My 7 Takeaways from Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
The Most Empowering Book I Have Ever Read
I first came across Anders Ericsson’s name in Geoffrey Colvin’s Talent is Overrated. The key message of Colvin’s book appealed to me — that is not really important in skill development. It was around the same time that I also read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, in which he popularized the concept of 10,000 hours — the amount of practice Gladwell said was needed to reach a world-class level. Again, Gladwell referred to Ericsson’s work in substantiating his points.
Learning is an important part of my life and I always sought out the methods and techniques to accelerate learning. Continuously seeking to improve, learn, and elevate yourself is, in fact, one of my two rules.
So it made sense to get hold of Ericsson’s work. Anders Ericsson is a psychologist who has decades-long experience researching skill acquisition and expert performance. His book Peak summarizes his key findings which have also been supported by other independent research.
In brief, the reason this is the most empowering book I have ever come across is that it allows one to dream big, but also to develop a specific plan with strategies and steps on how to get there. It helps us realize that any skill that we want to acquire is within reach, given appropriate focus, time, and training. To stop limiting oneself with the “I don’t have the talent for it” kind of thoughts — since according to Ericsson’s findings, skill development does not rely on any talent. If you ever read one book on skill development, this is the one you should read.
One of my first articles on Medium was on this very subject, how people’s first instinctive reaction to high-level performance in any field is — this person has talent. You can find the article here. But the research indicates that is not the case. When performance looks effortless, it is typically a result of many years of a particular kind of practice.
This, for me, is something worth repeating over and over. To your family. To your children. To your co-workers and students. Thinking about achievements in terms of people who have talent and who do not is extremely limiting and counter-productive. It pays off to have high levels of confidence in our abilities, and what we can achieve if we put our minds to it.
In this article, I want to share my seven key takeaways from Peak by Ericsson and Pool:
1. There is no such thing as talent. There are no gifts. There are no prodigies. There are no shortcuts. The only thing that can get you there is the right kind of (deliberate) practice over a period of time.
Yes, the motivation, the mindset, and opportunities matter, genetics and your circumstances can affect the outcome, but the key factor is practice. Or to be more precise, what kind of practice you are engaging in. This goes against the unfortunate narrative inadvertently pushed by the comic book and movie industry. No, there won’t be a gamma radiation accident or a spider bite to make you into a superhero. You have to put in the work. That may sound dull, but it is actually an incredibly empowering message. No one has an innate advantage that you don’t have. Whatever you put your mind to, you can become world-class at it.
2. Deliberate practice is the name of the game. This is truly the heart of the book’s message. What matters is how you practice, not the amount of practice. The book differentiates between naive, purposeful, and deliberate practice. Naive practice is blindly swinging and hoping for the best. An example of this is someone who plays tennis a couple of times a month and feels like that alone will improve his or her skill level. It won’t. Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals. It takes you beyond your comfort zone and demands constant near-maximal effort. Constant signs of improvement keep you motivated. This comes close to the ideal way of practicing but still falls short. Still, you can improve like this, up to a point. Finally, deliberate practice is purposeful but also reinforced with feedback and guidance by an expert teacher with knowledge on how to improve the skill in question. Especially at the beginning of skill development, a good coach is key, because we don’t yet have enough knowledge and experience to build our own training plan.
The deliberate practice works best in a field where there is a well-established training practice, such as sports or mastering a musical instrument, but the principles can be applied in other fields as well. It is best if superior performers are clearly identifiable and if the skill can be measured — i.e. through competition.
It is worth noting that the 10,000-hour “rule” is, in fact, a misrepresentation of Ericsson’s point. It is catchy, but quite a bit off the mark. Depending on the field, world-class performers may have accomplished much less practice than that and in some other areas, the required number may be much higher than 10,000. It also wrongly puts the focus on the amount of time, which is not the point — as noted above, it is about how you practice.
3. Practice for improvement is not fun. This you need to pay attention to. You are supposed to spend considerable effort. If the practice is always enjoyable, you are likely not improving. It is a trait of an amateur that lessons make you happy. This may come across as a somewhat controversial point, but pros are rarely happy after practice sessions — it is hard work, rarely fun. The deliberate practice focuses on specific components of the skill and has well-defined goals. You cannot do this on autopilot, this requires full attention and conscious action. If you feel your practice is becoming continuously enjoyable, watch out — perhaps you have found a comfort zone and stopped improving.
4. Train for skill, not knowledge. Knowing about something is not the same as doing it. For example, if you have strong knowledge of chess theory, that does not translate into increased playing strength. Similarly, if you are a grammar expert in a given language, that does not mean you are fluent, and so on. Practice and training should concentrate on improving the skill one wishes to acquire. Note how traditional training in schools concentrates on knowledge, rather than skill. This is why a lot of youth entering the workforce struggle — they have been taught knowledge, not skills — so they effectively start from scratch. Training needs to focus on improving performance, pay attention to whether your training actually contributes to that or not.
5. Importance of finding a skilled coach. Best find someone who is accomplished at the skill you want to learn, and who is skilled and experienced in teaching it. Ideally, this should be someone with a record of producing quality students — which is a sign that the instructor’s approach works. In this day and age, we might think that having YouTube is enough to learn any skill, and indeed, YouTube is a fantastic resource. But it is rather complementary. One comment, observation, or feedback from a quality coach can do what dozens of videos cannot — point out a small issue that prevents you from performing well. Note that you might need to change your teacher as you grow and change, students sometimes outgrow their teachers.
Of course, we don’t always find a great coach. If that is not possible, identify expert performers, study them and try to identify what it is that makes them great. Practice, perform, and compare your performance to the standard you are trying to achieve. Create a feedback loop, come up with training techniques, and at every training session, practice focusing on a specific aspect of the skill, not an overall improvement.
5. Mental Representations. This is, simply put, the mental image of what a successful performance looks like. As your skill improves, you will be better and better at generating mental representations that will help you with feedback about your level of skill. Chess players improve by studying expert games. Musicians can listen to recordings of great performances. Developing effective mental representations is, in fact, the primary purpose of deliberate practice. If you excel at this, you can effectively identify your mistakes in performance and can zoom in on them to improve further. Better mental representations lead to better feedback, and better training, which leads to better mental representations, and on and on. This is why experts have mental representations at the level that amateurs cannot even comprehend allowing for better and faster decision-making. Think of the incredible ability of top tennis players to counter mind-blowingly powerful serves of over 200 km per hour, or the seemingly superhuman ability of martial artists to function at high speed and accuracy.
6. Plateaus. We all hit plateaus when we are learning a skill. According to Ericsson, it happens when we feel like we have hit a “good enough” point. As soon as we feel we are good enough, consciously or subconsciously, more repetition will not help us get over the hump. You need to continue pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, for example, in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, every once in a while, spar with someone significantly better. Or, when learning a language, read a book of a substantially more challenging level. Try to change training methods, moving away from those you feel comfortable with. You need to challenge yourself, your body, and your brain, in new ways. Find specific elements of the skill that are your weakest and focus on addressing those.
7. Develop the ability to self-improve. This might seem like a contradiction to the 3rd point above, but it isn’t. It is best to have a quality coach at the beginning of your learning journey. But as you get better and better, you need to develop the ability to design and structure your training. Seek to understand the bigger picture and the individual components of the skill you are trying to master. As you develop your own style or own game, you will need to be your own main coach.
Any complex skill typically looks very confusing at the beginning. Sometimes, the reverse is true. It might seem too simple if you know too little to appreciate the complexities and nuances. As you learn, the horizons of your understanding expand and you can see further.
These takeaways have already helped me and thousands of others learn and improve at different skills much faster than we would otherwise have. I have successfully applied these principles in language learning, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and piano practice. One important side effect of having a reliable process and progressing fast is that tangible improvement has helped maintain and increase motivation to continue. But most importantly, I now know that with the correct approach, there is barely any skill that I could not improve at. That alone is a powerful confidence boost in any activity.
To conclude, Peak is an excellent read that packs a lot more than I can summarize in a brief article, so do check it out and, most importantly, make sure to test these principles yourselves!
