21–30 of 73 posts
> [...]
> I have an IQ below 105.
> I also graduated with a degree in Mathematics and received Highest Honours.
> [...]
> And the answer is ‘No'!
https://www.quora.com/Can-you-become-a-brilliant-theoretical...
One word: play. I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. Similarly, I have mediocre results when my schedule only allows BJJ classes but markedly better results when I can just go “play” Jiu jitsu with others. Just go get reps doing something you love, in an experimental and playful manner.
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…
One word: play. I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. Similarly, I have mediocre results when my schedule only allows BJJ classes but markedly better results when I can just go “play” Jiu jitsu with others. Just go get reps doing something you love, in an experimental and playful manner.
The standard BJJ classes (warm-up, technique of the day, sparring) are pedagogical black holes (BB here), anything else decent enough is better.
I am a MA practitioner myself (Aikido, 32 years and counting) and while I am always interested in the pedagogical aspect even if I rarely held a lesson myself.
(And yes, I know that BJJ is very different from Aikido, but at the end of the day, I see lots of other arts - including Karate, Judo... Aikido etc. - being taught as warm-up/a handful of techniques from the curriculum/sparring...).
“Second, the deliberate practice research makes an awfully attractive claim: that anyone, given enough determination, can become good at any skill. They merely have to do lots and lots of difficult deliberate practice.“ I am not sure if people on deliberate practice agree on precisely that claim, but perhaps they would agree on “Anyone can become better at any skill, given that one does deliberate practice”. Whether…
I would rephrase it: If you want to be good you need a lot of practice. The way to mastery is paved with failures. You need to invest a lot of time and energy before you can even begin to evaluate. Don't waste time on too early self-evaluation. Don't waste energy with useless doubt. Your body and brain are very adaptable much beyond what you normally experience.
In the end it's a balance of doing the things right and doing the right things.
Talent certainly differentiates the top levels competitive environments when everything else is held equal. However, in these environments, I can see where deliberate practice can move someone who is less talented into the top nth percent of performers. They may not be among the best, buy they're close enough that someone who is untrained or less disciplined doesn't stand a chance against them. Given that the distribution of material rewards generally doesn't follow a winner takes all model, like what you see with sports, deliberate practice can should eventually create significant competitive and material advantages.
What happens, though, in creative fields such as writing, where engaging in deliberate practice doesn't necessarily improve your craft or your end product? A part of me questions whether the deliberate practice that many prospective writers, such as MFA students, do on a daily basis really helps them write a best seller - or even a quality literary work.
The same could also apply to tech startups. Would it be a good idea for early-stage entrepreneurs to do daily coding challenges? Or, over a long period of time, would they be better off trying to consistently create something that they then test on the market?
> the effect sizes from deliberate practice far dominate when compared against innate talent, genetics, or other factors We won't settle this in the comments section of HN so I'm not even going to try. I'm just curious how this is percieved by ordinary pepople in your home region. I'm from Romania and generally people here see innate talent as a higher limit to performance, and practice is the way to reach it.
One word: play. I didn’t go to Unix school or do practice reps of building networks. I stayed up late nights building weird and sometimes nefarious projects. Similarly, I have mediocre results when my schedule only allows BJJ classes but markedly better results when I can just go “play” Jiu jitsu with others. Just go get reps doing something you love, in an experimental and playful manner.
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…
Thanks for the additional explanation! Could you give a short definition of what you mean by "pedagogical development"?
This body of knowledge is built up over time, usually through trial and error. It is then passed from coach to player and coach to coach.
The dirty little secret of DP is that it cannot be done in domains where no good pedagogical development exists. This is a definitional thing. You may read more about it in Peak, Ericsson's popular science book on the topic (summary: https://commoncog.com/blog/peak-book-summary/)
I want to repeat this, so it is very clear: you cannot do DP in a domain where there is no good pedagogical development.
So: rock music, jazz, some aspects of computer programming, software architecture, marketing, leadership, management — all of these are domains with under-developed pedagogical development. Don't get me wrong — there are experts in all of these domains. But they got there through trial and error and reflection, not DP (see: cognitive transformation theory for an explanation of how that occurs here: https://commoncog.com/blog/the-hard-thing-about-learning-fro...)
If you want to do DP, you would have to come up with training techniques for all of these skills, and test them over a long period of time. In other words, you would have to do pedagogical development yourself before you can do DP.
One other implication: anyone who says "oh, just go do DP" is likely someone who has not a) looked at the research closely, or b) not actually tried to put it to practice.
Applying DP is a lot harder than you might think.
Anyway, once you understand this, you may now pursue two different lines of inquiry:
- How do good coaches do pedagogical development? I recommend John Danaher to give you a taste: https://youtu.be/ktuw6Ow4sd0?t=2396 (on developing new techniques) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktuw6Ow4sd0&t=6211s (on his creation of the leg-lock system)
- How do you develop training without pedagogical development. And for that I recommend my tacit knowledge series (https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/) and my summary of Accelerated Expertise (https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/)