@benjaminkeep here's something meta to consider: programming practice. I have about 20 years in the industry. Sometimes, I can write actual "pages" of a program in minutes, other times it can take hours, want to know the difference? It's certainty. Sometimes, you just need to be certain to follow-through without being mentally impeded, even if you know what you're doing. I believe this applies to all arts and trades. Some of the "useless" practice will build a rote mental framework which can be followed with zero resistance, giving the impression of ease. The problem is that if I spent "10,000 hours" doing only that, the framework I created would be trash. Similarly, if all 10,000 hours were deliberate, I think the outcome would also be trash, like a violinist who only practiced scales (ad absurdum, I'm sorry), but you get the jist: now, how do I compose a brand new symphony?
I wish that more channels would cite their sources! It is time consuming but I think it sets a great example as well as providing a basis for further exploration for people that are interested. Thank you for creating this video, it seems like you have a scientific and rational approach to creating your videos.
A very stimulating video. From my own perspective as a classical musician who "mastered" one instrument and is now working on mastering a new one, I have to say that what one practices and what one considers to be "key skills" are VERY different from one person to another when it comes to something like music. So, generalizing is, well difficult. Also, the assumption that one musician is still an amateur, while another is a master after the same number of years of study is a really inaccurate data point. Even the definition of a "master" is pretty subjective. If someone gets up and plays a difficult piece perfectly for an audience, are they a "Master?" I can point to a number of touring performers in the classical music world that can play about 20 pieces, and they just play those same 20 pieces over and over and over again, and you never see them working with various ensembles. Some of them can barely read music on their instruments. I know others who are unsung heroes who can sight read really difficult music, play extraordinary pieces extremely well with real musicality and understanding of the performance practice, and can improvise a decent accompaniment from just about any given figured bass. We keep coming back over and over again to the fact that a human brain is trying to understand itself, which one could say mathematically is not possible in a finite amount of time. Personally, I am still trying to learn how to learn, and it has been going on for nearly 60 years now. Hmmm.
I find your videos quite helpful, in particular the deliberate practice and the expertise attainment. Please continue exploring this subject. Thank you.
This video is so in alignment with what I want to learn about! As a skateboarding teacher I’m always wondering, how can I improve my teaching methods. Thank you for making this video!!!!!
Superb, insightful coaching is the royal road to building the level of discernment and skill required to be a successful "deliberate practitioner". Discernment is king. The self-taught virtuoso violinist has never really existed (with the possible exception of outliers like Ossy Renardy and Albert Sammons).
Ericsson provides many examples in his book 'Peak: For Fans of Atomic Habits' to show how deliberate practice should be tailored to the individual, which needs to be flexible. It's mindful, purposeful, and individual. Would also recommend Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers: The Story of Success' to help complete the picture in terms of opportunity, learning environment, and the importance of the right kind of support. For me, the key ingredient is always passion, which is entirely individual and cannot be forced. Without passion, the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to a pursuit is less, and the focus within that time is dimmed. The people we so much admire in sport, music, science, dance and more are compelled to succeed at the highest level. It can become a torment. To quote Pelé :“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.”
just for the record: the wicked vs kind learning environment researchers also put deliberate practice to a very different position (and also there are a lot of documented cases where deliberate practice actually negatively correlates with results)
I used to be all-in on the Deliberate Practice train, and embraced the Ericsson version of practice design for more than a decade… teaching both computer science and physical/sport skills based entirely around the linear, incremental, successive approximation model. But the research coming from both modern Skill Acquisition and artificial intelligence dragged me (kicking and screaming) off that train. The work on Non-Linear Pedagogy, Ecological Psych, Dynamical Systems Theory in skill acq, Differential Learning, etc. all cast serious doubt on Deliberate Practice for deep skill building in anything that’s truly complex. If Deliberate Practice reflects a mechanical view of learning, as if mammals were merely *complicated* systems. But research on things like random vs. blocked, whole vs. part, external focus of attention (the most robust finding in the past 40+ years of motor learning research), Differential Learning, Constraints-Led Approach, Perceptual Learning, and especially (for me at least) the newest AI algorithms on Expiration (MAP-Elites is my favorite) ALL cast severe doubts on the underlying assumptions behind Deliberate Practice. I think Survivorship Bias led us to believe highly-skilled people got there *because* of their Deliberate Practice, rather than *despite* it. Or at the least, a correlation/causation thing. It was hard for me to let go . FWIW, I teach both computer science topics and horse rehab 💁♀️. Having both human and equine “students”, surfaced a lot of flaws in my earlier beliefs. This talk I gave many years’ ago is when I was still making the transition: ruclips.net/video/FKTxC9pl-WM/видео.html It’s over 300k views, but now I’m kinda cringe because the Deliberate Practice stuff is still in there AND I was only just scratching the surface of non-linear stuff… Forgive the rambling 🙏… it’s just rare for me to find places/people talking about this.
I REALLY appreciate the thoughtful comment. My background is more in teaching problem solving and scientific reasoning. I've been exploring the motor learning literature a lot more recently, though. Do you have some research articles related to non-linear pedagogy, ecological psychology or dynamical systems theory to recommend? I've read some, but it's mostly theory.
@Shravan So "non-linear" pedagogy is, I think, best understood by what it's not. What you might call "traditional" or "linear" pedagogy focuses on the technical skill of performing the task alone, what students learn is rigidly sequenced, and there is a well-defined "right" way of doing things that you're trying to get students to mimic. Non-linear pedagogy rejects these basic ideas. As far as I can tell, the idea has mostly been applied to learning motor skills in games, so let's use that as an example. Instead of focusing on exactly the right table tennis stroke and getting students to mimic the teacher's movements exactly, a non-linear approach would create a game situation or a modified game that makes students confront the problem of, say, a forehand stroke. There isn't necessarily one right way that everyone must follow (but students should learn how to "solve the problem"). There also isn't a fixed linear learning sequence. Different students might be acquiring different skills at different times. There's also more of an emphasis on the environment-social-skill interaction - you don't try to isolate the skill from everything else, you're looking to embed the skill in a more realistic play setting. The role of the teacher is to design these student interactions and guide students to learning the skill as they confront different challenges. In practice, I don't see much of a contradiction between deliberate practice principles and non-linear pedagogy. You can try to design deliberate practice activities that isolate skills from other skills. But often, this is a mistake. In a very real sense, you've changed the skill that the student is learning - because it's a decontextualized skill. You want to know what skill you're teaching (perhaps obviously) but part of knowing that is understanding the context in which that skill is needed. So effective deliberate practice means practicing in contextually realistic situations, tailored to the current level of the student.
I’d disagree. It seems like you think deliberate practice is one very set way of doing things. Seems like you just believe there are different methods to practice that may be better than others. But if I have an expert help me design a non-linear approach, and I work at those games with feedback, I am deliberately practicing. Maybe with a better method than I had been before. And that’s the point. Practice leads to expertise. Create the best non-linear system ever - and if I never spend any time doing it, I’ll never get better
@@benjaminkeep Let's take music. In my experience the more limited teachers are dogmatic in their approach - this is what we're working on, and this is exactly how to do it. Usually they are simply passing on what they themselves were taught, without much understanding or reflection. But the very best teachers adapt the programme to the student's interests and abilities and act more as mentors to help them discover their own best approach. At the most basic level, what works for a large hand may not work for a small hand, for example. The true teachers are working from fundamental principles rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. It seems to me that both of these are deliberate practice, but the more flexible, student-centred approach is surely going to be the more effective? And then there's the issue of decontextualising skills. For example slow practice is a staple technique in the practice room and is rarely questioned. But in my own experience playing a piece fast is a distinctly different skill, and slow practice actually interferes with the process. My progress soared once I started using techniques to play fast pieces fast from the outset. Equally, when I learn a piece fast, I find it hard to play it slow. So as you say, decontextualising and scaffolding skills is full of pitfalls. I suspect that the answer is to take the middle path - it will often pay to isolate specific issues, but they should be integrated back into the whole as soon as possible. My cello teacher told me an inspiring story. He was doing a workshop in Spain with the great Pablo Cassals. One morning he woke early to hear someone practising in the main hall. It was Cassals himself, working with intense concentration on slow open-string bowings - the first thing you would teach a 7-year-old beginner. Cassals was in his 80s at the time, but was still focusing on the basics.
Thank you, Benjamin, for sharing your thoughts on deliberate practice. :) A question I have is how do we measure difficulty of the practice? Another is how would we know what characterises expert skill?
Superb, insightful coaching is the royal road to building the level of discernment and skill required to be a successful "deliberate practitioner". Discernment is king. The self-taught virtuoso violinist has never really existed (with the possible exception of outliers like Ossy Renardy and Albert Sammons)
Deliberate practice was clearly defined, at least in Anders' Book Peak, as using an expert to guide and give immediate and targeted feedback and education with the aim to stretch beyond their current ability. The other version you mentioned here which is done individually is clearly defined as Purposeful practice. I don't think when you say the line was blurry, at least coming from the ideas in the book, that that is wholly true. I do think that within purposeful and deliberate practice that there's huge fluctuations in efficacy etc. but to say that deliberate practice wasn't clearly defined, in my eyes, is a bit of an untruth. What makes me question deliberate practice is the story of people like Stephen Hendry in snooker with 7 world titles - currently tied for the most ever and that was only after Ronnie got 7 this past year. He states that he had a baseline ability that came to fruition over a few weeks, being able to hit big scores on his little table when he was a kid. Most of his professional development came from practicing 6-8 hours a day, on his own, locked away in a snooker club with a manager watching over him telling him he had to be in there. No coach and therefore no 'deliberate practice' but he goes on to be arguably the most successful snooker player in his generation and arguably ever. That's surely an anomaly to the deliberate practice idea? I'm always trying to optimise learning and learning about learning so great content from you for sure! Be interested in your views on Andrew Huberman's learning protocols as that's all based in the neuroscience and comes at things from a different angle for sure.
Gotcha. To see where I'm coming from with critiquing the definition of deliberate practice, you have to look at how the term is operationalized in the research literature. There are many pieces on deliberate practice (not necessarily written by Ericsson) that operationalize deliberate practice with only one or two elements. I think of Angela Duckworth's piece on Spelling Bee participants - there deliberate practice was defined as "time spent practicing alone," and that piece is not the only one. I'm glad to hear that Ericsson himself distinguishes "purposeful" from "deliberate" practice - he's a fantastic researcher who has always emphasized precision. It's hard to judge the merits of anecdotal retrospective accounts of skill acquisition. It's very possible all of the special sauces just came together perfectly in him. It's still an absurd amount of daily practice in an area that has at least some built-in "performance" feedback. Perhaps with a great coach he could have been even better. Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'll probably look into Andrew Huberman's material at some point, but want to dig into it deeply before I comment on it.
@@benjaminkeep Ah that makes much more sense - I'll be honest, I've not read much into anything to do with deliberate practice that hasn't involved Ericsson in some way so I've got some tinted lenses for sure. That makes much more sense that different researchers are using the same term with different definitions and I agree that makes things much more muddy. I agree anecdotal evidence is always a bit of a mine field but often there is something in there to pull out and use. It's just knowing what that is. I hear similar stories of dart players who were winning local tournaments within weeks or months where most of us may never get anywhere near. Why is that? What do they have that others don't? That's what's fascinating and the fact there's no clear answer yet makes it even more of a mystery for sure! Thanks for this kind of content - it's important to be aware of in a world where everything is trending towards optimal performance.
Yeah, there are certainly cases where people's genetic and developmental endowments just seem to click perfectly to the task. I do think Ericsson has, at times, exaggerated the role that training plays. I tend to think that deliberate practice plays a large role in outcomes, but certainly isn't the only thing that is going on. I expect people will be arguing for quite some time about various cases and whether they are examples of (or contradictions of) deliberate practice. : ) I know there's a research article on Magnus Carlsen that holds him up as a counter-example to deliberate practice. But then when I read the piece, it seemed like his advantages could easily have come from the unusual way he trained (early on, he seemed fond of exploring unusual or strange moves, for instance). Gobet, F., & Ereku, M. H. (2014). Checkmate to deliberate practice: the case of Magnus Carlsen. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 878.
@@benjaminkeep @Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD Thanks for the paper - I'll have a look over it for sure. I've played Rocket League for over 2000 hours. I've played darts for almost 900 hours. For Rocket League I was well above average - champion level before everything changed - but my biggest jump was being involved in a league, playing with other players who were better than me. Before that I was trying to learn how to improve myself and was hard stuck in platinum for ages. With the darts I've purely been playing solo bar some league matches here and there and my improvement is much like when I was stuck in Platinum in Rocket League - stagnant. Yes I'm better than when I started but I'd hoped for so much more. I burnt out eventually in RL but I don't think I was genetically gifted in any way to get to where I was. I had to grind it out with a strong focus on if you just dump time in you'll get there. Some days I'd be going for 10 hours. For that investment, honestly I expected more. Perhaps a lack of active engagement as I'd often just settle into default practice routines etc. I'm not sure if you're interested - perhaps a topic for a video of yours or something as I doubt there's many who've tracked this as much as I have - I've played darts for 3 years now and have tracked every hour I've played with some notes each session about how I felt or what I was doing etc. I'm almost at 900 hours now. Despite the time invested and knowledge of motor learning etc. I'm still near where I started - if this is my period where I'm supposed to improve the most then I'm a little worried. Always believed that anybody can reach the top of whatever they go for but when I hear stories of the very best and how they started well above average and still struggle to compete at the top, it's daunting just how good you have to be.
DP is about having clear feedback. In sports like snooker or darts the feedback is obvious. Did you hit what you were aiming for? In these cases you really don't need a coach.
Thought provoking video. There are very specific skill sets at the deep level of any domain. As a professional musician, I know what needs to happen for my own success, but applying any of it cross domain raises many questions. Are you familiar with distributed practice? Using the entire day to spread out many intense sessions. The interval between focused attention seems to solidify learning.
@benjaminkeep It's been a few years since I last read Peak, but I think I remember Anders Ericsson highlighting mental models as the real key to expert performance. (Of course, deliberate practice is what most of the book is about - I'm not downplaying the value of deliberate practice.) For example, someone he worked with to learn how to memorize digit strings developed a lot of little tricks (mental models) for remembering numbers in various contexts. I think this memorizer was able to drastically speed up the path to expertise for a novice by explaining these tricks, rather than the novice having to discover them on their own. Do you have anything to say about the importance of, or strategies for identifying impactful mental models in the development of expert performance? Or do you disagree with my vague recollection? (BTW - loving your channel. Thanks for sharing your high quality expertise!)
The core idea doesn't sound novel. Like a master/apprentice relationship is an implementation of the concept which has been around for ages. Unfortunately, such relationships are not fostered in the US anymore with the present work culture.
I think that Deliberate practice is what makes the difference, but only if its done in the right environment. For example, you can learn 8h a day, but if you only sleep 4h a night your brain has no real chance to learn new information. Stress can be also a big factor.
Here's my uneducated opinion on the matter: it comes down to a level of passion. Passionate people tend to obsess over their field, and are mostly in a deeper state of flow (shout out Csikszentmihalyi). I agree that 10k hours is a poor metric, it's simply a by-product of loving what you do. Most masters are just obsessed with their work. "Find what you love and let it kill you" - Charles Bukowski
That's certainly important and also complicates objective measurement. If you're obsessed with something, you're thinking about it often - in the shower, on the toilet, everywhere you go. Is that stuff getting recorded in these longitudinal studies? Often, I think, no.
Magnus Carlsen would certainly agree, that's his main advice for improving in chess. He himself said that the way he practices was never very structured and he hated a coach that would make a strict learning regimen, he would just read and learn about what he was interested at the time and worked with very flexible coaches, but first and foremost he was basically thinking about chess and how to improve every single hour he is awake
As a musician, part of the problem that I have with deliberate practice is that it doesn’t really account for everything that actually happens in a practice session. The original study doesn’t have any qualitative assessment of the what the violinists do in their practice sessions (whether they used research backed techniques, etc) and purely judges the best group based on more hours of practice alone - which is obvious, but not very specific. Is deliberate practice only doing the activity that the instructor recommended for you? Even if that strategy or activity is highly effective, only part of your practice each day is spent directly on activities your instructor told you to do. You typically meet with an instructor for 1 hour each week - you cannot possibly cover every thing you have on your plate musically in this amount of time. Additionally, you become more advanced, your instruction sessions become less prescriptive about technique and musical knowledge and become more open-ended, investigative, and ambiguous as your mental representations are more highly defined.
After watching this video, one question come to my mind: If deliberate practice is not super essential, how should I practice to become a expert?(Note: I am an average person and want to think like how a expert person think)
There is critique for everything in this world for eg after you learn something xyz on RUclips try searching is xyz reliable you'll find tons of videos on that on the contrary you'll find tons of videos defending xyz. We can't reliably trust any of these tests we don't even know how they were carried out . All the critiques generally arises when they themselves try xyz things are they are unable to achieve the promised results . So rather than questioning something try applying things that you learn.
I agree with your first assertion, but not your second. If you know how the research is carried out, then you can judge it, weight the evidence, and come to some conclusions. And if the researchers (or presenters) are not transparent, then it's a reason to doubt what they're saying.
Ericsson makes some valuable points but clearly overreaches when he tries to explain away a prodigy, such as Mozart, and attribute all high achievement to deliberate practice.
Every time I hear meta analysis there is part of me that just cringes. Meta analysis should be one of the top areas of study in the philosophy of science.
I believe he is saying, meta analysis is not very precise language. It means very different things in real applications, and the scientific community would benefit from additional research and clarity on what meta analysis should be defined as.
Not to get all woo woo… but maybe It could because of reincarnation. You practiced hard in past lives. Now this life the practice paid off and that’s why you’re good so fast. Or it’s just purely a gift from the creator. You can’t count this out to say this is impossible.
For my other videos on deliberate practice, check out:
ruclips.net/video/WbUOY9ioIqw/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/aIPS4ugcanM/видео.html
@benjaminkeep here's something meta to consider: programming practice. I have about 20 years in the industry. Sometimes, I can write actual "pages" of a program in minutes, other times it can take hours, want to know the difference? It's certainty. Sometimes, you just need to be certain to follow-through without being mentally impeded, even if you know what you're doing. I believe this applies to all arts and trades. Some of the "useless" practice will build a rote mental framework which can be followed with zero resistance, giving the impression of ease. The problem is that if I spent "10,000 hours" doing only that, the framework I created would be trash. Similarly, if all 10,000 hours were deliberate, I think the outcome would also be trash, like a violinist who only practiced scales (ad absurdum, I'm sorry), but you get the jist: now, how do I compose a brand new symphony?
I believe the "answer" is in Rotating Focus, the most popular video on this channel.
I wish that more channels would cite their sources! It is time consuming but I think it sets a great example as well as providing a basis for further exploration for people that are interested. Thank you for creating this video, it seems like you have a scientific and rational approach to creating your videos.
A very stimulating video. From my own perspective as a classical musician who "mastered" one instrument and is now working on mastering a new one, I have to say that what one practices and what one considers to be "key skills" are VERY different from one person to another when it comes to something like music. So, generalizing is, well difficult. Also, the assumption that one musician is still an amateur, while another is a master after the same number of years of study is a really inaccurate data point. Even the definition of a "master" is pretty subjective. If someone gets up and plays a difficult piece perfectly for an audience, are they a "Master?" I can point to a number of touring performers in the classical music world that can play about 20 pieces, and they just play those same 20 pieces over and over and over again, and you never see them working with various ensembles. Some of them can barely read music on their instruments. I know others who are unsung heroes who can sight read really difficult music, play extraordinary pieces extremely well with real musicality and understanding of the performance practice, and can improvise a decent accompaniment from just about any given figured bass. We keep coming back over and over again to the fact that a human brain is trying to understand itself, which one could say mathematically is not possible in a finite amount of time. Personally, I am still trying to learn how to learn, and it has been going on for nearly 60 years now. Hmmm.
I find your videos quite helpful, in particular the deliberate practice and the expertise attainment. Please continue exploring this subject. Thank you.
Thanks very much for this video. As a 62-year-old learning how to play guitar, I’m always looking for ways to improve the process.
This video is so in alignment with what I want to learn about! As a skateboarding teacher I’m always wondering, how can I improve my teaching methods. Thank you for making this video!!!!!
Superb, insightful coaching is the royal road to building the level of discernment and skill required to be a successful "deliberate practitioner". Discernment is king. The self-taught virtuoso violinist has never really existed (with the possible exception of outliers like Ossy Renardy and Albert Sammons).
Ericsson provides many examples in his book 'Peak: For Fans of Atomic Habits' to show how deliberate practice should be tailored to the individual, which needs to be flexible. It's mindful, purposeful, and individual. Would also recommend Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers: The Story of Success' to help complete the picture in terms of opportunity, learning environment, and the importance of the right kind of support. For me, the key ingredient is always passion, which is entirely individual and cannot be forced. Without passion, the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to a pursuit is less, and the focus within that time is dimmed. The people we so much admire in sport, music, science, dance and more are compelled to succeed at the highest level. It can become a torment. To quote Pelé :“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.”
I like this style of videos.
Awesome. Thanks!
just for the record: the wicked vs kind learning environment researchers also put deliberate practice to a very different position (and also there are a lot of documented cases where deliberate practice actually negatively correlates with results)
I used to be all-in on the Deliberate Practice train, and embraced the Ericsson version of practice design for more than a decade… teaching both computer science and physical/sport skills based entirely around the linear, incremental, successive approximation model.
But the research coming from both modern Skill Acquisition and artificial intelligence dragged me (kicking and screaming) off that train.
The work on Non-Linear Pedagogy, Ecological Psych, Dynamical Systems Theory in skill acq, Differential Learning, etc. all cast serious doubt on Deliberate Practice for deep skill building in anything that’s truly complex.
If Deliberate Practice reflects a mechanical view of learning, as if mammals were merely *complicated* systems. But research on things like random vs. blocked, whole vs. part, external focus of attention (the most robust finding in the past 40+ years of motor learning research), Differential Learning, Constraints-Led Approach, Perceptual Learning, and especially (for me at least) the newest AI algorithms on Expiration (MAP-Elites is my favorite) ALL cast severe doubts on the underlying assumptions behind Deliberate Practice.
I think Survivorship Bias led us to believe highly-skilled people got there *because* of their Deliberate Practice, rather than *despite* it. Or at the least, a correlation/causation thing.
It was hard for me to let go .
FWIW, I teach both computer science topics and horse rehab 💁♀️. Having both human and equine “students”, surfaced a lot of flaws in my earlier beliefs.
This talk I gave many years’ ago is when I was still making the transition:
ruclips.net/video/FKTxC9pl-WM/видео.html
It’s over 300k views, but now I’m kinda cringe because the Deliberate Practice stuff is still in there AND I was only just scratching the surface of non-linear stuff…
Forgive the rambling 🙏… it’s just rare for me to find places/people talking about this.
I REALLY appreciate the thoughtful comment. My background is more in teaching problem solving and scientific reasoning. I've been exploring the motor learning literature a lot more recently, though. Do you have some research articles related to non-linear pedagogy, ecological psychology or dynamical systems theory to recommend? I've read some, but it's mostly theory.
What does all these "non-linear stuff" imply?? Expertise is predominantly a matter of innate abilities??
@Shravan So "non-linear" pedagogy is, I think, best understood by what it's not. What you might call "traditional" or "linear" pedagogy focuses on the technical skill of performing the task alone, what students learn is rigidly sequenced, and there is a well-defined "right" way of doing things that you're trying to get students to mimic.
Non-linear pedagogy rejects these basic ideas. As far as I can tell, the idea has mostly been applied to learning motor skills in games, so let's use that as an example. Instead of focusing on exactly the right table tennis stroke and getting students to mimic the teacher's movements exactly, a non-linear approach would create a game situation or a modified game that makes students confront the problem of, say, a forehand stroke. There isn't necessarily one right way that everyone must follow (but students should learn how to "solve the problem"). There also isn't a fixed linear learning sequence. Different students might be acquiring different skills at different times. There's also more of an emphasis on the environment-social-skill interaction - you don't try to isolate the skill from everything else, you're looking to embed the skill in a more realistic play setting. The role of the teacher is to design these student interactions and guide students to learning the skill as they confront different challenges.
In practice, I don't see much of a contradiction between deliberate practice principles and non-linear pedagogy. You can try to design deliberate practice activities that isolate skills from other skills. But often, this is a mistake. In a very real sense, you've changed the skill that the student is learning - because it's a decontextualized skill. You want to know what skill you're teaching (perhaps obviously) but part of knowing that is understanding the context in which that skill is needed. So effective deliberate practice means practicing in contextually realistic situations, tailored to the current level of the student.
I’d disagree. It seems like you think deliberate practice is one very set way of doing things.
Seems like you just believe there are different methods to practice that may be better than others.
But if I have an expert help me design a non-linear approach, and I work at those games with feedback, I am deliberately practicing. Maybe with a better method than I had been before.
And that’s the point. Practice leads to expertise.
Create the best non-linear system ever - and if I never spend any time doing it, I’ll never get better
@@benjaminkeep Let's take music. In my experience the more limited teachers are dogmatic in their approach - this is what we're working on, and this is exactly how to do it. Usually they are simply passing on what they themselves were taught, without much understanding or reflection.
But the very best teachers adapt the programme to the student's interests and abilities and act more as mentors to help them discover their own best approach. At the most basic level, what works for a large hand may not work for a small hand, for example. The true teachers are working from fundamental principles rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.
It seems to me that both of these are deliberate practice, but the more flexible, student-centred approach is surely going to be the more effective?
And then there's the issue of decontextualising skills. For example slow practice is a staple technique in the practice room and is rarely questioned. But in my own experience playing a piece fast is a distinctly different skill, and slow practice actually interferes with the process. My progress soared once I started using techniques to play fast pieces fast from the outset. Equally, when I learn a piece fast, I find it hard to play it slow.
So as you say, decontextualising and scaffolding skills is full of pitfalls. I suspect that the answer is to take the middle path - it will often pay to isolate specific issues, but they should be integrated back into the whole as soon as possible.
My cello teacher told me an inspiring story. He was doing a workshop in Spain with the great Pablo Cassals. One morning he woke early to hear someone practising in the main hall. It was Cassals himself, working with intense concentration on slow open-string bowings - the first thing you would teach a 7-year-old beginner. Cassals was in his 80s at the time, but was still focusing on the basics.
The style of this video is splendid
Great channel. Thank You.
Thank you, Benjamin, for sharing your thoughts on deliberate practice. :) A question I have is how do we measure difficulty of the practice? Another is how would we know what characterises expert skill?
Superb, insightful coaching is the royal road to building the level of discernment and skill required to be a successful "deliberate practitioner". Discernment is king. The self-taught virtuoso violinist has never really existed (with the possible exception of outliers like Ossy Renardy and Albert Sammons)
Deliberate practice was clearly defined, at least in Anders' Book Peak, as using an expert to guide and give immediate and targeted feedback and education with the aim to stretch beyond their current ability. The other version you mentioned here which is done individually is clearly defined as Purposeful practice. I don't think when you say the line was blurry, at least coming from the ideas in the book, that that is wholly true. I do think that within purposeful and deliberate practice that there's huge fluctuations in efficacy etc. but to say that deliberate practice wasn't clearly defined, in my eyes, is a bit of an untruth.
What makes me question deliberate practice is the story of people like Stephen Hendry in snooker with 7 world titles - currently tied for the most ever and that was only after Ronnie got 7 this past year. He states that he had a baseline ability that came to fruition over a few weeks, being able to hit big scores on his little table when he was a kid. Most of his professional development came from practicing 6-8 hours a day, on his own, locked away in a snooker club with a manager watching over him telling him he had to be in there. No coach and therefore no 'deliberate practice' but he goes on to be arguably the most successful snooker player in his generation and arguably ever. That's surely an anomaly to the deliberate practice idea?
I'm always trying to optimise learning and learning about learning so great content from you for sure! Be interested in your views on Andrew Huberman's learning protocols as that's all based in the neuroscience and comes at things from a different angle for sure.
Gotcha. To see where I'm coming from with critiquing the definition of deliberate practice, you have to look at how the term is operationalized in the research literature. There are many pieces on deliberate practice (not necessarily written by Ericsson) that operationalize deliberate practice with only one or two elements. I think of Angela Duckworth's piece on Spelling Bee participants - there deliberate practice was defined as "time spent practicing alone," and that piece is not the only one.
I'm glad to hear that Ericsson himself distinguishes "purposeful" from "deliberate" practice - he's a fantastic researcher who has always emphasized precision.
It's hard to judge the merits of anecdotal retrospective accounts of skill acquisition. It's very possible all of the special sauces just came together perfectly in him. It's still an absurd amount of daily practice in an area that has at least some built-in "performance" feedback. Perhaps with a great coach he could have been even better.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'll probably look into Andrew Huberman's material at some point, but want to dig into it deeply before I comment on it.
@@benjaminkeep Ah that makes much more sense - I'll be honest, I've not read much into anything to do with deliberate practice that hasn't involved Ericsson in some way so I've got some tinted lenses for sure. That makes much more sense that different researchers are using the same term with different definitions and I agree that makes things much more muddy.
I agree anecdotal evidence is always a bit of a mine field but often there is something in there to pull out and use. It's just knowing what that is. I hear similar stories of dart players who were winning local tournaments within weeks or months where most of us may never get anywhere near. Why is that? What do they have that others don't? That's what's fascinating and the fact there's no clear answer yet makes it even more of a mystery for sure!
Thanks for this kind of content - it's important to be aware of in a world where everything is trending towards optimal performance.
Yeah, there are certainly cases where people's genetic and developmental endowments just seem to click perfectly to the task. I do think Ericsson has, at times, exaggerated the role that training plays. I tend to think that deliberate practice plays a large role in outcomes, but certainly isn't the only thing that is going on.
I expect people will be arguing for quite some time about various cases and whether they are examples of (or contradictions of) deliberate practice. : ) I know there's a research article on Magnus Carlsen that holds him up as a counter-example to deliberate practice. But then when I read the piece, it seemed like his advantages could easily have come from the unusual way he trained (early on, he seemed fond of exploring unusual or strange moves, for instance).
Gobet, F., & Ereku, M. H. (2014). Checkmate to deliberate practice: the case of Magnus Carlsen. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 878.
@@benjaminkeep @Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD Thanks for the paper - I'll have a look over it for sure.
I've played Rocket League for over 2000 hours. I've played darts for almost 900 hours. For Rocket League I was well above average - champion level before everything changed - but my biggest jump was being involved in a league, playing with other players who were better than me. Before that I was trying to learn how to improve myself and was hard stuck in platinum for ages. With the darts I've purely been playing solo bar some league matches here and there and my improvement is much like when I was stuck in Platinum in Rocket League - stagnant. Yes I'm better than when I started but I'd hoped for so much more. I burnt out eventually in RL but I don't think I was genetically gifted in any way to get to where I was. I had to grind it out with a strong focus on if you just dump time in you'll get there. Some days I'd be going for 10 hours. For that investment, honestly I expected more. Perhaps a lack of active engagement as I'd often just settle into default practice routines etc.
I'm not sure if you're interested - perhaps a topic for a video of yours or something as I doubt there's many who've tracked this as much as I have - I've played darts for 3 years now and have tracked every hour I've played with some notes each session about how I felt or what I was doing etc. I'm almost at 900 hours now. Despite the time invested and knowledge of motor learning etc. I'm still near where I started - if this is my period where I'm supposed to improve the most then I'm a little worried. Always believed that anybody can reach the top of whatever they go for but when I hear stories of the very best and how they started well above average and still struggle to compete at the top, it's daunting just how good you have to be.
DP is about having clear feedback. In sports like snooker or darts the feedback is obvious. Did you hit what you were aiming for? In these cases you really don't need a coach.
Thought provoking video. There are very specific skill sets at the deep level of any domain. As a professional musician, I know what needs to happen for my own success, but applying any of it cross domain raises many questions. Are you familiar with distributed practice? Using the entire day to spread out many intense sessions. The interval between focused attention seems to solidify learning.
@benjaminkeep
It's been a few years since I last read Peak, but I think I remember Anders Ericsson highlighting mental models as the real key to expert performance. (Of course, deliberate practice is what most of the book is about - I'm not downplaying the value of deliberate practice.)
For example, someone he worked with to learn how to memorize digit strings developed a lot of little tricks (mental models) for remembering numbers in various contexts. I think this memorizer was able to drastically speed up the path to expertise for a novice by explaining these tricks, rather than the novice having to discover them on their own.
Do you have anything to say about the importance of, or strategies for identifying impactful mental models in the development of expert performance? Or do you disagree with my vague recollection?
(BTW - loving your channel. Thanks for sharing your high quality expertise!)
Hambrick is a professor at Michigan State University, not U of M.
Oops! 😅 Now I'm really going to get it b/c my dad is a MSU alumnus... thanks for the correction!
The REAL question: which person deliberately practiced meta analysis?
The core idea doesn't sound novel. Like a master/apprentice relationship is an implementation of the concept which has been around for ages. Unfortunately, such relationships are not fostered in the US anymore with the present work culture.
I think that Deliberate practice is what makes the difference, but only if its done in the right environment. For example, you can learn 8h a day, but if you only sleep 4h a night your brain has no real chance to learn new information. Stress can be also a big factor.
Yes.yes.yes.
Thank you
Awesome.
Here's my uneducated opinion on the matter: it comes down to a level of passion.
Passionate people tend to obsess over their field, and are mostly in a deeper state of flow (shout out Csikszentmihalyi). I agree that 10k hours is a poor metric, it's simply a by-product of loving what you do. Most masters are just obsessed with their work.
"Find what you love and let it kill you" - Charles Bukowski
That's certainly important and also complicates objective measurement. If you're obsessed with something, you're thinking about it often - in the shower, on the toilet, everywhere you go. Is that stuff getting recorded in these longitudinal studies? Often, I think, no.
Magnus Carlsen would certainly agree, that's his main advice for improving in chess. He himself said that the way he practices was never very structured and he hated a coach that would make a strict learning regimen, he would just read and learn about what he was interested at the time and worked with very flexible coaches, but first and foremost he was basically thinking about chess and how to improve every single hour he is awake
i personally think one part of it also comes from luck
As a musician, part of the problem that I have with deliberate practice is that it doesn’t really account for everything that actually happens in a practice session. The original study doesn’t have any qualitative assessment of the what the violinists do in their practice sessions (whether they used research backed techniques, etc) and purely judges the best group based on more hours of practice alone - which is obvious, but not very specific.
Is deliberate practice only doing the activity that the instructor recommended for you? Even if that strategy or activity is highly effective, only part of your practice each day is spent directly on activities your instructor told you to do. You typically meet with an instructor for 1 hour each week - you cannot possibly cover every thing you have on your plate musically in this amount of time.
Additionally, you become more advanced, your instruction sessions become less prescriptive about technique and musical knowledge and become more open-ended, investigative, and ambiguous as your mental representations are more highly defined.
After watching this video, one question come to my mind: If deliberate practice is not super essential, how should I practice to become a expert?(Note: I am an average person and want to think like how a expert person think)
Deliberate Practice *is* essential!
There is critique for everything in this world for eg after you learn something xyz on RUclips try searching is xyz reliable you'll find tons of videos on that on the contrary you'll find tons of videos defending xyz. We can't reliably trust any of these tests we don't even know how they were carried out . All the critiques generally arises when they themselves try xyz things are they are unable to achieve the promised results . So rather than questioning something try applying things that you learn.
I agree with your first assertion, but not your second. If you know how the research is carried out, then you can judge it, weight the evidence, and come to some conclusions. And if the researchers (or presenters) are not transparent, then it's a reason to doubt what they're saying.
A meta analysis study of meta analysis studies shows that meta analysis studies suck and cannot be considered real science.
QED.
Ericsson makes some valuable points but clearly overreaches when he tries to explain away a prodigy, such as Mozart, and attribute all high achievement to deliberate practice.
Your best video
i think your videos are informative.but somehow its boring ccan you make more easier
🦑
Every time I hear meta analysis there is part of me that just cringes. Meta analysis should be one of the top areas of study in the philosophy of science.
Wait you worded that weirdly. Top area as in its good? Or cringe because it’s bad?
Meta-physics?
I believe he is saying, meta analysis is not very precise language. It means very different things in real applications, and the scientific community would benefit from additional research and clarity on what meta analysis should be defined as.
Isn’t meta analysis just a review of a bunch of different studies and making different conclusions based on what others found
@@jasoneng3161it is, but … it’s definitely not standardised in approach or methodology
Not to get all woo woo… but maybe
It could because of reincarnation. You practiced hard in past lives. Now this life the practice paid off and that’s why you’re good so fast. Or it’s just purely a gift from the creator.
You can’t count this out to say this is impossible.
:( blocking u cuz i dont want more clickbait like this
Look's like kolb's learning cycle might be missing piece 🧩 .
nice analysis on deliberate videos
Btw please Don't be discouraged by view count .