[HN Gopher] The Deliberate Practice Guide (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
The Deliberate Practice Guide (2021)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 259 points
Date : 2023-06-14 12:00 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fs.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| throwaway918243 wrote:
| You want a all-knowing, well, relatively all-knowing, body, the
| master, to design what to be practiced. It is sometimes in direct
| conflict with another management fad - let people do their stuff.
| It is not specifically related to DP, but training in general.
| Just wanted to point it out
| MichaelRo wrote:
| It's great to apply "deliberate practice" "10,000 hours" and what
| else into domains that are strongly stable across time like
| mathematics, music, some foreign NATURAL language. You get to use
| the skill in which you invested so much of your time.
|
| It sucks to apply even the least of effort into vaporware
| fashions like programming languages, tools and techniques. You
| don't even get to complete half of the 10,000 hours of effort to
| acquire the skill that the whole thing is already antiquated and
| thrown into the garbage can of history. You wasted a vast amount
| of time for next to nothing.
| hughcrt wrote:
| I feel you. That's why I try to limit my learnings as much as
| possible to "foundational" subjects. You can't go wrong by
| learning SQL in depth for example.
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| A lot of frustration around the vagueness of online guides to DP.
| Here are the chapter headings from the Practiceopedia, an out of
| print guide to using deliberate practice principles in music
| training, with much broader applicability for most of them. This
| should give some idea of the detailed resolution you're looking
| for with DP.
|
| Chapter guide
|
| Beginners: curing your addiction to the start of your peace
|
| Blinkers: shutting out the things you shouldn't be working on
|
| Boot camp: where you need to send passages that won't behave
|
| Breakthroughs diary: keeping track of your progress
|
| Bridging: smoothing the bumps between sections
|
| Bug spotting: because you can't fix what you don't know about
|
| Campaigns: connecting your daily practice to the big picture
|
| Cementing: locking in the version you want to keep
|
| Chaining: getting to full speed one segment at a time
|
| Clearing obstacles: finding what causes tricky bits to be tricky
|
| Clock Watchers: curing the unhealthy obsession with time
|
| Closure: knowing when you can safely stop practicing something
|
| Color coding: a whole new dimension to marking your score
|
| Coral reef mistakes: detecting invisible trouble spots
|
| Cosmetics: minimizing the impact of weak capacities on concert
| day
|
| Countdown charts: factoring your deadlines into your practice
|
| Designer scales: choosing technical work to support your pieces
|
| Details trawl: ensuring you know what's really in the score
|
| Dress rehearsals: setting up your own concert simulator
|
| Engaging autopilot: the dangers of practicing without thinking
|
| Exaggerating: overstating key ideas to embed them
|
| Excuses and ruses: why you'll never really fool your teacher if
| you haven't practiced
|
| Experimenting: testing different interpretation options
|
| Fire drills: training to cope gracefully with onstage mistakes
|
| Fitness training: behind the scenes practice to help all your
| pieces
|
| Fresh photocopies: creating your own custom scores tailored for
| practicing
|
| Horizontal versus vertical: knowing when to change your practice
| Direction
|
| Isolating: stopping problems from interfering with each other
|
| Lesson agenda: setting aside issues to raise at your next lesson
|
| Lesson pre-flight check: finding out if you're on track for next
| lesson
|
| Lesson review: ensuring last lesson is fresh in your mind while
| you work
|
| Level system: the astonishing power of Tiny Steps
|
| Marathon week: pushing yourself to find out what's really
| possible
|
| Metronome method: sneaking up on full tempo
|
| Not wanting to practice: how to manage the biggest practice
| crisis of all
|
| One Way doors: eliminating the need for constant revision
|
| Openings and endings: VIP attention for the most important parts
| of any performance
|
| Painting the scene: giving your performances a cinematic Edge
|
| Practice Buddies: using the power of competition and cooperation
|
| Practice traps: bad habits that waste your time and wreck your
| playing
|
| Pressure testing: ensuring you can produce your best playing when
| it counts most
|
| Randomizing: the ultimate way to end the practice ho hums
|
| Prototypes: building a model of the ideal performance
|
| Recording yourself: finding out and responding to what you really
| sound like
|
| Recordings: using existing performances to supercharge your
| preparation
|
| Reflecting: why the best practice sometimes makes no sound at all
|
| Restoration: relearning old pieces without regressing
|
| Rogue cells: when the smallest unit of practice goes bad
|
| Scouting: getting to know your new piece before you start
| practicing it
|
| Session agenda: creating and working with daily practice to do
| lists
|
| Shooting the movies: a smarter way to work out what's next
|
| Speeding: the hidden damage caused by practicing too fast
|
| Stalling: what to do when a piece gets stuck
|
| Thematic practice: a powerful alternative to practicing in
| sections
|
| Tightening: making the leap from good enough to excellent
|
| Triage: when there's too much to do and not enough time to do it
|
| Triggers: setting up cues that get you practicing in the first
| place
|
| Turn around time: mastering new pieces in weeks instead of months
|
| Varying your diet: freeing yourself from dull repetitive practice
|
| Visualizing: the most important practice you'll ever do
|
| Your practice sweet spot: setting up the ultimate practice space
| greyman wrote:
| I was always intrigued about this concept, but when I wanted to
| try it in some specific area, let's say programming in specific
| language, or writing blog posts, I couldn't find more specific
| info how exactly would the training performed. Is there some
| template, which I can use to design deliberate practice training
| for X?
| awb wrote:
| For those interested in an alternative view, check out _Range:
| Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World_ by David Epstein
|
| > Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a
| skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start
| early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate
| practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch
| up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at
| research on the world's top performers, from professional
| athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is
| the exception, not the rule.
|
| https://davidepstein.com/the-range/
| weakfish wrote:
| It could just be me self-soothing, but as a verified ADHDer who
| switches hobbies like I switch clothes, this book helped me
| feel less... bad? I guess? About my lack of specialization. But
| it's fun that I have enough knowledge on lots of subjects to
| speak competently on them. The ones that surprise folks the
| most are usually photography and audio engineering/production,
| which I dabbled in for a long time.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _early specialization_
|
| _Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World_
|
| but specialization later in life is still specialization? This
| sounds like goalpost moving.
| awb wrote:
| He's responding to the theory that some parents/teachers
| believe that if you can't do X by age Y you'll never be a top
| performer.
|
| He's saying you can still train but you don't need to hit 10k
| hours in a specific skill to excel, especially in complex
| fields like team sports or creative thinking.
| mahathu wrote:
| >But a closer look at research on the world's top performers,
| from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early
| specialization is the exception, not the rule.
|
| As another commenter has pointed out, this is a more comforting
| and maybe also more realistic stance when it comes to
| professional/scientific achievement. Unfortunately, however,
| early specialisation is definitely the rule nowadays in
| professional football ("soccer"). I'm assuming it's the same
| for Basketball/Football/Baseball/... in the US and elsewhere.
|
| Pretty much every player who's playing in the top leagues now
| grew up in an academy, where their education and social lives
| revolved around their football practice routine, not the other
| way around. That is not only the top leagues like Premier
| League or La Liga, but also the leagues that come below it.
| Players like Brinkmann, Scholl, Bernd Schneider, ... are
| celebrated as the exception to the rule.
|
| I used to "play" in the fifth league in Germany (Oberliga BaWu)
| for 2 seasons (barely got any time on the pitch) and even
| there, almost every player was in some sort of specialised
| training since they were 5 or 6, either in the youth programmes
| of local clubs or private academies their parents paid a lot of
| money for. Everyone is dreaming of playing in the Bundesliga
| and the academy owners know that. Players coming from a
| different sport later in their childhood were the exception.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| I don't know much about soccer/football.
|
| From the anecdata of professional athletes I'm aware of
| (NBA/NFL) there isn't really an "academy". And these folks
| weren't specialized at 5-6 years of age. They were extremely
| athletic and invested a lot of time in the teenage years when
| they showed promise.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Pro football/basketball are more about raw athleticism than
| technical ability. The guy who is super technically gifted
| and who has been training his entire life but not super
| athletic will either get bent in half by much larger,
| stronger players and have to retire due to injuries, or
| just be shut down by a genetic freak who took up the sport
| in high school
| zigman1 wrote:
| If you are further interested, check out the difference
| in player development in basketball between Europe and
| US. In EU there is much more focus on the systems and
| team play from the early age, whereas in US, as soon as
| someone shows promise, everything starts to revolve
| around them.
|
| https://youtu.be/qEG5JGc1P7o
| mahathu wrote:
| That sounds like a much healthier/less exploitative scene
| to be honest!
| zeteo wrote:
| > Pretty much every player who's playing in the top leagues
| now grew up in an academy, where their education and social
| lives revolved around their football practice routine
|
| The argument would only apply to star soccer players. Sure,
| lots of parents are talked into signing their kids up for
| pricey training when they're as young as 6. But if you check
| out big names like Messi, Iniesta, and Cristiano Ronaldo,
| they didn't hit the academy scene until they were almost
| teens, right before getting picked for major under-15 club
| teams. It looks more like you've got to go to an academy to
| get noticed, not that spending more time in one boosts your
| chances of making it big.
| heyheyhey wrote:
| > The argument would only apply to star soccer players.
|
| What do you mean by star players? If you're talking Big
| Five + MLS players, then you pretty much either need to be
| an academy or high level club (ECNL in USA for example) at
| a young age to have a chance.
|
| Iniesta was part of La Masia, the youth academy for FC
| Barcelona. Messi/CR7 both played for the youth clubs of
| professional teams.
| JustBreath wrote:
| Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of people aren't in
| professional sports and so that's not the case for them.
| awb wrote:
| > He discovered that in most fields--especially those that
| are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists,
| are primed to excel.
|
| As for sports, he argues that individual sports like golf can
| be mastered through deliberate practice (ex. Tiger Woods),
| because there are a minimal, defined set of actions that need
| to happen. So you should go hit your 9-iron 10k times to get
| better.
|
| However, with complex team sports like soccer, it's a mix.
| For set plays and fitness you should use deliberate practice.
| But for the rest of the game you need creativity because the
| number of combinations of player sizes, speed and positioning
| quickly approaches infinity. And creativity can come from
| similar sports like basketball, or by playing full games
| against a wider variety of opponents.
|
| And it seems akin to linguistics where the breakthroughs came
| not by breaking language down into discreet rules but by
| broadening the knowledge base.
|
| You see this in MMA too where fighters will use deliberate
| practice for a specific punch or submission, but then will
| dramatically alter their training camps (often learning new
| techniques for the first time) depending on their opponent.
| Poppys wrote:
| I wonder what the quality would be if football was not the
| hoover of European childhood athletic talent it currently is.
| Plenty of sportsmen in other fields played football as
| children and went onto success in other sports. Maybe if
| basketball was the predominant sport of young boys would we
| still have Messi and Ronaldo?
| awb wrote:
| The opposite is true in the US. Parents treat soccer as a
| youth pastime and funnel kids towards basketball, football
| and baseball for high school and college.
|
| Then the question becomes: Would LeBron or Patrick Mahomes
| be elite soccer players if they were raised in Europe?
|
| My guess is yes. Their body composition would be different
| by following different fitness goals but I think there's a
| combination of strength, balance, vision, endurance,
| leadership, decision making and determination that is
| highly translatable across team sports.
| butterNaN wrote:
| I don't know where I got this from, but in my old notebook I
| found the following notes I made for myself.
|
| To be an expert, you need 4 things:
|
| 1. A suitable environment
|
| 2. Lots of iterations (which is what I think the parent post is
| about, but it isn't the 100% story)
|
| 3. Timely feedback
|
| 4. Always being just at the edge of your comfort zone, "the
| goldilocks zone" of comfort
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| This article mostly rehashes what others have said about
| deliberate practice spending 80% on describing what it is and not
| how to do it.
|
| The final 20% is just do spaced repetition and something about
| 10,000 hours by Gladwell.
|
| There doesn't seem to be anything of value here that hasn't
| already been said.
|
| I was waiting for the "how" the whole time.
|
| So, dear reader, how do you do deliberate practice?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Spaced repetition is useful, there's a level of nuance beyond
| that with interleaving and variation that hasn't really hit the
| mainstream of podcasters trying to hype research yet.
| https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/ has some good
| nuggets.
| danielvf wrote:
| Your overall goal is to improve your ability to do some larger
| task. Larger tasks tend to be able to be broken down into
| smaller tasks. Improving your ability on smaller task tends to
| make you better at the larger task.
|
| So what you do is find a way to:
|
| - somewhat isolate a smaller task
|
| - then focus on doing that smaller task with ONE particular
| focus or improvement in mind
|
| - have feedback on how it went
|
| When feedback is present and you are paying attention, you will
| tend to fairly naturally improve.
|
| Repetion is good, but repetition in different circumstances is
| much better for learning.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is 99% of the content from fs.blog.
|
| Remember when they were writing constant articles about mental
| models... that didn't contain a single mental model?
| Zetice wrote:
| The article was _so_ long, if someone here read it top to
| bottom I would be very impressed.
|
| The "how" is taught in a lot of places without those people
| knowing what they're referring to; immediate feedback. In golf
| this takes the form of a launch monitor of some kind. You have
| to know when you do it wrong, and the faster you know the
| easier it is to correct.
| burnished wrote:
| Write down the definitions of words with citations into a kind
| of personal glossary, drilling down until I have a concrete
| understanding. I typically put the definitions into a
| spreadsheet, one column being a direct quote from the reference
| and another being my own definition - this is typically more
| like color commentary and connects to other concepts or even
| just journals my own journey of exploration.
|
| I check it first for word (or acronym) definitions and it
| reinforces the whole thing.
|
| I have found it effective for doing deep dives into academic
| topics (so many medical research papers) and tech.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Deliberate practice is practice + an evaluation feedback loop.
| If you aren't analyzing how you are doing and using that to
| feed back into your practice you are just practicing. The use
| of a coach\teacher\oracle as the evaluator is important because
| of the DK effect, higher skill people generally are better at
| evaluating a performance making the feedback loop better.
|
| So in general: practice activity, evaluate performance, come up
| with drill to improve weaknesses identified during evaluation,
| do drill, repeat.
| queuebert wrote:
| It's very simple: figure out what you suck the most at, and
| practice that carefully until you don't suck as much. Rinse and
| repeat.
|
| The things you suck the most at are usually painfully obvious.
| greyman wrote:
| Yes, exactly. How to design such training for some specific
| area, that's still an uncovered topic.
| piva00 wrote:
| Or just some guides for some topics, even a few examples of
| how deliberate practice for X might look like is already much
| better information to start your own practice than these
| aloof principles. It's great to know the principles if you're
| also aware on how to apply them, if there's no path to
| application it becomes mostly noise...
| galleywest200 wrote:
| This is why "self help" books are so rarely helpful. They
| often lack concrete, actionable steps that you can take and
| simply provide faux-epiphanies.
|
| I do not doubt this author's words, but they did not
| provide much "concreteness" here.
| rwnspace wrote:
| Love doing something so much that noticing what you are bad at
| and putting attention into picking up your performance in that
| area comes naturally (inspired practice is more effective than
| 'deliberate'). Along with the intelligence to solve those
| issues effectively and the wisdom to ignore what's not so
| important. Rinse and repeat for x units of attention.
|
| Source/flex: that's what got me into the top .01% of multiple
| pursuits, or into a decent percentile with not that much time
| invested.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| What are you good at?
| HPsquared wrote:
| There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here.
| thatoneguytoo wrote:
| Sorry for kinda hijacking this, but it is the main reason I am
| building trydeepwork.com, to actually put deep work or
| deliberate practice into actual "practice".
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think of deep work (as described by Cal Newport) and
| deliberate practice as being similar or connected? I could
| see deliberate practice being deep work, but deep work
| doesn't necessarily have anything to do with deliberate
| practice.
| valval wrote:
| Only things I've done "it" for were matters of physical
| exercise - first indoor rowing utilising an actual coach and a
| progressively overloading program, and now for running
| utilising ChatGPT as my coach, as sort of an experiment.
|
| I suppose the "how" is really boring, and that's why none of
| the resources talking about deliberate practice really seem to
| dive too deep into it. For my rowing practice it was simply
| getting feedback from the coach constantly regarding form and
| doing checkups for my pacing and current condition. I'm more
| interested in this running practice with ChatGPT, where I aim
| to keep it updated on my current progress on the program we
| came up with together, and ask for advice on possible
| adjustments.
|
| After all the difference between deliberate practice and any
| old practice seems to be the progression and constant feedback
| from someone who knows what they're doing.
| scastiel wrote:
| I just read the first paragraphs, and added it to my reading
| list!
|
| I heard about deliberate practice for the first time in Cal
| Newport's "Deep Work". I'm a developer and coding is a perfect
| discipline where deliberate practice can apply.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I agree coding is a great discipline for both deep work and
| deliberate practice.
|
| I would draw a distinction between the two. Deep work is about
| achieving the focus and attention to do serious work.
| Deliberate practice is about the motivation and effort to focus
| on improving your skill set.
|
| You probably know this from Cal Newport's excellent book, but
| for others. Two great but distinct mental tools to add to your
| kit.
| scastiel wrote:
| Agree, deep work !== deliberate practice, but it turns out
| they play very well together :)
| OldManRyan wrote:
| Feedback is a requirement for deliberate practice and I have
| a damn hard time finding a place to get good coding feedback.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Great point.
|
| Code review gives some commentary on result, but process
| wise it's a solitary activity.
|
| Perhaps this was some of the benefit of the mostly
| abandoned practice of pair programming?
| Mimmy wrote:
| Having had a few years of intensive, classical-trained piano
| lessons at a young age, the notion of "deliberate practice" has
| also just meant "practice" to me: break down what you're learning
| into its separate parts, figure out which part you're weakest at,
| try to further isolate that specific thing into its own exercise,
| then do it slowly, gradually increase the pace, gradually re-
| incorporate the aspects you removed, play that part with the
| preceding music, play that part with the postceding music, play
| it without the sheet music, etc. Each step should feel
| uncomfortable at first, and once you get comfortable with it you
| move on to the next step until you can play it perfectly without
| any thought.
|
| Kahneman has already touched on this, but obviously not all
| skills are predisposed to this type of practice. IIRC, this
| method of learning is useful for skills with shorter feedback
| loops (e.g. music, dance, gymnastics, some aspects of sports,
| etc.) and neutral to practically useless for skills with longer
| feedback loops or that can't be clearly broken down into its
| constituent parts (e.g. investing, science, entrepreneurship &
| innovation, etc.)
|
| I wish all skills could be learned this way--it's the method of
| learning I'm most comfortable with. But of course, life is not
| always so easy.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| IMO, those things you listed where deliberate practice doesn't
| work aren't technical, nor really "skills" so much as acquired
| "wisdom"
| simonw wrote:
| Decided to use this to try out the new gpt-3.5-turbo-16k model:
| curl -s 'https://fs.blog/deliberate-practice-guide/' | \
| strip-tags -m | \ llm --system 'Turn into a step by
| step guide' \ -m gpt-3.5-turbo-16k
|
| Here's the result:
| https://gist.github.com/simonw/d065b356c59eb76ab7c2166bef0c2...
|
| More on the tools I used here:
|
| - https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/larger-context-openai-mod...
|
| - https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/18/cli-tools-for-llms/
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| That is cool Simon! I have had a TODO, for a while, to try your
| command line tools.
| agentultra wrote:
| For deliberately practising programming problems, I keep a
| spreadsheet and a journal. The spreadsheet tracks the problem,
| the difficulty level, the time it took me to solve it, the
| algorithm I used to solve it, and notes. I use the journal to
| dive in deep by explaining my solutions to someone who has never
| encountered the problem before. I'll often re-test on problems
| I've solved before and see if I can get a better time, use a
| different algorithm, or something else.
|
| I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on the
| card and the algorithm to solve it on the back. This is to train
| me to read through lengthy, puffy, problem descriptions and get
| straight to the point.
|
| ... but I usually only do this when I'm preparing for interviews
| or feel like I need to sharpen up. Deliberate practice is one of
| those things where you can turn up the heat for a while but
| you'll need to take a break at some point and let it sink in to
| your subconscious.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > I also use flash cards where I put the problem description on
| the card and the algorithm to solve it on the back.
|
| Have you used space repetition software (SRS) before? You're
| 90%+ there already. You build up a deck of cards with a "memory
| prompt" on the front and the "memory" on the back.
|
| The software tests you on the deck and passes your results
| through an SRS algorithm that estimates your "forgetting curve"
| that predicts when you'll forget a memory.
|
| Then, right before you forget, it'll reprompt you to refresh
| the memory.
|
| I use Anki off-and-on and love it.
| agentultra wrote:
| Yes, I use Anki for these for sure. It's great!
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Cedric Chin changed my mind on deliberate practice. Or maybe he
| pointed out the obvious to anyone who has tried to apply it to a
| mushy domain. DP is premised upon having a teacher and
| pedological method that you can hit hard.
|
| Otherwise, you have to do something not quite DP. But that's ok,
| because in a mushy domain just acquiring the tacit knowledge that
| the experts have will put your far ahead ( because the
| pedological method and real coaches don't exist yet).
|
| But yeah, it's not deliberate practice and reading books on
| deliberate practice might not help you much.
|
| https://commoncog.com/tacit-knowledge-is-a-real-thing/
|
| Here is my random programming take on it:
|
| https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yes, having a teacher and method matters. As a cautionary tale,
| I tried to teach myself touch-typing years ago without either,
| and it was a disaster. I invented my own 'hover' method using
| the wrong fingers for the keys, practiced extensively, and as a
| result ended up having to unlearn bad muscle memory which is
| much harder than learning the right muscle memory from the
| beginning. This is apparently also a common problem for people
| who try to teach themselves the violin.
|
| Unfortunately even finding a teacher doesn't necessarily solve
| the problem, as a fair amount of teachers end up passing on bad
| habits they themselves learned and adopted. However, if a
| teacher can clearly explain the rationale for taking a certain
| approach if a student asks about it (without getting upset
| about having their authority/method questioned), that's a good
| sign.
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| I don't get it. I learned "touch typing" after playing a lot
| of games and frustrated unable to type quickly to reply to
| teammates or argue with opponents... forced to use Vim and
| SSH in college and ended up getting pretty good with "just
| keyboard." It's probably just an environment problem
| sometimes. I guess my method is to learn angrily, rage
| against dying of light.
| sarchertech wrote:
| Are you touch typing correctly though. I assume not based
| on the quotes. My younger brother did the same thing you
| did. He's very very fast, but he doesn't use all his
| fingers and many of his movements are inefficient. He'd be
| even faster if he was using the correct technique.
| gczh wrote:
| Cedric Chin is massively underrated on the topic of Deliberate
| Practice. He literally has a whole bunch of a gem of articles
| on the topic of Expertise, which Deliberate Practice falls
| under.
|
| See: https://commoncog.com/expertise/
|
| I wished more people knew about his writings - so much to
| benefit from!
| baconforce wrote:
| Is the membership subscription worth the cost?
| wenc wrote:
| As someone who's mid career trying to navigate corporate
| life and understand the hidden whys in business, I think
| so. I think of it like a Patreon or Substack. The blog has
| changed my mental model for the better on quite a few
| subjects and has changed how I view the world. I think it's
| worth the spare change that I have.
| zigman1 wrote:
| I don't think he is that underrated? His blogs often get
| quite high on HN
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Thank you for the link!
| thor_molecules wrote:
| Whoa how cool to spot you in the wild on HN! I listen to your
| podcast, thank you for the awesome content.
|
| When I was younger and more idealistic I took a chance and got
| a bachelor's in music. It didn't work out, but when I later
| became a programmer, one of things I took with me was this idea
| of "total immersion" - e.g. just hanging around and
| listening/watching the more experienced people do their thing.
|
| Nice to see that I'm not alone in this idea!
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Thanks for listening!
|
| Yeah, I think immersion works, but I'm not sure how to make
| it not a huge time sink. It feels like its a slow path as
| measured by hours invested, but sometimes It's the only way.
| thor_molecules wrote:
| Yeah the huge time sink aspect is definitely real. It gets
| much harder to justify when you already working 40+ hrs a
| week or have kids or whatever.
|
| Going back to the earlier analogy, music has the same
| problem as programming in that the stuff you do for money
| doesn't necessarily translate to making you better at your
| craft. You end up being a factory that just produces the
| same thing over and over instead of growing in your craft.
|
| I see this a lot at my job currently (I'm guilty of it as
| well) - speed is usually prioritized over anything else,
| and so bad patterns end up getting copied and "lifted and
| shifted" everywhere.
|
| It's hard to find the balance.
| wenc wrote:
| Exactly. It's easier to deliberately practice skills in closed
| domains or with an established pedagogy like piano where there
| are clear feedback loops. It's harder to deliberately practice
| an open domain like doing business. That's where you have not
| only to learn from experience but learn the right things from
| experience in the context of that experience.
|
| Just because something worked doesn't mean it will work all the
| time. You also have to learn the context it worked in and
| reason analogically. Cedric calls this concept instantiation
| and there's more to it than that but it's been a useful
| corrective to my previous adulation of first principles only
| thinking (which also only works in some circumstances and not
| others)
| raincole wrote:
| The funny thing is that most people who use the term
| "deliberate practice" don't even read Peak.
|
| When they say deliberate practice, they just mean practice. Or
| practice with focus at most.
|
| Deliberate practice isn't just practicing extra hard. Remember
| the original research is about violinists.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Deliberate practice isn't just practicing extra hard.
| Remember the original research is about violinists.
|
| So, what's missing ?
| aliasxneo wrote:
| Anders Ericsson, in his book Peak, states that having a coach
| is not optional. It's a core piece of the puzzle and people
| will plateau fairly quickly without one. It's a very
| interesting problem for software engineering since it's not
| typically an area I see a lot of coaching in.
| inadequatespace wrote:
| PhD training teaches people how to not plateau, as (1) it
| teaches one how to focus on the unknowns (in that context, in
| the entire field, so one can dig into them; more easily
| applicable to one's own knowledge) and (2) teaches one how to
| learn without professors / classes, which mostly consists of
| evaluating the quality of textbooks and/ or research papers
| in a field, and also how to skim at just the right level so
| as to learn what one needs to know.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That depends on the domain. For technical skills where rapid
| feedback is required during performance, coaching is critical
| and even reviewing video of yourself immediately after the
| fact is much worse. For non-technical things where skill
| involves knowing the correct combination of simpler actions
| to take to achieve a complex objective, coaching is helpful
| but not required.
|
| Nobody is going to succeed at gymnastics without a coach, but
| you can totally reach a high level in a game like chess just
| by reviewing your games afterwards, reading theory and
| studying the games of past masters.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Speaking of which, I last took a programming class 20 years
| ago; has the pedagogy there improved any? It was quite terrible
| back then.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Feels like there should be a dedicated role for this at tech
| companies, like instead of it being an undefined thing that
| senior engineers have to do to mentor juniors but isn't really
| rewarded in most cases when it comes to promotions because it
| isn't visibly "high impact" to management.
|
| so instead split it off into a specific role that selects for
| people who enjoy teaching. I think it would appeal to people
| looking for lower stress for maybe a slight pay decrease
| compared to a standard engineering role
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Interesting to compare with how the UK army approaches
| training. Simplifying somewhat, it has dedicated schools that
| do trade-training for specific categories of soldiers (e.g.
| infantry, armour, artillery, etc). Soldiers go to these after
| basic training (how to be a generic soldier) when they have
| chosen their military specialisation. They then return as
| they go through career progression to do trade-specific
| professional development (e.g. going from tank driver, to
| gunner, to commander, etc).
|
| Crucially, as soldiers (non-commissioned) go up through their
| rank structure (corporal, sergeant, etc) they can take
| instructor courses back at the schools that qualify them to
| do on-the-job training back in their parent units (and which
| increase their pay). The best of these instructors may be
| invited to undergo additional training that qualifies them to
| become an instructor at one of the schools. So some
| responsibility for training is fundamentally baked in to
| career development.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| As a rule, on the modern world we study too much on the
| beginning of our lives and too little after it.
|
| I don't think that model specifically can be adapted, but
| yes, it is a real problem and people should be thinking
| about ways to solve it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think a lot of it is that, in a modern world where we
| don't have kids out in the fields or milking the cows, we
| want something for them to do before sending them off to
| college (for which they need prep but probably not 12-13
| years of it). And, on the other side, companies aren't
| really incentivized to do a lot of training of employees
| who will probably be gone in 3 years anyway. And the
| employees are often not really rewarded for doing
| training rather than their day job.
|
| The military example is probably instructive because
| that's a case where a long-term career in a given
| military is relatively common.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > The military example is probably instructive because
| that's a case where a long-term career in a given
| military is relatively common.
|
| Figures from the last decade [0] show that half of all
| British Army recruits will have left after four-to-five
| years service, and only 23% make it to ten years.
|
| One reason (not the only one) for the military emphasis
| on training is they can't fully utilise their skills in
| peacetime, unlike most other professions.
|
| [0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/u
| ploads/...
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough though I'm guessing those are still fairly
| high numbers compared to industry in general. People with
| over ten years are probably something of an outlier at
| most companies these days so 23% still seems like quite a
| few.
|
| >One reason (not the only one) for the military emphasis
| on training is they can't fully utilise their skills in
| peacetime, unlike most other professions.
|
| That makes sense. I attend conferences and the like which
| is training to some degree. But training in the sense of
| actual courses of some sort wouldn't be a lot of use to
| me at this point in general.
| loeg wrote:
| Mentoring juniors is both an explicit job requirement and
| rewarded during the performance cycle / promotion
| consideration at my employer.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| > https://earthly.dev/blog/golang-streamers/
|
| This is a great list. Some of my all time favorite hackers in
| there such as Casey Muratori and Andreas Kling.
|
| Something that I have realized as I have gotten more
| experienced, is that things take time. I tried to shortcut my
| learning through every trick in the book and while I did manage
| to get pretty good in the first few years of hacking, only
| after I was close to 10 years of programming did I start
| noticing patterns and have an instinctive understanding of what
| to avoid and what to do.
|
| In other words taste formation is a function of building hard
| things over a period of a very long time. There is simply no
| way of short circuiting that.
| lordofuniverse wrote:
| I didn't go through the article completely, but I know it's
| seriously underrated. One of the things the article probably
| didn't mention is it's ability to reduce stress. Quite often I've
| noticed that i get stressed as I make no progress on my goals.
| With deliberate practice / deep work, i see myself making
| progress on a daily basis. Slowly, but definitely.
| ehnto wrote:
| There is reassurance in knowing you did what you could in a
| day, especially when you give yourself boundries to make sure
| it's sustainable. Such boundries should make sure you have
| space to do the work, but also that you are happy and not
| wearing yourself down, have good balance on other things in
| life. Long term goals take time, burning yourself out is pretty
| rapid.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| I'm sorry to be a spoilsport, but is there any _evidence_ that
| deliberate practice rather than ordinary practice is any good? I
| happily believe that one can easily convince how good you are
| doing--really killing that practicing---but how do I know it is
| any better than dumb practise. It all sounds like a cargo cult to
| me. What is really happening is that some people have talent, but
| rather than accepting that genetic reality we are telling
| ourselves this fairy tale that they must _do_ something
| different.
|
| I just saw the schwarzenegger documentary on netflix. n-time
| world champion in body building. Do you want to know his secret?
| 3 sets per day, of 7 hours total, for years on end. Nothing
| deliberate about it.
| raincole wrote:
| You can tell this is a self-help article without substance or
| actionable guidance from the title alone.
|
| (I read it and yes, the "title gut feeling" is spot on)
| phazy wrote:
| At least for me, another element of deliberate practice holds
| true: Deliberate practice scales nonlinearily with time and
| effort.
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| I think the key here is that you only deliberately practice
| things that you really, really want. Things that you want so bad
| that you obsess over them and you wake up realizing you've been
| dreaming about them. I quit a comfortable software job to take
| about 9 months off to devote to piano recently. Every free moment
| I get, I'm throwing myself in the waters. It's really hard to
| push through the painful points of learning stuff if you're not
| obsessed.
| danvayn wrote:
| I think the real key to top performance is to learn to get over
| the aches of practicing and training yourself to get engrossed
| in a range of subjects. Piano is good practice but I usually
| recommend something more dopamine efficient.
| pyrale wrote:
| I deliberately practice a lot of things that I'm not obsessed
| with, it's really useful when I'm overwhelmed with a new field
| (e.g. learning a new framework), to isolate a small bit I want
| to master and try several different ways of doing it, and
| document my findings.
|
| That allows me to not see what I'm trying to learn as an
| obstacle to what I'm trying to achieve. It removes a lot of
| frustration, since that shifts my view of the task from being
| an obstacle to being the goal itself.
|
| I'm not sure I would say that I focus on deliberately
| practicing the same few skills as often as the author of the
| article does, though. Usually, even for the few skills that I
| have deliberately practiced for a long time, my focus has been
| on exploring variations or adaptation to new context. That is
| because I aim for adaptability rather than having muscle memory
| of a skill.
| julianh65 wrote:
| I wonder how one would apply this to programming, I'd like to
| continuously improve my programming but not sure how to apply the
| ideas from this to it. I could see it being a thing for something
| very measurable like competitive programming, yet if I wanted to
| deliberately practice different aspects of software engineering
| is there anything specific to do besides building larger and more
| ambitious projects?
|
| Perhaps purposefully creating small toy projects with "harder"
| aspects like concurrency, graphics, compilers etc... would help?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| It's so strange that there's this whole realm of technical terms
| and scientism for what amounts to something so simple: In order
| to get good at some thing, you need to do that thing.
|
| >Ah, yes, but _Deliberate Practice_ aims to scientifically
| deconstruct each skill into some identifiable set of particular
| components
|
| Yeah, whatever. Most knowledge is tacit, but go ahead and try to
| impose reductionism onto everything. If all you have is a
| hammer...
|
| >Do you have a citation for most knowledge being tacit?
|
| Nope, I'm just a skilled fool. Probably learned my skill in the
| most inefficient way possible - by just diving in and doing it.
| Go ahead and keep appealing to Dr. Doctorson. Amongst all his
| academizing, I'm sure he's formulated the most scientifically
| sound way to acquire a skill. Trust the science.
| konschubert wrote:
| I think you're missing the point.
|
| The point is that you can get much more out of every hour of
| practice if that practice is deliberate.
|
| If you're paying attention to what you are doing and you are
| checking yourself.
| anthomtb wrote:
| > Nope, I'm just a skilled fool. Probably learned my skill in
| the most inefficient way possible
|
| You're saying it yourself right here. Just going out and "doing
| the thing" is not a time-effective way to learn. Nor, on
| average, is it going to get you to the top of whatever
| discipline you are pursing (with the known caveat that certain
| disciplines do not lend themselves to deliberate practice).
| kmac_ wrote:
| Let's make this simpler: if you want to become an athlete, you
| need a training plan.
| Lewton wrote:
| > In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that
| thing.
|
| Doing the thing is not enough to get good at it
|
| I've played guitar for 25 years and I'm shit at it, because I
| thought "just doing the thing" was enough
| selykg wrote:
| Likewise. Had I taken it seriously at 16 when I started I'd
| be a significantly better guitarist. Instead of noodling
| actually practicing important concepts in a fundamental way
| that matters to improving. Music theory like keys and chord
| progressions, triads, scales (to some extent), timing and
| rhythm, etc.
|
| You can certainly "practice" this stuff, but if you sit down,
| even for 10 minutes with a real deliberate intention it'll
| matter way more than noodling. Present me is kicking myself
| for being stupid when I was younger.
| bedobi wrote:
| Really empathize with you! It does seem like you really
| want it, in that case, allow me to encourage you to start
| now. Literally 10-20 minutes of actual practice every day.
| You'll quickly improve.
| selykg wrote:
| Trying! I've been taking lessons for about 8 months.
| Unfortunately, due to work, my practice routine has been
| very hit and miss. I'm starting to try to find ways to
| work it in during breaks for work, using flash cards and
| such to just take a minute or two to review the knowledge
| specific bits. Then I have a plan for ways to utilize
| some of that knowledge and applying it on the guitar when
| I sit down.
|
| Slowly but surely, I just need to really get a routine
| going. Thanks for the encouragement!
| buildsjets wrote:
| I've found Rocksmith to be great help for practice. Lots
| of drills to run, and instant feedback on performance.
| Fantastic for working on chord transitions and timing.
| Not a replacement for professional instruction, but a
| useful tool. Very easy way to take a 15 minute practice
| break, all you need is a laptop, guitar, interface cable,
| and headphones.
| scns wrote:
| > Present me is kicking myself for being stupid when I was
| younger.
|
| Stop doing that please, it only spoils your mood.
|
| Your old self did the best it could. Acceptance and
| Kindness towards yourself will feel better and and better
| uses of your mind.
|
| What keeps you from deliberately practicing now that you
| know better?
| [deleted]
| neuronerdgirl wrote:
| When I was a kid, I had a coach that would always say
| "Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent." I
| feel like that captures the difference here pretty well. If
| you practice something 10,000 times poorly, you're just going
| to engrain that poor performance to "expert" level. You can't
| magically get better at something just because you do it over
| and over, there has to be some evaluative component that
| shifts your actions over time.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > In order to get good at some thing, you need to do that
| thing.
|
| Professional musician here. Practice for one person is not the
| same as practice for another; and the resulting outcomes are
| different. There's reductionism that serves and there's fussy,
| pedantic reductionism. I'm not saying the latter doesn't creep
| into this field (as in any) but by and large the distinction
| between just doing the thing and deliberate practice is
| significant. I've seen countless students just repeat repeat
| repeat their repertoire; and I've seen students employ
| principles of deliberate practice - highly focused, super-
| specific, acutely aware. The results are strikingly different.
| So I don't think it's excessively reductionist to account for
| those differences.
| Xeamek wrote:
| Extremely incorrect and yet extreemely Smug, everyone's
| favorite internet personality!
| louissan wrote:
| Reminds me (somewhat?) of the principles by Ray Dalio.
|
| "If we want to improve a skill, we need to know what exactly has
| to change and what might get us there."
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Why do people reference the '10,000 hour'? It instantly reduces
| your credibility because that number was made up.
| Sakos wrote:
| > Why do people reference the '10,000 hour'? It instantly
| reduces your credibility because that number was made up.
|
| It's just short-hand so we're on the same page and we all know
| that we're talking about the same thing. Shared knowledge is an
| important place to start from in order to communicate.
|
| As for the exact number? Who cares? The number itself is
| irrelevant. Whatever the number is or what it might actually be
| (as if there could ever be one single number for it), it
| doesn't invalidate the ideas that it's associated with. This
| tired criticism is tired.
|
| The article even addresses the number directly:
|
| > Although the backlash against Gladwell's calculation has
| arguably been exaggerated, it's important to stress that
| research into deliberate practice emphasizes quality of
| practice, not quantity. It's all too possible to spend 10,000
| hours engaging in a skill without serious improvements. For
| example, most of us spend hours per day typing, yet we don't
| see continuous improvements in speed and quality because we're
| not using deliberate practice.
|
| > The useful takeaway from the "10,000 hours rule" is simply
| that it takes a lot of work to become the best. There's no
| magic number of practice sessions, and everyone's path will
| look different. Just because successful people in a given field
| have spent around 10,000 hours practicing their key skill, that
| doesn't mean every person who practices that skill for 10,000
| hours will become successful.
|
| But you probably didn't even read it before coming here to
| complain, did you?
| tasuki wrote:
| > Deliberate practice is what turns amateurs into professionals.
|
| No, charging money is what turns amateurs into professionals.
|
| Amateurs do a thing because they love it, professionals do it to
| get paid. In my experience, amateurs are often more capable than
| professionals.
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