How to do deliberate practice • Hacker News Board

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#31

Post by nandemo » Tue, May 31, 2011, 10:31 PM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #12

wccrawford wrote: post #4

I actually disagree with the 'play perfectly' example. It emphasizes the beginning of the practice and de-emphasizes the end. If playing the whole thing 20 times is boring, imagine how boring it is to play the beginning over and over until you get the whole thing perfect 5 times? Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This…

Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake. This makes it really, really awful if you're playing a recital and slip up just a tiny bit (obviously, you should practice it so you don't slip up /at all/, but let's be realistic here. Even people studying to be performance majors make mistakes in their recitals) - your first instinct would be t…

> Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake.

The key is not making mistakes in the first place! Do slow practice on short passages. If you make a mistake then decrease the tempo (or play a shorter passage) until you can play it correctly. Repeat it until you can't do it wrong. Then increase the tempo.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~schuring/Oboe/practice.html

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#32

Post by Travis » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 12:00 AM UTC

zarastralia wrote: post #9

Something I recently discovered: the secret to deliberate practice is to consciously enjoy it by entering more deeply into the experience. This approach is the opposite of enforced drill. Thus, when you are bored and enjoyment starts to flag, you stop immediately (nothing is lost by this). Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorisi…

Reminds me of the koan, "Wash the dishes when you are washing the dishes."

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#33

Post by zarastralia » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 12:13 AM UTC

Travis wrote: post #32

zarastralia wrote: post #9

Something I recently discovered: the secret to deliberate practice is to consciously enjoy it by entering more deeply into the experience. This approach is the opposite of enforced drill. Thus, when you are bored and enjoyment starts to flag, you stop immediately (nothing is lost by this). Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorisi…

Reminds me of the koan, "Wash the dishes when you are washing the dishes."

In my case, 'flip the cutlery before placing it in the dishwasher.'

But yeah. The problem isn't that learning is unenjoyable, but that we don't enjoy it enough.

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#34

Post by wccrawford » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 11:52 AM UTC

jonprins wrote: post #12

wccrawford wrote: post #4

I actually disagree with the 'play perfectly' example. It emphasizes the beginning of the practice and de-emphasizes the end. If playing the whole thing 20 times is boring, imagine how boring it is to play the beginning over and over until you get the whole thing perfect 5 times? Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This…

Another problem with stopping and restarting with every mistake, is you learn to stop and restart when you make a mistake. This makes it really, really awful if you're playing a recital and slip up just a tiny bit (obviously, you should practice it so you don't slip up /at all/, but let's be realistic here. Even people studying to be performance majors make mistakes in their recitals) - your first instinct would be t…

That's a good point, since the author was also making the point that practice should mirror the skill as closely as possible. In a real orchestra, if you make a mistake, you do NOT hesitate. You keep playing and hope not to make another. If all your practice has depended on being perfect, you have neglected a needed skill.

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#35

Post by bostonvaulter2 » Fri, Jun 03, 2011, 5:50 PM UTC

zarastralia wrote: post #9

Something I recently discovered: the secret to deliberate practice is to consciously enjoy it by entering more deeply into the experience. This approach is the opposite of enforced drill. Thus, when you are bored and enjoyment starts to flag, you stop immediately (nothing is lost by this). Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorisi…

This sounds like a great idea! I'll try to in incorporate it into my practice. I can also draw many interesting parallels between this and mindfullness.

Re: How to do deliberate practice

#36

Post by bostonvaulter2 » Fri, Jun 03, 2011, 5:54 PM UTC

raju wrote: post #19

I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I am not quite sure how to apply it, to say learning a new (programming) language (I have been playing with Clojure for a while now but am nowhere near productive in it). I guess the part that confuses me is the first step - "R stands for Reaching/Repeating" - How exactly would you apply this to learning a new language, framework, algorithm? Folks here on HN - Any…

Similar to what teach said you could apply some of it by trying to code without using the docs as much as possible. But I agree that it's hard to "practice" programming, versus "doing" programming.

So much of programming is working with large complex systems that it isn't that amenable to small drilling techniques.