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The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

commoncog.com

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Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#11

Post by shadowsun7 »

If you want alternatives to DP that work much better, it might be worth it to take a look at:

1. The Tacit Knowledge Series (which argues that methods from Naturalistic Decision Making are more useful when you are in a skill domain with no good pedagogical development) https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/

2. Accelerated Expertise — which covers methods from the military to accelerate expertise acquisition (and, yes, some of it uses DP principles, but it isn't really DP) https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#12

Post by skmurphy »

TameAntelope wrote: post #7

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing…

Thanks for sharing this it's a very helpful summary on deliberate practice.

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#13

Post by skohan »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #11

If you want alternatives to DP that work much better, it might be worth it to take a look at: 1. The Tacit Knowledge Series (which argues that methods from Naturalistic Decision Making are more useful when you are in a skill domain with no good pedagogical development) https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ 2. Accelerated Expertise — which covers methods from the military to accelerate expertise acqui…

Not to bring politics into a HN discussion, but based on their recent outcome in Afghanistan, I'm not sure if the US military is an organization I would currently turn to for insight.

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#14

Post by throwawayatwork »

TameAntelope wrote: post #7

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing…

Incidentally, Ericsson's 2019 paper cites a Hacker News comment. We've come full circle.

'10,000 h' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of genius. It’s not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things if they want to, by practicing enough

Hacker news, (2017). Hacker News Post by "Paulpauper". Available at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855422 (accesseed March 4, 2019).

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#15

Post by shadowsun7 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #7

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing…

I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post.

In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Well, has there been a few decades of pedagogical development in your field so that you can be coached like with chess or math or tennis? NO? Ok, you're tough out of luck. No DP for you!

So the real question is: if you are working in marketing or management or leadership or computer programming, all of which are domains that matter to our careers, these domains do not have good pedagogical development — so how do you get good?

The answer to this, at least from one branch of expertise research, is to extract mental models of expertise from the heads of domain experts, and then turn those into training programs. This is a far more tractable training approach. See: https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ for a summary (note: Paul Feltovich is one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson; he's one of the authors of the book).

For a full survey of the approach, see the Oxford Handbook of Expertise https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019... (as opposed to the Cambridge Handbook, which is the Ericsson school.)

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#16

Post by shadowsun7 »

skohan wrote: post #13
shadowsun7 wrote: post #11

If you want alternatives to DP that work much better, it might be worth it to take a look at: 1. The Tacit Knowledge Series (which argues that methods from Naturalistic Decision Making are more useful when you are in a skill domain with no good pedagogical development) https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/ 2. Accelerated Expertise — which covers methods from the military to accelerate expertise acqui…

Not to bring politics into a HN discussion, but based on their recent outcome in Afghanistan, I'm not sure if the US military is an organization I would currently turn to for insight.

Most of these techniques are co-developed in industry applications, and are seeping out from military research into business. In tech, John Allspaw has done a huge amount to take these training methods and skill-extraction techniques and adopted/applied it to resilience engineering. (https://twitter.com/allspaw and https://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/)

Not paying attention to research with military provenance seems rather silly. What matters more are the questions: does this work? Where has it been tried? And can I apply it to my company or career?

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#17

Post by TameAntelope »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #15
TameAntelope wrote: post #7

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing…

I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post. In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Wel…

You mean these? https://i.imgur.com/2tWApHA.jpg

I've not done more than cherry-pick from them, admittedly, but I've always had a pipe dream of writing articles about concepts within, as a way of teaching myself.

I don't think practicality is a necessary component of truth. It may be true that, should you stumble upon a way to deliberately practice something, you will grow your mastery of that thing regardless of talent, and it may also be true that finding a way to deliberately practice something is nearly impossible without decades of effort.

What I believe you're talking about is called "tacit knowledge" and the work around how people can effectively transfer that knowledge from one person to another. One classic anecdote is of the pilots who were able to find success by "pretending" to be their instructors -- doing exactly as they thought their instructor would do, without really knowing why, and obtaining more positive evaluation results than by trying to do everything "as themselves".

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#18

Post by vaylian »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #15
TameAntelope wrote: post #7

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with this article - it seems written as a hit piece on Deliberate Practice, but doesn't live up to that by more or less pointing at various works and saying, "That seems crazy!" Anders Ericsson passed away in 2020, but fortunately in 2019 he wrote a comprehensive article describing his journey through the discovery of deliberate practice and how it evolved over the ensuing…

I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post. In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Wel…

Thanks for the additional explanation! Could you give a short definition of what you mean by "pedagogical development"?

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#19

Post by shadowsun7 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #17
shadowsun7 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post. In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Wel…

You mean these? https://i.imgur.com/2tWApHA.jpg I've not done more than cherry-pick from them, admittedly, but I've always had a pipe dream of writing articles about concepts within, as a way of teaching myself. I don't think practicality is a necessary component of truth. It may be true that, should you stumble upon a way to deliberately practice something, you will grow your mastery of that thing regardless of tale…

I've actually been putting some of the CTA methods mentioned in the Oxford Handbook to practice! See: https://commoncog.com/blog/john-cutlers-product-expertise/ for one accounting; I'm currently trying it out with an international Judo coach right now, on technique analysis. (We can't meet due to COVID, since I cannot fly to him, so what I want is to extract his ability to perform video analysis, so that I can perform it on myself and on other competitors).

If I were to summarise why the CTA/Oxford Handbook approach is more tractable, it is this: you don't 'stumble' into a way to deliberately practice something — you do 'pedagogical development'. But pedagogical development is hard! One of the things that I've found most perplexing about Ericssons's work is that, in Peak, he provides an accounting of a skill domain (memorisation competitions) that experienced pedagogical development during his time. Thanks to that pedagogical development, DP techniques could be used in the domain. But he spent no time talking about the pedagogical development!

So I've concluded that it's simply too hard to do good pedagogical development. Better to adopt CTA methods, which already work, and use those to design training programs for myself.

And while it's too early to tell (check back in a few years) I think it's more fruitful.

Re: The Problems with Deliberate Practice (2020)

#20

Post by TameAntelope »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #19
TameAntelope wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean these? https://i.imgur.com/2tWApHA.jpg I've not done more than cherry-pick from them, admittedly, but I've always had a pipe dream of writing articles about concepts within, as a way of teaching myself. I don't think practicality is a necessary component of truth. It may be true that, should you stumble upon a way to deliberately practice something, you will grow your mastery of that thing regardless of tale…

I've actually been putting some of the CTA methods mentioned in the Oxford Handbook to practice! See: https://commoncog.com/blog/john-cutlers-product-expertise/ for one accounting; I'm currently trying it out with an international Judo coach right now, on technique analysis. (We can't meet due to COVID, since I cannot fly to him, so what I want is to extract his ability to perform video analysis, so that I can perfor…

Okay, I'll admit I was too harsh initially, you and I are certainly both interested in this topic, and I suppose I'll keep reading as you write more about your exploration here. :)

Good luck, if I ever find more free time I hope to do a lot of the same work you're doing here, I find this topic extremely fascinating!

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