
It takes more than practice to excel - Multics
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140728094258.htm
======
mcone
I think this confirms what a lot of us intrinsically felt: Some people are
just better at certain things than others. Jeff Bezos came to this realization
while he was in college:

"Intent on becoming a theoretical physicist and following the likes of
Einstein and Hawking, he discovered that although he was one of the top 25
students in his honors physics program, he wasn't smart enough to compete with
the handful of real geniuses around him. 'I looked around the room,' Bezos
recalls, 'and it was clear to me that there were three people in the class who
were much, much better at it than I was, and it was much, much easier for
them. It was really sort of a startling insight, that there were these people
whose brains were wired differently.' The pragmatic Bezos switched his major
to computer science and committed himself to starting and running his own
business." [1]

[1]
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html)

~~~
gaelian
I would have thought it pretty obvious that some people have in intrinsic
"gift" in certain areas. This is completely obvious in physical sports and I
don't see why - considering that our minds are underpinned by the physical
structure of our brains - that this wouldn't also be the case when it comes to
mental activites as well.

Just because I may not have the intrinsic gift that allows me to become the
best physicist or investor in the world doesn't mean that I couldn't get
pretty damn good at it if I put the time in, though. It doesn't necessarily
mean that I would enjoy what I was doing any less.

I remember hearing about a study that I think was by Claudia Mueller and Carol
Dweck[1] that basically found that praising kids for being smart (i.e. having
an intrinsic gift) was far less effective than praising them for putting in a
good effort (i.e. putting in the time and practice). While it is
incontrovertable that some people do indeed have an intrinsic gift for certain
activities, I think we should not lose sight of the apparent fact that just
about anyone will do better when this view is at least not assigned greater
importance than the need to put in a good effort. Lest we unintentionally
start sending messages something like "Oh, well you're obviously not as gifted
as Michael Jordan at Basketball, so you should probably not even bother
learning the game at all." That's an intentionally exaggerated example to get
my point across, but particularly when it comes to early childhood development
I believe we should not underestimate the effect of even a stray word of
encouragement/discouragement. I know that such words had a definite effect on
me at an early age if they were from the right person - e.g. an authority
figure - and often more of an effect than the authority figure assumed their
words had at the time.

1\.
[http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/](http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/)

~~~
watwut
There are things you can become damn good at it if you put the time in. Those
are definitely worth doing professionally. But, there are also things you can
get mediocre at best if you put in excessively lot of time. Those are not
worth trying to do professionally, although hobby is another matter.

On the other hand, I think that we underestimate childrens ability to get up
again after failure or isolated stray word of discouragement. Telling children
they sux one too many times will lower their self-esteem, sure. However, most
of them will recover from hearing something slightly discouraging once in a
while just fine.

~~~
gaelian
> On the other hand, I think that we underestimate childrens ability to get up
> again after failure or isolated stray word of discouragement. Telling
> children they sux one too many times will lower their self-esteem, sure.
> However, most of them will recover from hearing something slightly
> discouraging once in a while just fine.

For sure, I would even go so far as to say discouragement is a normal part of
life and if one was to shelter a child from all forms of discouragement -
assuming that's even possible - then that child would probably not be very
well equipped for life generally. This is an interesting issue as well, but I
think it's orthogonal to the main point I was trying to make.

------
zvrba
I think the key is "deliberate practice" \-- google it; but here's an OK
article: [http://www.fastcompany.com/3020758/leadership-now/why-
delibe...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3020758/leadership-now/why-deliberate-
practice-is-the-only-way-to-keep-getting-better)

But before learning about 'deliberate practice', I had first heard a saying
that "practice makes permanent". You have to practice with the actual
intention of getting better and perfecting your technique, otherwise you're
just strengthening the old habits.

Some context for the rest of the text: my hobbies are aikido and an old
Japanese sword art, so I practice sword cuts a lot (wooden sword, no target --
yet).

Deliberate practice is hard, it's taxing, both physically but _also_ mentally.
It requires not only that you focus on _what_ you're doing but also
consciously focusing on _how_ you're doing it. By focusing on what and how
simultaneously, you can draw a causal connection between the result (what) and
how you achieved it. If you're not satisfied with the result, then you try to
modify the "how" in a variety of ways until you feel the result has gotten
better.

This is mentally taxing and absolutely _not_ fun. You're watching yourself
making mistakes in real time, the mind wants but the body cannot (yet).
Sometimes you even need to get a fundamentally new idea about "what" or "how"
in order to break the (current) barrier. Suddenly an advice that you got from
a teacher a year ago, and which didn't make sense then, makes sense NOW.

And after having practiced for a while (usually up to 50 min; different
exercises), I notice that I have reverted to "blind" practice, that I can no
longer focus on "how", regardless how much I try. That's when I stop,
regardless of how much "real time" has elapsed.

\---

Trying to write ten thousand different sentences will make you a better writer
than writing the same sentence ten thousand times.

~~~
jwdunne
That's the thing that stuck out for me in the article. It mentions practice,
but there is no distinction from deliberate practice. It may well be that the
highest performers did more deliberate practice, which totalled less practice
overall.

The last sentence of your comment sums up my thoughts exactly.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
It's completely unfalsifiable and therefore useless. There's no objective way
to categorize practice as deliberate or not. It's just some stupid buzzword.

~~~
epochwolf
Just because there's no simple objective way to categorize and measure
something doesn't mean it's automatically invalid.

------
phatbyte
To me one factor that matter a lot is motivation, or a goal to achieve
something.

In my field I see a lot of people coming into CS just because it's trendy and
they will sure have a job after graduation. But they lack the motivation to do
something in that field. A lot are just in it because the pay is great and you
can around computers all day..

I remember when I was 9 I had a goal, I wanted to make a game. I didn't even
have a computer back then, but I knew I wanted to make a game so others could
play it. I remember spending afternoons drawing level design, characters and
how the game would work once I had my own computer. I never actually made a
game but I loved the idea of creating something for other to use.

When I was 14 (now with a Pentium 100mhz good times) I wanted to be an hacker
(hehe), so I learned C, Socket programming, I wet my feet into Linux, I
started messing around deamons like email, web server.

When I was 18 I needed money, my parents couldn't afford to pay my tuition. So
I created an app, to add my empty Resume and got hired by a software company
to develop web apps.

Tens years fast-forward and here I am today, still making apps that people can
use and still learning everyday, working for an awesome company, having my own
small software-shop on the side and doing what I love to do.

I may not excel in my field, I may not be disruptive (haha), but I truly love
what I do and can't honestly see myself doing anything else.

I just wanted to say that's fine not to excel or to be in the top 10. If
that's your goal, go for it, but as long as you love what you do and have
something that motivate you I'm pretty sure you will do just fine.

------
kappaloris
A funny thought: this is a very obvious thing for people who follow the
competitive scenes of (valid) multiplayer games. There are lots of cases where
progamers get to a high level of skill after an amount of practice that
absolutely would not be enough for other people. In the end it's not dark
magic, they just tend to already have the right mindset (and experience from
other games for example) to make the most of their practice.

An iconic example is the team (Na`Vi) that won the first big DotA2 tournament.
The game was in closed beta and professional DotA1 teams got a key at
different times. Navi got their key just 1 month before the tournament while
other teams got theirs way before. Still, 1 month was enough to beat all other
professional teams.

There's a lot of interesting things that one can learn from esports, even just
from the sheer amount of data generated (dota2 has almost 10M unique monthly
players).

~~~
suby
Quality of practice is also important, and probably a major factor in your
example. My knowledge and skill will be vastly different if I spend 500 hours
playing against the best players in the world, compared to spending 500 hours
playing in Bronze league (does Dota2 have a bronze league?).

------
jwatte
If we believe in evolution as expression of genetic traits, And we believe
that intellectual capacity has evolved, Then we believe that intellectual
capacity is a generic trait.

(Remains to determine whether intellectual capacity genetic trait varies like
"has two arms," or like "height," and of course to try to pin down how to
measure it, and count how many "its" there may be.)

~~~
klodolph
And our best theories indicate that genetic disposition for intellectual
capacity varies between individuals much in the same way that "has two arms"
varies between individuals. That is, there are a lot of genes involved and if
one of them is changed, you're more likely to end up with missing or malformed
arms than you are to end up with super arms.

Or what I'm trying to say is that there's no gene for "smart", just like
there's no gene for "has two arms".

~~~
bjourne
That is reassuring. But do you have any references for that? The only study I
can think of is the one where it was showed that Ashkenazi Jews had higher
intellectual aptitudes than other ethnic groups. Which would prove that
intelligence is on a scale and not on/off. Of course, the result is highly
contentious and was criticized on various grounds. One of them being that it
is very hard to discover whether a trait is due to genes or the environment.

------
ivotron
From Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow": practice AND feedback.
Without feedback, you don't know how well/bad you're doing

~~~
rvn1045
Yes feedback is the most important thing. One thing I notice between people
who get good at something and people who don't is that the people who don't
just keep doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expect
different results. However the people who do get good at something, keep
making small little tweaks day in and day out based on their performance.

------
RachelF
A lot of it is in the DNA. Here's a study where they compared twins, some who
practise music and some who didn't:

[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/2160625...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21606259-musical-ability-dna-practice-may-not-make-perfect)

~~~
kenjackson
Except this test doesn't actually test musical expertise. Recitals make way
more sense. Out would be like testing how good one programmed by how fast they
typed.

------
jamesrom
"Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect." — Vince
Lombardi

------
arh68
I've thought about this for years, since hearing about Gladwell's 10khrs rule.
I recently started reading _The Inner Game of Tennis_ , and I think it's
clarified what's going on here. It's obvious the trend is related to
_physical_ , not intellectual, skills. Playing violin, soccer, archery, etc.
The 'deliberate practice' concept basically boils down to clearing up
interference between Self 1 & Self 2 [1]. You have to maintain the constant
feedback loop, where you are aware of what you are playing, you hear the
notes, and you make small adjustments to Self 1. The opposite of this, the
useless kind of practice, is where you tell Self 2 to shut up and keep making
endless adjustments, never _listening_ to the feedback.

This state of mind, 'conscious unconsciousness', trains your Self 2 to
execute. I don't know why it takes so long for the subconscious to learn, but
muscle memory does develop.

Most people think these people are training their Self 1, as if studying music
theory will guide their hand, unconsciously, up the scales. It doesn't work
that way. You can't memorize a compound bend on guitar, you can't memorize a
double stop on a violin. Self 1, as important as it imagines itself, cannot
play music all by itself. There are far too many notes in any song to
consciously focus on each one as it passes. You have to rely on muscle memory
to get you through.

Keeping that feedback loop open is about as hard as maintaining averted vision
in the night sky. Or staring into a Magic Eye. You've got to relax _and_
focus.

[1] you'll have to read the book. Self 1 observes & directs, Self 2 executes.
Roughly, Self 1 is conscious, Self 2 is subconscious.

------
jmulho
“But Macnamara and her colleagues found that practice explained 12 percent in
mastering skills in various fields, from music, sports and games to education
and professions. The importance of practice in various areas was: 26 percent
for games, 21 percent for music, 18 percent for sports, 4 percent for
education and less than 1 percent for other professions.”

This is just stupid. Suppose I take a test to see how many pairs of three
digit numbers I can multiply correctly in one minute. Then I practice
multiplying three digit numbers for one hour twice a day for two weeks. Then I
take the test again. How much will I improve? 100%, 200%, 1,000%? How close
will I be to having “mastered” the skill of multiplying three digit numbers?
Is 28 hours enough? Maybe I am just not able to master a skill that is so
difficult to master. Let’s suppose I’ve got the right stuff and I am able to
master this particular skill. Now convince me that practice explains only 12
percent of my success!

------
jkscm
There are many threads here discussing the influence of genetic factors but
this is not what the article is about. Genetic factors are not mentioned in
the article. One of the last paragraphs states other possible factors
explicitly:

> Her next step is to find out what factors contribute to being an expert on
> an instrument, playing field, in the classroom or at work. She hopes to
> investigate such factors as basic abilities, age when starting to learn the
> skill, confidence, positive or negative feedback, self-motivation and the
> ability to take risks.

I think the whole nature vs nurture discussion in relation to intellectual
aptitude is shaped to much by peoples own biases which leads them to ignore
the overwhelming evidence for the importance of nurture/culture/eduction/...

Maybe it's easier to believe some people are born smart.

------
programminggeek
I don't think anyone who has ever truly excelled at something would attribute
all the success solely to practice, but I don't think anyone who truly
excelled did so by not practicing either.

Sports are a great example of this. A great athlete is often...

One part genetic gifts - if you are tall basketball might work well for you,
if you're short maybe a horse jockey would be a more sensible sport.

One part intuitive skill or affinity - some people naturally are good at
throwing a baseball fast or really love to kick a soccer ball. Some people
just aren't.

One part opportunity - I've never had an opportunity to do curling, but I've
played football and basketball. If my parents were world class martial
artists, I'd probably be pretty good at martial arts.

One part practice and experience - a good amount of skill acquisition can only
come from doing and refining that skill. You can read about how to run long
distances, but at some point you just have to put in the miles. The more you
do, the more you learn.

One part obsession - to be the best in the world, you have to have a
ridiculous amount of determination. Most people don't have that for most of
what they do. The ones who reach the highest levels tend to go beyond
determination to obsession. Read about how Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan
practiced and prepared and you realize that they weren't just doing
"deliberate practice", they were obsessed with greatness and that obsession
drove them beyond what anyone else was willing to do.

One part luck - even if everything else aligns you can get hurt, something
else could sideline your career, you might fight a drug addiction or have
family problems or an illness. Also, being lucky enough to get certain
opportunities come your way at the right time often plays a big factor.

When you have all of those things come together you have something special. We
can all recognize it simply because it's rare.

When we try and reduce everything down to a simple idea like "deliberate
practice" that might sell a lot of books, or make for interesting papers, it
really doesn't tell the whole story.

I think the human mind wants to reduce complexity to simple things because it
makes the story we tell ourselves about the world easier to understand, but
it's the complexity that makes it all so fascinating in the first place.

------
agumonkey
I suck at music. But I suck 1000x more when I started. I love the
enlightenment phases a non-genius like me goes through when he passes a
landmark. First swing, first rubato .. Even without excellence, it's totally
worth it.

------
parasight
It would be interesting to know a way to pick the skills one can excel in.
10000 hours of deliberate practice is a huge investment. I'd rather invest it
in something I can excel in.

------
sidcool
The discussion here sort of disheartens me. Does it mean that I will be what I
was born with? I would like to believe otherwise as it gives hope to achieve
greatness, in spite of it not being in my genes.

~~~
walterbell
The difference with humans is that we can modify our environment, which means
we can and do modify the fashions of greatness. Hence the many opinions
telling us what is cool today.

To exercise free will one must decide which "choices" are deterministic (i.e.
not actually choices) and which are open to imaginative innovation. It is the
definition of greatness which is personal, not its achievement.

In the words of Heinz von Foerster,
[http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html](http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html)

"Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide."

------
sp3000
Why can't we just admit that some people are born with certain genetic traits
that allow them to excel in certain fields? Practice would accentuate those
gifts and is vitally important, but let's not pretend everyone is capable of
everything if they just practiced more.

Hell, even the ability to commit to extended periods of practice requires
certain genetic ability. Most people are not born with the ability to
hyperfocus like Bill Gates and work for 24 hours straight like he was able to
do during the early days of Microsoft.

We accept ADHD has genetic components, and so the ability to focus for
extended periods of time (which is what practice entails) is inherently easier
for certain people.

~~~
Mangalor
> Why can't we just admit that some people are born with certain genetic
> traits that allow them to excel in certain fields?

Because throughout all of world history there are many examples of people
taking that logic too far in order to consider certain races, certain sexes,
and people from certain lands as inherently mentally inferior, and in the
worst case, exterminating them in the form of a proposed "solution" to the
"problem".

People strongly hesitate around this sort of talk for a reason.

~~~
obvious_throw
It's scientific fact that intelligence as measured by any manner of g-factor
psychometry has heritability correlates of between 0.4 and 0.5. Furthermore,
studies such as the Minnesota transracial adoption study show clearly that
these correlates apply within racial groups, having fully negated
socioeconomic and parenting factors. We have willfully ignored reality per the
ideological dictates of progressivism for the last fifty years.

Feelings and ideology trumping reality may work for a while, but it can't last
forever when faced with competition from groups and nations that harbor no
such illusions, such as the Chinese, who are investing in their genetic
research labs to investigate the genetic origins of intelligence so as to
benefit their own population generations hence. We, on the other hand, are too
frightened to even _talk about_ such investigations. Much to the detriment of
our own future.

------
caster_cp
I really, really thought that the article contained practical tips for excel,
the MS Office Excel

------
spaldingwell
That's because being a master at something requires something science can't
quantify: you need to care.

I don't mean pedestrian caring. I mean a deep, rich relationship between you
and what it is you practice. That caring translates into focus, attention,
deliberation etc.

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that
counts cannot necessarily be counted." \- Albert Einstein

(PS - I'm hinting at Heideggers phenomenology here. You can watch a great
documentary introduction to it here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-rmGy9gWvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-rmGy9gWvE))

