Peak

Author	Anders Ericsson
Read	December 18, 2019
Categories	Productivity Learning
People	Anders-Ericsson
Links	LibraryThing

Extracts

This is the basic blueprint for getting better in any pursuit: get as close to deliverate practise as you can. If you’re in a field where deliberate practise is an option, you should take that option. If not, apply the principles of deliberate practise as much as possible. In practise this often boils down to purposeful practise with a few extra steps: first, identify the expert performers, then fiture out what they do that makes them so good, then come up with training techniques that allow you to do it, too.

p. 103
In his influential book House of cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth, the psychologist Robyn Dawes described research showing that licensed psychiatrists and psychologists were no more effective at performing therapy than laypeople who had received minimal training.

p. 105
Fortunately there’s a way around this that can be used in a variety of situations. Think of it as the Top Gun approach to improvement. In the early days of the Top Gun project, no one stopped to try to figure out what made the best pilots so good. They just set up a program that mimicked the situations pilots would face in real dogfights and that allowed the pilots to practise their skills over and over again with plenty of feedback and without the usual costs of failiure.

On the problem with figuring out what makes top performers top performers p. 124
One of the implicit themes of the Top Gun approach to training whether it is for shooting down enemy planes or interpreting mammograms, is emphasis on doing. The bottom line is what you are able to do, not what you know, although it is understood that you need to know certain things in order to be able to do your job.

On the knowledge versus skills p. 124
In almost every one of the five dozen studies included in the reviews, doctors’ performance grew worse over time or, at best, stayed about the same.

On performance of experienced experts p. 133
Davis concluded that this sort of passive listening to lectures had no significant effect at all on either doctor’ performance or on how well their partients fared.

Finally, the researchers fount that no type of continuing medical education is effectige at improving complex behaviours, that is, behaviours that involve a number of different factors. In other words, to the extent that continuing medical education is effective, it is effective in changing only the most basic things that doctors do in their practises.

From the perspective of deliberate practise, the problem is obvious: attending lectures, minicourses, and the like offers little or no feedback and little or no chance to try something new, make mistakes, correct the mistakes, and gradually develop a new skill.

On the effectiveness of “didactic” training activities for doctors p. 135
Remember: if your mind is wandering or you’re relaxed and just having fun, you probably won’t improve.

… For the professionals, the lesson was a time to concentrate on such things as vocal technique and breath control in an effort to imrove their singing. There was focus but no joy.

p. 151
Learning to engage this way - consciously developing and refining your skills - is one of the most powerful ways to improve the effectiveness of your practise.

p. 152
The hallmark of purposeful or deliberate practise is that you try to do something you cannot do - that takes you out of your confort zone - and that you practise it over and over again, focusing on exactly how you are doing it, where you are falling short, and how you can get better.

Real life - our jobs, our schooling, our hobbies - seldom gives us the opportunity for this sort of focused repetition, so in order to improve, we must manufacture our own opportunities.

p. 157
… a studend of his who went to the mall and stopped a number of shoppers, asking each the same question. In this way she was able to hear similar answers over and over agaion, and that repetition made it easier for her to understand the words being spoken by native speakers at full speed.

p. 158
To effectively practise a skill without a teacher, it helps to keep in mind the three Fs: Focus. Feedback. Fix it. Break the skill down into components that you can do repeatedly and analyze effectively, determine your weaknesses, and figure our ways to address them.

On moving past a plateau p. 159
What we learned from Steve’s experience holds true for everyone who faces a plateau: the best way to move beyond it is to challenge your brain or your body in a new way.

p. 163
This then, is what you should try when other techniques for getting past a plateau have failed. First, figure out exactly what is holding you back. What mistakes are you making, and when? Push your self well outside of your confort zone and see what breaks down first. Then design a practise technique aimed at improving that particular weakness. Once you’ve figured out what the problem is, you may be able to fix it yourself, or you may need to go to an experienced coach or teacher for suggestions. Either way, pay attention to what happens when you practise; if you are not improving, you will need to try something else.

Recipe for moving past a plateau p. 165
What distinguished the most successful spellers was their superior ability to remain comittted to studying despite the boredom and the pull of other, more appealing activities.

p. 166
So that’s the problem in a nutshell: purposeful practise is hard work. It’s hard to keep going, and even if you keep up your training - you go to the gym regularly, or you practise the guitar for a certain number of hours every week - it’s hard to maintain focus and effort, so you may eventually stop pushing yourself and stop improving.

Purposeful practise is hard work p. 167
The most important question to answer then becomes, What factors shape motivation? By asking such a question, we can home in on the factors that might boost the motivation of our employees, children, students, and ourselves.

p. 169
As a rule of thumb, I think that anyone who hopes to improve skill in a particular area should devote an hour or more each day to practise that can be done with full concentration. Maintaining the motivation that enables such a regimen has two parts: reasons to keep going and reasons to stop. … Thus to maintain your motivation you can either strenghten the reasons to keep going or weaken the reasons to quit.

p. 169
Limit the lenght of your practise sessions to about an hour. You can’t maintain intense concentration for much longer than that - and when you’re first starting out it’s likely to be less. If you want to practise longer than an hour, go for an hour and take a break.

One hour practise sessions p. 171
Perhaps the most limportant factor here, though, is the social environment itself. Deliberate practise can be an lonely pursuit, but if you have a group of friends who are in the same positions - the other members of your orchestra or your baseball team or your chess club - you have a built-inn support system. These people understand the effort you’re putting into your practise, they can share training tips with you, and they can appreciate your victories and commiserate with you over your difficulties. They count on you, and you can count on them.

On your social environment p. 174
In order to keep the discussions open and collaborative, the Junto’s rules strictly forbade anyone from contradicting another member or expressing an opinion too strongly. And once every three months each member of the Junto had to compose an essay - on any topic whatsoever - and read it to the rest of the group, which would then discuss it.

On Franklin’s Junto p. 176
Nigel Richards won the 2015 French Scrabble competition without even being able to speak the langeuage. He took nine weeks to memorise the words from the French Scrabble dictionary, and he was ready.

On Nigel Richards p. 203

Extracts

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