
Becoming an expert through deliberate practice - wallflower
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/03/expert/
======
GCA10
Bear in mind that Erickson's original research involved classical musicians.
They're competing in a field where high standards were largely defined 150
years ago. Those standards have stayed remarkably similar. If you want to be a
great classical pianist, cellist, etc., you need to put in a lot of time to
rival the performance levels of prior masters like Heifetz or Rubinstein. And,
yes, focusing on the hard stuff (deliberate practice) is crucial.

These insights extrapolate to some current-day fields -- but not everything.
Not by a long shot. It doesn't take 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to get
great at a lot of newer areas where standards are being defined on the fly.
Newcomers with boldness and originality can go a lot further in such
situations.

~~~
sbov
I feel like you might be hinting that software is one such field.

IMHO software's problem is not that it doesn't take 10,000 hours of practice -
it is that it takes much, much more. It can be months (or years!) before you
receive feedback on your decisions. Given this, boldness and originality can
go far not because it's easy to be an expert, but rather because almost no-one
is an expert.

~~~
Scarblac
But hardly anybody in software does deliberate practice, everybody learns on
the job by just trying to solve the problems they are faced with at the time.

Nobody considers what their weaknesses in programming are, invents a program
of exercises to remedy that specific weakness and then does those exercises
every day for a year. That's what deliberate practice is.

The book was about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. As long as nobody in
software does that, it's simply not applicable to software.

~~~
wobbleblob
When you're young and relatively inexperienced, every day you have to figure
something out you don't yet know how to solve. I believe this does the same
thing as the deliberate practice of a musician. Five years of 40 hrs a week or
ten years of 20 hrs a week comes down to about 10,000 hours.

Now that I'm a veteran, I find that at work I spend most of my time at work
solving problems I already know how to solve. I spend some of my spare time on
pet projects doing things that are new to me, but unless they find a cure for
the need to sleep, I'll never have 20 hours a week to spare for this again.

~~~
scarecrowbob
As a programmer and a musician, I feel that deliberate practice is much
different than the day to day practice of working.

Sitting down and playing scales / etudes / method books every day is very
hard, but it's the only way to get better at a quick pace. You can't really
pay attention at that level for more than 4 hours (or, rather, I and most
other humans can't).

Similarly, I've made concerted efforts to refactor procedural code into
functional code, and while that is very difficult conceptually (for me, maybe
not you) it felt very much the same way as doing scales.

Deliberate practice is not the same as just doing work, and just doing work
doesn't make you better as quickly or in the same ways as deliberately
practicing.

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edtechdev
Ericsson's work is classic, but you have to realize A) it is primarily from
the 80s and involved studying things like games or sports or trivial pursuits
where expertise is more likely to be measured, and B) the author of the book
described in this article is Ericsson himself - it's going to be a bit biased.

Here is some more up to date research and information on his theories:

This recent special issue of Intelligence critiques Ericsson's work:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45)

The 10,000 hour rule has been pretty refuted in my opinion. There are so many
exceptions to the rule that it's not really a valid rule.

In fact, one of the articles in that special issue is a meta-analysis that
found no evidence for the 10,000 hour rule. Here's a summary:
[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-
not...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not-
real-180952410/?no-ist)

------
jfaucett
First "expert" should be defined.

If by expert you mean someone better than 90% of all humanity at some task X,
then the time to get to this level could be orders of magnitide smaller than a
95%, which itself is orders of magnitude smaller than 99.9% i.e. (pro/olympic
athletes, concert pianists, etc).

If you don't agree please offer a counter example. Besides all sports, lets
consider juggling. Here, 1-2 hours can make you better than about 80% of the
population, but becoming a passable street juggler will take months, and a
proffesional artists who can innovate as a juggler probably many years.

Essentially, my hypothesis is that improvements in a task X decrease
exponentially over time.

~~~
Jtsummers
Does it actually make sense to define an expert as skill relative to others?
If I define my own programming language and am the only one that knows it, I'm
inherently an expert in it by this definition. I'm better than |world
population| - 1 people with this language. However, I may not actually _be_ an
expert. I could have created something beyond my ability to truly master (or
that I haven't mastered to the level of expert yet).

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jabagawee
This blog has 1058 pages of material. How? Each post has a fairly clickbaity
title and seems to summarize someone else's work/research, but is it really
all one guy working full time on getting this material together? Is he farming
it out to contractors?

~~~
NeutronBoy
First post is in 2009, 5 blogs per page, so 2 posts per day, every day, for 7
years. Not impossible, but you've got to be very motivated.

~~~
Scarblac
He seems to have 1 post per week in recent months though. Slacker.

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xyzzy4
I think the best thing to focus on is how much value and happiness you can
bring to others. Not something self-centered such as expertise that perhaps
nobody else would even notice because it's meta. Expertise should not the end
goal, but instead a facilitator to value creation.

For example, if you're making a song, your thinking should be "I can't wait
until people hear this song!", not "I can't wait to slightly increase my
skill".

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sdrothrock
This reminds me of the phrase "practice makes perfect" and of course, the oft-
repeated correction: " __perfect __practice makes perfect. "

I can't say I'm a fan of the domain name, though. There are certain
connotations you raise in people's minds when you use incredibly common/trite
Japanese phrases within a given subculture for a domain names, especially one
that sounds like "I'm retarded dur dur."

~~~
Ace17
_Practise doesn 't make perfect ; practise makes permanent._

~~~
sdrothrock
Oh, that's a great rephrasing, too. Is it yours? (Curious about the source,
not nitpicking.)

~~~
Ace17
I don't remember where I read this the first time ; but no, it's not mine.

------
kozikow
I would consider programming contests like Topcoder deliberate practice of
some aspects of programming. When writing code at the job I spend maybe 30%
writing code that does stuff and half of that is spent on boilerplate (yeah, I
work in Java). The rest is spent on writing tests, refactoring, waiting for
compilation or code review, etc.

Some people would say "but you write different code at programming contests"!
It's somewhat true - I feel that different parts of my brain are engaged when
working on a "right" edit to a massive codebase. On the other hand, from time
to time there are problems that require writing few hundreds/thousands of
quite dense, relatively greenfield code and then I feel that "Topcoder" parts
of my brain are engaged.

~~~
jasonlotito
Code reviews, when intentional, are deliberate practice. Both reviewing, and
getting reviewed. With deliberate practice, people get caught up in the
practice part, and believe that if they are "actually doing something
productive, it's not practice." But practice is more than that. It's the
intentional application of ideas. The difference between deliberate practice
and normal work is that normal work is, in many cases, boilerplate. It's
things you know. You are doing things that aren't pushing yourself.

Yes, Topcoder and things like that can be deliberate practice, but deliberate
practice is not limited to such things. And those who are successful, really
successful, don't limit deliberate practice to such events.

------
nefitty
Awesome. Just listened to Dean Bokhari's interview with Dan Coyle.
[http://www.meaningfulhq.com/daniel-
coyle.html](http://www.meaningfulhq.com/daniel-coyle.html)

------
eric_bullington
According to the article, a key skill to acquire are proper metal
representations of problems in your field: "You want to be able to clearly and
specifically visualize the right way to do something in your head. This is
what separates the experts from the chumps."

Would anyone like to discuss any particularly effective ways of visualizing
programs or data? Approaches you have found effective?

~~~
teach
In college I got a LOT of mileage from printing out my code (this was in the
90s) and sitting down with a pencil and tracing through statement by
statement.

Draw little boxes for each variable, for pointers, for the stack, whatever.
Change each value only when the execution gets there. Resist the urge to just
skip over -- "this section does such-and-such."

I'm fairly certain it's the only reason I made an A in my assembly language
courses.

~~~
eric_bullington
Great point. On a similar note, I've gotten a lot of use out of stepping
through Python algorithmic code using PythonTutor [1], which maintains a
visual dashboard of stack frames/variables and heap objects. Very useful, was
just using it earlier today.

Doing this manually with a pencil and paper is arguably even better for
learning purposes, although significantly more arduous. I should try it.

1\. [http://pythontutor.com/](http://pythontutor.com/)

------
struppi
It's a great article, well written, and I like the recommendations. Especially
"Find a Mentor"! But I still think deliberate practice is overrated (in some
fiels, especially programming):
[http://davidtanzer.net/deliberate_practice](http://davidtanzer.net/deliberate_practice)

~~~
sheepmullet
It sounds like the photographer in your linked article is advocating
deliberate practice. He is advocating working on improving specific skills in
a realistic setting.

Personally, I find side projects one of the least efficient ways to improve. I
already spend 8+ hours a day "doing" at work. In contrast I spend less than 30
minutes a day at work learning and understanding theory, new concepts, and
different approaches to a problem.

So I get a lot more value from focusing my "free time" on the latter.

------
yodsanklai
1 - some tasks are simple enough that much less than 10000 hours is needed.
Consider every day driving. 100 hours should be enough.

2 - some people are order of magnitude more talented better than others at
some things. Maths or music come to mind. My personal experience: it took me
years of hard working to get decent rhythmic abilities. On the other hand, my
sister (who is a professional musician) had a innate sense of rhythm. She
doesn't even understand how that could be an issue.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that after 10000 hours, one can get close to
its full potential, which varies tremendously among people.

~~~
gdulli
Right. I took to drumming very easily. Like you said about your sister, not
having rhythm is something I don't understand. I think of that as a head
start, but it doesn't disprove 10,000 hours. I do still need all the hours to
reach my potential. Someone else without that head start but who practices a
lot will catch up to me if I don't practice.

Even if I do practice the same amount as them, I expect the difference between
me and someone without the head start would go down significantly over time.

So innate talent is a real thing but it's consistent with 10,000 hours.

~~~
mbrock
I recently started drumming in a hobby band and I seem to have a knack for it.
I'm curious to hear how you've progressed and what kind of practice you do.
I'm just winging it and it's alright.

~~~
gdulli
Drumming wasn't important to me, it was just a fun novelty for a short time. I
knew what it would cost (both time and money) to bridge the gap from talent to
real expertise and it wasn't personally worth it to me.

------
dwc
The conflict between the article title and the domain name is delicious.

------
sjg007
Deliberate practice of algorithms, data structures, math, statistics.

------
dang
This is better than the usual fluff, but obviously we had to change the baity
title. If anyone can suggest a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we
can change it again.

~~~
teach
I agree. The article was _much_ better than would have been indicated by the
original title. I'm glad you changed it or I might have skipped right over!

------
paulpauper
As someone who has spent 10 years writing online with little to nothing to
show for it, this does not work. You need connections, good luck, and or
genetically endowed talents to succeed. More hours will not cut it. Also,
becoming good enough to be an expert requires being better than 99.9% of
people, which by virtue of the Bell Curve is unobtainable for most people. The
chess example may be measuring something else (some other normally distributed
variable) than IQ, with IQ being an important but only secondary factor.

~~~
jasonlotito
> More hours will not cut it

That is not deliberate practice. Merely spending 10 years writing online is
not deliberate practice. Doing something every day is not deliberate practice.

> genetically endowed talents to succeed.

No. You are not born with the ability to write. Mozart was not a naturally
born musician. Tiger Woods did not one day suddenly become a golf pro.

> As someone who has spent 10 years writing online with little to nothing to
> show for it, this does not work.

Spending 10 years writing does not mean you spent 10 years deliberately
practicing. It merely means you spent 10 years writing.

~~~
paulpauper
How does one 'deliberately practice' writing? Using longer words, writing
more? It's not like the most successful writers or writings are the most
complicated. Maybe it's also about 'pitching' ideas, networking, but this
could be seen as a separate skill than just writing. Finding the optimal
linear regression of what people want.

~~~
rrherr
> How does one 'deliberately practice' writing?

See Venkatesh Rao's Quora answer: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tips-
for-advanced-writer...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tips-for-advanced-
writers/answer/Venkatesh-Rao)

“Writing is a skill like any other, and the famous 10,000 hour rule _should_
apply, and it does, but not in the way you might assume. A prolific writer can
usually churn out about 1000 reasonably decent words in an hour, so if you
count in words, it might seem like 10 million words would be enough. Or at 4
hours a day, 250 days a year, about 10 years.

The problem is everybody writes. And yes, things like emails count. So any
idiot can clock that many words in 10 years even if they only do a lot of
casual/work email and texting. ...

What matters is not how much you write, but _how much you rewrite._ ...

The HUGE difference between everyday writing that everybody does and serious
writing is the proportion that is re-writing. I'd estimate that for non-
writers, rewriting accounts for maybe 10-20% of their writing.

For serious writers, it accounts for anywhere between 50-90% depending on how
critical the particular piece is. ...”

