for myself. To be an expert, you need 4 things: 1. A suitable environment 2. Lots of iterations (which is what I think the parent post is about, but it isn't the 100% story) 3. Timely feedback 4. Always being just at the edge of your comfort zone, "the goldilocks zone" of comfort

julianh65 3y ago

I wonder how one would apply this to programming, I'd like to continuously improve my programming but not sure how to apply the ideas from this to it. I could see it being a thing for something very measurable like competitive programming, yet if I wanted to deliberately practice different aspects of software engineering is there anything specific to do besides building larger and more ambitious projects? Perhaps purposefully creating small toy projects with "harder" aspects like concurrency, graphics, compilers etc... would help?

tasuki 3y ago

> Deliberate practice is what turns amateurs into professionals. No, charging money is what turns amateurs into professionals. Amateurs do a thing because they love it, professionals do it to get paid. In my experience, amateurs are often more capable than professionals.

throwaway918243 3y ago

You want a all-knowing, well, relatively all-knowing, body, the master, to design what to be practiced. It is sometimes in direct conflict with another management fad - let people do their stuff. It is not specifically related to DP, but training in general. Just wanted to point it out

louissan 3y ago

Reminds me (somewhat?) of the principles by Ray Dalio. "If we want to improve a skill, we need to know what exactly has to change and what might get us there."

nazgulnarsil 3y ago

A lot of frustration around the vagueness of online guides to DP. Here are the chapter headings from the Practiceopedia, an out of print guide to using deliberate practice principles in music training, with much broader applicability for most of them. This should give some idea of the detailed resolution you're looking for with DP. Chapter guide Beginners: curing your addiction to the start of your peace Blinkers: shutting out the things you shouldn't be working on Boot camp: where you need to send passages that won't behave Breakthroughs diary: keeping track of your progress Bridging: smoothing the bumps between sections Bug spotting: because you can't fix what you don't know about Campaigns: connecting your daily practice to the big picture Cementing: locking in the version you want to keep Chaining: getting to full speed one segment at a time Clearing obstacles: finding what causes tricky bits to be tricky Clock Watchers: curing the unhealthy obsession with time Closure: knowing when you can safely stop practicing something Color coding: a whole new dimension to marking your score Coral reef mistakes: detecting invisible trouble spots Cosmetics: minimizing the impact of weak capacities on concert day Countdown charts: factoring your deadlines into your practice Designer scales: choosing technical work to support your pieces Details trawl: ensuring you know what's really in the score Dress rehearsals: setting up your own concert simulator Engaging autopilot: the dangers of practicing without thinking Exaggerating: overstating key ideas to embed them Excuses and ruses: why you'll never really fool your teacher if you haven't practiced Experimenting: testing different interpretation options Fire drills: training to cope gracefully with onstage mistakes Fitness training: behind the scenes practice to help all your pieces Fresh photocopies: creating your own custom scores tailored for practicing Horizontal versus vertical: knowing when to change your practice Direction Isolating: stopping problems from interfering with each other Lesson agenda: setting aside issues to raise at your next lesson Lesson pre-flight check: finding out if you're on track for next lesson Lesson review: ensuring last lesson is fresh in your mind while you work Level system: the astonishing power of Tiny Steps Marathon week: pushing yourself to find out what's really possible Metronome method: sneaking up on full tempo Not wanting to practice: how to manage the biggest practice crisis of all One Way doors: eliminating the need for constant revision Openings and endings: VIP attention for the most important parts of any performance Painting the scene: giving your performances a cinematic Edge Practice Buddies: using the power of competition and cooperation Practice traps: bad habits that waste your time and wreck your playing Pressure testing: ensuring you can produce your best playing when it counts most Randomizing: the ultimate way to end the practice ho hums Prototypes: building a model of the ideal performance Recording yourself: finding out and responding to what you really sound like Recordings: using existing performances to supercharge your preparation Reflecting: why the best practice sometimes makes no sound at all Restoration: relearning old pieces without regressing Rogue cells: when the smallest unit of practice goes bad Scouting: getting to know your new piece before you start practicing it Session agenda: creating and working with daily practice to do lists Shooting the movies: a smarter way to work out what's next Speeding: the hidden damage caused by practicing too fast Stalling: what to do when a piece gets stuck Thematic practice: a powerful alternative to practicing in sections Tightening: making the leap from good enough to excellent Triage: when there's too much to do and not enough time to do it Triggers: setting up cues that get you practicing in the first place Turn around time: mastering new pieces in weeks instead of months Varying your diet: freeing yourself from dull repetitive practice Visualizing: the most important practice you'll ever do Your practice sweet spot: setting up the ultimate practice space

isaacfrond 3y ago

I’m sorry to be a spoilsport, but is there any evidence that deliberate practice rather than ordinary practice is any good? I happily believe that one can easily convince how good you are doing—really killing that practicing—-but how do I know it is any better than dumb practise. It all sounds like a cargo cult to me. What is really happening is that some people have talent, but rather than accepting that genetic reality we are telling ourselves this fairy tale that they must do something different. I just saw the schwarzenegger documentary on netflix. n-time world champion in body building. Do you want to know his secret? 3 sets per day, of 7 hours total, for years on end. Nothing deliberate about it.

MichaelRo 3y ago

It's great to apply "deliberate practice" "10,000 hours" and what else into domains that are strongly stable across time like mathematics, music, some foreign NATURAL language. You get to use the skill in which you invested so much of your time. It sucks to apply even the least of effort into vaporware fashions like programming languages, tools and techniques. You don't even get to complete half of the 10,000 hours of effort to acquire the skill that the whole thing is already antiquated and thrown into the garbage can of history. You wasted a vast amount of time for next to nothing.

hughcrt 3y ago
I feel you. That's why I try to limit my learnings as much as possible to "foundational" subjects. You can't go wrong by learning SQL in depth for example.

simonw 3y ago

Decided to use this to try out the new gpt-3.5-turbo-16k model: curl -s 'https://fs.blog/deliberate-practice-guide/' | \ strip-tags -m | \ llm --system 'Turn into a step by step guide' \ -m gpt-3.5-turbo-16k Here's the result: https://gist.github.com/simonw/d065b356c59eb76ab7c2166bef0c2f65 https://gist.github.com/simonw/d065b356c59eb76ab7c2166bef0c2... More on the tools I used here: - https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/larger-context-openai-models-llm https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/larger-context-openai-mod... - https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/ https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/

mark_l_watson 3y ago
That is cool Simon! I have had a TODO, for a while, to try your command line tools.

archwiki 3y ago

s/pedological/pedagogical/g