Improve your performance with deliberate practice — part 3
A series about experts, learning, performance, and concrete steps to go from 0 to hero in your domain. Starts with Part 1, goes on with Part 2, and ends with Part 3.
Luck and talent have nothing to do with performance. Some of our genes have something to say, but they’re like whispers in a crowd.
From experts’ research, we find what it takes to go from not knowing nothing to expertise in a domain.
It takes a damn lot of practice!
That’s what we learned so far from part 1 and part 2.
For our final article, we’ll go deeper in what deliberate practice is. What are mental representations? Why is feedback important? What are the characteristics of this type of practice?
Experts have one thing in common
To become a taxi driver in London is pretty hard. You have to know a shit load of things. London is not a city where you can rely on GPS.
So you have to learn streets. Housing estates. Parks and open spaces. Government offices and departments. Hotels and clubs. Colleges and universities and so on. Your knowledge should go to the point where you know statues. The big ones. And the small ones.
What a taxi driver does is developing mental maps on how to reach from point A to point B in an effective way.
Like London taxi drivers, experienced soccer players build mental maps on game structures. They learn over time what are the possible interactions during a match. And the best of them predict and act upon that knowledge.
The same thing happens in music. Violonists, pianists (some examples) know how their music should sound. And adapt their performances to it.
A mental map on how players interact with each other during a match is different from one of what are the most effective ways of travelling. So they impact different brain parts. But all have been called and defined the same. As mental representations.
A mental representation is a mental structure. It corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else that the brain is thinking about.
The purpose of deliberate practice is to create more effective mental representations.
You can become an expert too
Purposeful practice is, as the term implies, much more purposeful, thoughtful, and focused.
As a young man, Ben Franklin wanted to improve his writing. The education he received left him, by his own assessment, as an average writer.
The Spectator was an inspiration for him. So his goal was to be as good as those writing for it.
But since he had no one to teach him how, he had to find another way. His technique was clever. He picked up articles, read them and wrote down short descriptions of the content. Days after, he tried recalling word by word what he read, while using the descriptions he made.
He compared his results with the original articles and corrected his work. This provided real time feedback on the outcome of his efforts.
By doing this over and over again, he spotted his problem. He lacked vocabulary. Not that he didn’t knew the words, but he couldn’t recall them when needed. So he engaged in other types of writing — poetry. He thought poetry would force him to come up with all kinds of words he wouldn’t think otherwise due to the poem’s rhythm and rhyming pattern.
He picked up again The Spectator articles and transformed them into verse. After a while, waiting enough for his learning to fade away, he turned them back into prose.
As a final step, he worked on structure and logic engaging in the same recollection exercise.
What he actually did in the process was creating mental representations. On how his writing should sound. What words he should use. How he should structure his articles.
He ended up being a great writer. His autobiography became one of the classics of American literature.
The hallmark of purposeful or deliberate practice is that you try to do something you cannot do — that takes you out of your comfort zone — and that you practice it over and over again, focusing on exactly how you are doing it, where you are falling short, and how you can get better.
Now let’s break down the definition in concrete characteristics of deliberate practice.
Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals.
Before you start learning something, break the concept/ the skill down into smaller steps. Transform those steps into specific goals and make a plan on how to approach each of them.
As we saw in our Ben Franklin example, he knew exactly what he had to improve. Words. Structure. Logic. He knew exactly how he will approach his practice and how to measure if he was progressing.
Purposeful practice is focused.
The task at hand should have your full attention.
You can use the Pomodoro technique, which requires you to focus for 25 minutes and then take short breaks. You can have a full 2 hours session. No matter your approach, make sure nothing will distract you.
Purposeful practice involves feedback.
To improve, you have to know if you’re doing something wrong. And what exactly. Having the discipline of seeing your own mistakes is a skill that takes time and practice. If you feel you’re not there yet, a teacher or a mentor might help you in the process.
But most important, is that by breaking down the process in steps, you can integrate feedback faster.
If you don’t have feedback, you won’t know what you have to improve and if you’re closer to reaching your goals.
Purposeful practice requires getting out of one’s comfort zone.
I talked a bit in the first part of this series about Myelin.
Myelin is a living tissue, and much like a muscle, it needs to be exercised regularly for it to grow.
If you stay in your comfort zone, your myelin won’t get thicken. When you exercise to build your body, you won’t get different results by doing the same thing over and over again. It goes the same for the brain.
Motivation is king
Going through deliberate practice is not fun.
After reaching the plateau point, when your improvements are more subtle, the one thing you need is motivation.
Anders Ericsson discovered experts build various habits to keep them going. Set yourself a fixed time of the day to practice. Clear that time of any obligations and distractions.
Look right from the start at what might get in your way and think beforehand how to minimise those factors.
Get enough sleep and keep healthy. It will help you focus on the long run.
A final recommendation
I wrote this series based on a book I would recommend to anyone— Peak, by Anders Ericsson.
He spend his life researching expertise. In his book, he combines some cool examples with theory and practical steps.
It doesn’t matter you’re a beginner or you already know some things. It will give you some insights for sure!
I would love to share more learning tips with you. Follow me on Medium!
Lavinia Mehedințu is a self directed learner, always trying to get the best out of her learning process. She dreams to change mindsets and educational systems through her work.
