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Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview

• treetalker 2y ago
  The link is just an image of the article’s first page. The entire article is available on Anna’s Archive, which I do not condone using. Under no circumstances should you download it from this link: https://wbsg8v.xyz/d3/x/1724737279/100/i/scimag/09800000/09839000/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00227.x.pdf~/m6BWDYzqwEJla0R-t3EFQg/Deliberate%20Practice%20and%20Acquisition%20of%20Expert%20Performance%3A%20A%20--%20K_%20Anders%20Ericsson%20--%20Academic%20Emergency%20Medicine%2C%20%2311%2C%2015%2C%20pages%20988-994%2C%202008%20--%2010_1111%2Fj_1553-2712_2008_00227_x%20--%20d07cf0b677562249a5832c58812b581a%20--%20Anna’s%20Archive.pdf https://wbsg8v.xyz/d3/x/1724737279/100/i/scimag/09800000/098...
  • darkteflon 2y ago
    That sort of place is totally abhorrent - not something I would ever use. However, I have a friend who is wondering if there is a better way to access content on AA than having to futz around with Onion, MySQL and ratarmount? He’d prefer not to code something up himself for what is presumably a fairly common use-case.
    • john_minsk 2y ago
      I've heard that there is Library Genesis extension on Google Chrome that allows you to search catalog right from the browser window. It has everything SciHub has to offer. Article from the post was found without any issue. Rumors are that extension was working just fine for the past year+ so it is quite reliable.
      • sieste 2y ago
        Why would you spread such unverified rumours on an online forum? Whoever acts on them might get themselves into trouble...
  • kzrdude 2y ago
    The link in the posting is to a full pdf viewer, that doesn't work for reading on mobile, with pdf download link.
  • JustinSkycak 2y ago
    Alternatively, Wiley also provides the full article on a HTML page: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00227.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1553-2712...
• quirino 2y ago
  "Peak", from the same author, is probably the book I've read that has had the biggest influence on my life. The most important idea I got from it is something like: You gotta practice to get good at things. People that are better than you at things very likely practiced _more_ and/or _better_ than you. Other factors matter very little in comparison. The book goes deeper into what "more" and the "better" mean here. You may think this takeaway is obvious, but the extent of it certainly wasn't for me, and I can tell it isn't for a lot of the people I talk to.
  • bsder 2y ago
    Part of the book is that experts did NOT necessarily practice more--they practiced in a better way. This is the whole point of "deliberate practice". The problem is defining what is "deliberate" for tasks where there is not necessarily an "objectively correct" result.
    • LeonB 2y ago
      Studies are easiest to perform on topics with easy to measure results. But in most any field, if you’re genuinely interested in the field, you will be aware of people who you consider to be better than you. Even if it’s a highly subjective field, as you learn your taste/appreciation grows and you get a clearer picture of what you consider “better”. Those are your potential pool of coaches/mentors. You don’t have to pick just one, either.
      • bsder 2y ago
        Sports demonstrates precisely the opposite. Most experts that are very good at a subject are completely incorrect at describing what is actually going on. There is a reason why we use cameras, computers and scientists for kinematics at the highest levels of sports.
        • LeonB 2y ago
          I think this is a confusion between “marginal” and “by and large”. If I go to a coach to help me with running faster their advice won’t be “completely wrong” — it will be “by and large” correct. But there are still opportunities for “marginal” improvements that can be found with better measurements. Eg in moneyball they weren’t showing that everything the scouts did was completely wrong. They showed that marginal improvements could give them an economic edge. Even a few percentage points of improvement of received wisdom v measurement meant their money was much better spent.
• isaacfrond 2y ago
  It's always chess or music, sometimes basketball. But how does one become say, a first class lawyer, or a teacher, or any of the 99% of human skills that do not have easy performance metrics?
  • LeonB 2y ago
    This is a really good question and I’m not qualified to answer it, other than to say “it can be done!” Alan Kay is an example of someone who has a great intuition for answering this kind of question. My general opinion is that a great coach/mentor can “see” your errors and doesn’t just know what you’re doing wrong but what the best next step is from where you are, to learn the thing that is holding you back. Deliberate practice never feels easy. You’re always pushing the boundary of what you’re capable of. And you keep going back for more. Where there are a lot of different styles of doing a thing “well” (e.g. first class lawyer, teaching, writing, 99% of things ) you’ll need to progress through a wider series of different mentors/coaches, sort of “earning” the mentorship of a “better” coach is a good goal in any field. In fields like you describe it’s not a simple ladder, more like a branching tree of ladders. You’re goal is not just higher and higher but learning (by climbing) where and who is a mentor for you.
    • sevnin 2y ago
      I agree with you but then I don't think you can call this deliberate practice, deliberate practice is not just sitting down and pushing boundaries, it's also having a clear path. In programming (since you said Alan Kay) sitting down and knowing precisely what you need to do in order to get good is very rare. Here everything is displaced - once you know what is good, everything is downhill. The problem is always overcoming X - that place where you don't know where you are, you don't know where you are going and you somehow need to get to your destination.
  • azthecx 2y ago
    This is one of those cases where finding someone that already _is_ what you're looking for and get (meaningful) mentorship from them can shortcut your progress. You can most definitely figure out the path yourself, find out what practice exercises and knowledge are required and then go for it and adjust as necessary. However this is much more labor and time intensive than having someone highly skilled, that has essentially already been there, point out your weak points. Music as you mention is very stereotypical in this, where a good instructor can quickly point out the exercises you need for your specific style and instrument, however very rarely does this apply to full professions and careers, where you know from the get go what you want to be a Lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions of overseas companies in the chip manufacturing industry.
• feoren 2y ago
  So what? Why bother? Why would anyone bother becoming an expert? Nobody is going to pay attention to you. You're not going to get any more pay or respect or authority than people who are just good at bullshitting. You're not going to have an outsized influence on the world. So why bother? Say, for sake of argument, that I'm in the top 0.1% of software engineers. Maybe the top 0.01%; say I'm utterly phenomenal. What the hell am I supposed to do about it? My choices are: 1. Work for a FAANG or adtech for 70 hours per week with a toxic manager on optimizing the psychological weapons and dark patterns they use to keep their users in a negative feedback cycle of dependence on their increasingly shitty and hostile products 2. Work for a bank or fintech as a middleman trying to get that extra 0.01% rent on other people's labor 3. Work in a niche industry or a consulting firm doing interesting and important work, but always for one client at a time, having an extremely limited impact (and limited pay to match), or 4. Start my own business and work 90 hour weeks spending 95% of my time on organizational business things that I'm bad at, leaving virtually no hours for the thing I'm a phenomenal super-expert at. I've chosen #3, but I'm honestly sick of just continuing to just get better and better at software engineering and having it mean absolutely fuck-all. What's the point? Why would you ever bother becoming an expert?
  • Y_Y 2y ago
    Become an expert at bullshitting maybe? I don't disagree with your overall point, but for me the payoff of being a good engineer is working less. I'm salaried and work for a big oldtech shop writing mostly glue code and fixing god-damn dependency issues. When I get more productive I turn that into less time spent at my desk or thinking about my job.
    • feoren 2y ago
      > Become an expert at bullshitting maybe? I'd literally rather kill myself. > When I get more productive I turn that into less time spent at my desk or thinking about my job. So your advice is: check out of your job. Quiet quit. Get into knitting. Honestly? Probably the best advice I'm going to get.
  • obscurette 2y ago
• yamrzou 2y ago
  There was a HN discussion some time ago about choosing a textbook that is optimal for oneself (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41016650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41016650), and this passage from the answer about deliberate practice stuck out to me: In the field of talent development, there is absolutely no debate about the most superior form of training. It's deliberate practice: mindful repetition on performance tasks just beyond the edge of one's capabilities. Deliberate practice is about making performance-improving adjustments on every single repetition. Any individual adjustment is small and yields a small improvement in performance – but when you compound these small changes over a massive number of action-feedback-adjustment cycles, you end up with massive changes and massive gains in performance. Deliberate practice is superior to all other forms of training. That is a "solved problem" in the academic field of talent development. It might as well be a law of physics. There is a mountain of research supporting the conclusion that the volume of accumulated deliberate practice is the single biggest factor responsible for individual differences in performance among elite performers across a wide variety of talent domains. (The next biggest factor is genetics, and the relative contributions of deliberate practice vs genetics can vary significantly across talent domains.)
  • Xcelerate 2y ago
    > The next biggest factor is genetics I think it depends where you’re at in the progression curve. I’ve always thought that most people can reach the top 1% of just about anything with hard work. Beyond that, it comes down to other factors: genetics, environment, luck, etc. I ran track in college and reached roughly the top percentile of my age and gender (i.e., the level of a typical D1 athlete), but there is absolutely no way I would ever have come remotely close to a 12:37 5k. You could have started the training from birth under a team of experts, and it simply just would not have happened.
    • FuckButtons 2y ago
      In basically any other field of endeavor, this is fine though, most things people do aren’t judged as though there can only be one best person in the world at it.
• begueradj 2y ago
  For those who are interested in this subject, it's good to read this also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41282574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41282574
  • casualrandomcom 2y ago
    I have found this long read a useful summary of deliberate practice https://fs.blog/deliberate-practice-guide/ https://fs.blog/deliberate-practice-guide/
• pressentiment 2y ago
  I feel the lesson here is complicated. Yes, DP breeds expertise. But I don't think you can just decide to do DP. An expert craftsman/woman does that craft everyday because they LIKE doing it, expertise might not even be the goal. Think of Nobel Prize winners, is the core thing that they did DP, or is it they were having enough fun (loose definition) that DP is how they wanted to spend their time. I think the lesson for a young person is still find what you love. But with this you can say: find what you love, then sacrifice yourself to it.
  • Suppafly 2y ago
    >But I don't think you can just decide to do DP. I disagree, lots of craftsmen do deliberate practice to improve their skills, even when it's not necessarily enjoyable. Hobbyists probably don't so much, but people who do a specific craft for a living do. Granted sometimes this ends up being 2nd or 3rd level fun, where it's not fun while you're doing it but looking back gives you a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment later. I remember taking a ceramics class in high school and they showed us a video called 'the potters way' or something similar and the trick to getting good at making simple pinch pots is to make thousands of them until you essentially have the muscle memory to do it. There are probably moments of zen while spacing out and making them, but I can guarantee that no one would find that enjoyable enough to just crank them out for hours at a time if they weren't trying to improve their skills.
    • pressentiment 2y ago
      I agree it's not first level fun. And on your ceramics point. That sounds like hell to me too. But maybe that's why neither of us make pots.
  • solarmist 2y ago
    I get your point, but many people find what they love and throw themselves into it without the intention or discipline to keep progressing. Millions of amateur artists and musicians spend hours daily working on their craft without ever noticeably improving past an intermediate learner's level.
• RigelKentaurus 2y ago
  I play electric guitar at a decent speed but want to get very fast, say ~600 notes per minute (npm). I had two guitar teachers who gave me conflicting advice: 1) Practice doesn't make perfect, only "perfect practice makes perfect". Use a metronome, start with a speed I'm 100% comfortable with, and slowly build up my speed at 5 npm intervals. When I start making even minor mistakes, stop, go back 10 rpm, and hold my practice there for 5-10 minutes. Keep to this technique and I will get faster over time. 2. Don’t aim for perfection. Get comfortable with the concept of fast playing in my mind, and my fingers will follow. Warm up a little, but after that, jump to playing at my target speed, even if it sounds sloppy. Repeat this enough number of times and I will get faster over months and years. I’ve tried both techniques over the last 3 years and have gotten considerably faster. But I'm not sure which of these techniques has worked more than the other. My own take is that it takes time, and staying on the edge of what I’m capable of doing is important. No rules beyond that, really. Question for this audience, especially for musicians and guitarists: how do you structure your practice to become great?
  • PandaRider 2y ago
    Not a guitarist (take my comments with a pinch of salt). Your teachers are both right: Either advices (1) or (2) works as long as the practice is hard. That said, while (2) may sound easier because the approach pursues "comfort in the mind" over perfection... this is still hard because because by definition: you still need to get from uncomfortable to comfortable! A similar example in bodybuilding: muscle confusion [1]. To build better squats, one requires both compound(2) and isolation (1) exercises [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/well/move/muscle-confusion-exercise-workouts-fitness.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/well/move/muscle-confusio... (Huge Caveat: this only applies to physical deliberate practice!)