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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise |  |
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Anders Ericsson became famous for his work on what he called "deliberate practice", a set of recipes that could help someone gain expertise in an area. In this readable and well-researched book he expands upon this concept and brings several time-tested and scientifically reviewed ideas to bear on the search for perfection in our lives. Ericsson and his co-author Robert Pool are good storytellers and they pepper their ideas with dozens of case studies and examples from diverse fields like music, sports and medicine.
In the first part of the book Ericsson dispels the myth that most "prodigies" or experts achieve what they do by innate talent. I thought he was a bit biased against the truly brilliant individuals like Mozart which humanity has produced, but he makes the good point that even Mozart adopted certain strategies and worked very hard - often helped by his father - to become famous. Similarly Ericsson examines several other extraordinary individuals mainly in the realm of sports, music and recreational arithmetic such as Paginini, Picasso and Bobby Fischer and tells us of their intense and often grueling routine of practice. What he perhaps fails to mention is that even the intense ability to focus or to work repeatedly with improvement has an innate component to it. I would have appreciated his take on recent neuroscience studies investigating factors like concentration and mental stamina.
Once the myth of some kind of an innate, unreachable genius is put to rest, Ericsson explains the difference between 'ordinary' practice and 'deliberate' practice. In this difference lies the seed for the rest of the book. When it comes to deliberate practice, the key words are focus, feedback, specific goals and mental representations. Unlike 'naive' practice which involves doing the same thing again and again and expecting improvement, deliberate practice involves setting specific goals for oneself, breaking down complex tasks into chunks, making mental representations of paths leading to success, getting out of your comfort zone and getting constant feedback.
Much of the book focuses on those key last three factors. Mental representations are patterns or heuristics that allow you to become successful in a task and do it repeatedly with improvement. Ericsson provides examples from calculating prodigies and chess grandmasters to illustrate the utility and power of mental representations. Getting out of your comfort zone may sound obvious but it's equally important; helped in his narrative by neuroscience studies which illustrate how the brain strengthens neural connections in certain areas when you push yourself, Ericsson provides good tips for exerting yourself just a little bit more than you did the previous time when you attempt to get better at a task.
Lastly, he shows us how getting constant feedback on results is of paramount importance in becoming an expert. Ericsson calls this the 'Top Gun' method based on a reference to the elite US Navy pilots who became much better when they got feedback on their combat maneuvers at the Navy's Top Gun flight school. The lack of feedback can explain many seemingly paradoxical results. For instance Ericsson spends several pages describing studies showing that more experienced doctors aren't always necessarily better at diagnosis, mainly because they often work alone, don't change their methods and have no peers to provide feedback; in a nutshell, the work they put in daily contributes to ordinary practice but not deliberate practice. Doctors who made positive changes in all three areas were much better, and so can the rest of us. In fact it is startling to realize how little feedback we get from our daily work. Other studies from the areas of motivational speaking and business management showed similar trends; breaking up jobs into parcels and getting regular feedback on these can make an enormous difference.
As an aside, Ericsson offers a good critique of Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers" in which Gladwell made the "ten thousand hour rule" so popular; Ericsson cautions us that Gladwell misunderstood many details of that rule including its limited utility as an average and its inapplicability to some of the examples he cites in his book.
Overall I found the book very readable and interesting, with scores of recognizable and thought-provoking examples thrown in. The only caveat to deliberate practice is one Ericsson himself states in the middle of the book: it is mainly applicable only to "highly developed fields" like sports or music where there have been hundreds of years of published and known case studies and data and widely agreed upon metrics for the field, and where there are several world-class experts to whom one can compare themselves when trying to improve. Ericsson himself states that the principles for deliberate practice don't work as well for professions like "engineer, teacher, consultant, electrician and business manager". I would think that these professional titles apply to millions of people around the planet, so those people will probably benefit a bit less from Ericsson's principles. Nonetheless, in a world constantly competing with itself, Ericsson's book offers some timely and well-researched advice for self-improvement.
I hesitated to buy this book, because I have read so much about Anders Ericsson's work already, and have used what I (thought I) knew about it in my own life, and in my work as a business coach in the very specialized field of direct marketing copywriting.
Wow... and this is not the copywriter in me, this is the student, teacher, and coach speaking from here on in... wow, am I glad I got past the hesitation and bought it.
I haven't finished reading it yet. I'm at about page 175 of 300. But what I've read so far has opened my eyes, shaken up my brain, put new courage in my heart, and motivated me in ways that are more experiential than describable.
It's kind of weird, because I'm reading the book from three points of view, almost at the same time:
1) As a coach, who helps others reach their personal peaks (and often, raise the limit on what they thought their own peak was)
2) As someone who has been very successful at a few things and not so successful at all at a number of other things, and
3) As a beginner, a student, who at age 63, has started on a rather challenging journey and is eager for all the help and insights he can get.
I've reflected on my own life, and the successes of my most accomplished coaching clients. In the light of what I've read in the book so far, I realize that a lot of big wins came either from purposeful or totally accidental deliberate practice. I thought I knew what it was, but this book fills in what either I didn't know, or was mistaken about, with great clarity and care.
Deliberate practice, of course, is self-imposed focused work on raising your skill level where doing so will bring you the greatest gain. It's more than that, though. The authors politely hint about it, but I'll say it blatantly: Deliberate practice, when done right, can take you to a place of confusion and personal terror the likes of which you might never imagine, if you haven't experienced it before.
Not forever. But for at least a little while.
Not always. But it can happen. I've experienced this myself, and spoken quietly with clients of mine who were also Olympic medal winners and other world-class performers. High anxiety... happens. Sometimes.
Here's why: You're rewiring your brain. Literally. You are creating new neural pathways, rearranging the organization and use of your brain cells, and in some cases, actually enlarging portions of your brain (an example you may be familiar with if you've read any of Ericsson's previous work is the fact that the two hippocampi, the seahorse-shaped lobes in the brain, actually got larger in the heads of London cabdrivers, as a result of the ridiculously detailed amount of memorizing they had to do to get, do, and keep their jobs).
OK. So rewiring your brain -- sounds like an exciting adventure, right?
Well... partially. But you also can get disoriented. Anxious. Even very scared. Because suddenly the familiar world you were living in, is different. And as exciting as that may be (especially... eventually), it's also disturbing at times.
When the great champs say, "No pain, no gain," it's not just physical muscle aches and fatigue they're talking about. There are mental and emotional aspects to growth in skill and capability, too.
I can't recall seeing as detailed a description, and explanation, of what happens and why, as I have in this book. Ericsson and his co-author clearly took a lot of pains themselves to bring the science of deliberate practice to a new level of clarity and accessibility.
So I don't want to dwell on my own past glories or those of my clients. If for no other reason, because what's most fascinating to me about this book was how it helped me get clear on what I'm going through with the new thing I'm working on, and understand at least in general terms, what's ahead.
By the way, "10,000 hours" was either very clever promotion or insufficient research on Malcolm Gladwell's part. While it turns out that most professional violinists and most professional dancers have put in roughly that much time to achieve mastery, Ericsson definitively says (and proves) that the number varies depending on the person and what they are applying deliberate practice to. (It can be less. It depends on a lot of things.)
Which... is a relief to me. Since, at 63, if I were to put 10,000 hours going forward into what I'm doing, and I could do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take me over a year. But at a more reasonable rate of two hours a day, every day, it would take me over 13 years.
Hey... that's too long!
What is this labor of love I'm looking to become skilled at?
Playing guitar. I started when I was nine, and stopped sometime in my teens. Then, something came over me a year ago, and I picked it up again. I finally settled into a routine about six weeks ago.
Now I didn't get a roadmap or a timeline from this book as to how long it will take me to get how good. Nor would I expect to. But what I did get, which is so valuable to me in so many ways, is the clearest possible definition of what deliberate practice is, and how so much of the world of training, teaching, and coaching (including -- ouch! -- guitar instruction) just doesn't get it.
Plus, the book gave me a very clear idea of what to look for, what to steer clear of, and what I can do for myself.
The key takeaway is this: Deliberate practice isn't fun. But it's necessary. It's not the only practice you need or want to do, whether it's playing guitar, or any other skill you are seeking to develop. In fact, you probably shouldn't do deliberate practice on anything for more than an hour at a time -- and that's Ericsson's advice, not mine.
But deliberate practice IS pretty much the only way you can make massive and lasting improvements -- and, as long as you have reasonable health and a functioning brain, it's available to you.
Even if you're a "senior citizen," like me. :)
That's why I like this book so much. I've never seen information about advancing skills... whether a little, or to a world-class level, or anywhere in-between... laid out so clearly and comprehensively (and convincingly) as it is here.
If you are looking for "the missing piece" in achievement, you very well might find it in this book. For me at this time in my life -- I did.
Thanks, Anders Ericsson and your co-author, Robert Pool.
As a sophomore in high school, I remember asking my favorite English teacher if he would sign off on my application to an advanced writing class. The look on his face was shock: mouth open, eyebrows raised. I felt stupid for even asking.
Needless to say, I took a general English class my junior year.
But I decided I didn't want the other kids to get ahead of me academically. I didn't have that elusive, all-important trait that everyone calls "talent." I had a brain that was geared more towards science and math, so when I read in Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated that there was a science behind improvement, I was blown away. I emailed K. Anders Ericsson, asking for research on how to use deliberate practice to improve my writing skills, and, to my surprise, he actually emailed me back. In this book, he made all of that research even simpler. Soon I began writing and reading every night for about an hour, focusing on improving my weaknesses, imitating my favorite writers, and stepping out of my comfort zone.
The following should speak for itself:
I took an AP writing course my senior year.
I scored a 5 on that test (the highest score possible).
I aced a creative writing course in college.
I began submitting my fiction to literary magazines (at this point I was churning out at least one story a week).
I became a professionally published short story writer at 20 years old ("Elite Slugger" in Cracked Eye).
I still have a long way to go, but one day I want to be a New York Times best-selling novelist. Without Mr. Ericsson's research, I would still be a sub-par writer. Instead, I developed a passion for something that no one thought I could do.
More importantly, though, I developed a passion for improvement, and that doesn't really depend on some outside factor, like whether or not a publisher wants to buy my work. Improvement is an intrinsic, driving force. Whether or not I ever become a New York Times best-selling novelist isn't the point. The point is constant improvement. The extrinsic goal is a side effect.
If there is some skill or "talent" that you always wish you had, then buy this book and follow its principles. I guarantee you can have it.
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