
Not All Practice Makes Perfect - DiabloD3
http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/not-all-practice-makes-perfect
======
YeGoblynQueenne
Something I've noticed, which the article doesn't quite say (but sure hints
at): you can accidentally teach yourself performance-degrading "techniques" if
you keep practicing beyond a certain point.

I used to study (modern) drums 5+ hours a day. This would happen sometimes,
around the time when I was learning a new technique: I'd start on the new
material, practice it for a while, then I'd get it to a so-so point and I'd
stall there making the same mistake over and over again. At that point I would
have to stop and play something else and only come back to the new material
the next day, otherwise it would take me weeks to get past the plateau.

The thing is, I think, when you practice, your body (or, I guess, your mind)
doesn't know what you're learning- whether it's good or bad. Maybe for dancers
or athletes there is some physical feedback, some pain from doing the wrong
thing, but for many other types of performance there isn't and so it's very
easy to just practice the wrong thing and learn it really, really well.

~~~
Ma8ee
I think it is a common mistake by people starting to learn for example an
instrument. You play the new piece, often a bit too fast, and make a mistake.
Then just repeat in the same way, making exactly the same mistake over and
over again. The hope is that if you play it enough times and put in enough
effort you will cease making the mistake. That is of course wrong. Instead you
learn the mistake really really well.

What you should do is to play it slow enough so you are sure not to make any
mistakes. Sometimes that is ridiculously slow.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
agreed, practicing slow enough to get it right is the most important thing for
sure. once thats in the bag, then the problem becomes getting it up to speed,
and techniques you were using at the slow pace can be non-viable past certain
tempos. for me, getting it up to speed involves constantly interspersing the
slow flawless practice with attempts that are right on the threshold of what i
can do, tempo wise.

~~~
laxatives
That seems surprising. It's not like there's a discrete threshold between
"able" and "too fast". I'm not a violin player, but just about anything I can
play slowly on a bass or piano, I can also play quickly, given enough
practice, even if it means I can only initially play it at quarter or third
speed with a metronome. Aside from some virtuouso performances, I think any
beginner/intermediate player with a decent ear and headphones/sheet can play
any piece at quarter speed. It seems like muscle memory is one of those things
you really can achieve through mindless repitition with good technique, while
theory requires a lot more focused practice.

edit: Okay, disregard that, the above comment is completely different and I
guess I agree now.

~~~
nitrogen
An example of the parent comment's point: learning a piece slowly but with
poor fingering or posture can lead to one's fingers getting tangled or
becoming exhausted and stiff when trying to speed up.

------
Jugurtha
I thought it was way too verbose going over too many examples to make a simple
point. "Okay, I get it, what used to be exceptional is now just "meh".. Get to
the point"..

It didn't address the actual matter, the one in the title, that not all
practice makes perfect, until very far in the article.

I then thought about an article that would have given much more information
with fewer words, a seminal paper entitled "The Role of Deliberate Practice in
the Acquisition of Expert Performance" by Anders Ericsson.

I was then surprised taking a look at the article's author.

~~~
afarrell
Thank you for reminding me of that paper's title. Jacobian mentioned it to me
at PyCaribbean, but I've since been hunting for it.

It is available for free at
[https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/...](https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice\(PsychologicalReview\).pdf)

~~~
Jugurtha
Oh, you're very welcome. This paper sent me down the rabbit hole: after
graduating as an incompetent Electronics Engineer, I thought about the essence
of competence and I stumbled upon this article. I'm always happy when I find a
resource that addresses an abstract idea I'm thinking about but can't
formulate for two main reasons: it always opens a door -if it has a name, it
can be searched effectively- and it always amazes me how come I didn't think
of it before.

For instance, after graduation, I read a book titled "How to Study in
College". Why didn't I ask such an obvious question before. I learned many
things, one of which is the Cornell Note-taking method.

I've always been interested in how to search for, acquire, and _keep_
knowledge, how to apply it, how to manage it, and how to track its evolution
-mental breadcrumbs, which idea lead to the other?-

So it got me interested in how memory works: how we forget, how we remember,
and what to do about it. It led to Hermann Ebbinghaus and "spaced repetition".
I wasn't satisfied, though, for I wanted to know the underlying brain
processes. The neuroscience behind it. This led me to Hebbian Theory and the
concept of Long Term Potentiation. (The Brain from Top to Bottom -
[http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/](http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/)) which frankly blew
my mind to a thousand shards: memory viewed in terms of _ions_. (Here's a very
nice video from Carleton College "Neuroscience - Long-Term Potentiation" :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vso9jgfpI_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vso9jgfpI_c))
and here's a good presentation by Carleton's Dr. Matthew Hollahan: ("How We
Can Improve Memory":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXX58QhNfjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXX58QhNfjc))

In the meantime, I put a name on the discipline: Cognition/Cognitive
psychology, etc..

That was good, but I still wanted to think about it in a "meta" way. Some
overarching theme or discipline that englobes other things I might be missing.
After some time, though, I stumbled on "metacognition", and here's where it's
truly amazing how the mind works: How didn't I make the connection before
between "cognition" and "meta-cognition" even though "meta" was the very word
I used to think about it. It's the very thinking about thinking and was
humbled because I missed such an obvious link. I have already met that word
before and read about it, but it didn't "click" until that very moment.

This has also driven me to think about "learning" in a larger context:
learning organization and learning countries. Why are some countries more
evolved than others, etc. (Which led me to a book titled "Why Nations Fail"
(again, how on Earth did I miss such an obvious question). How can we make
poor countries better, or asked from another perspective: in a post-
apocalyptic world where all countries are the same, what would we do to
rebuild civilization? How to bootstrap civilization? Can we take those steps
and apply them on difficult countries. (Bill Gates was on Jimmy Fallon and the
latter asked a marvelous, in its form, question: How do you solve a poor
country?).

It got me thinking about the necessity of having some conditions A and B
present to have X and those conditions being absent in poor countries, you
can't have X. It then got me thinking about it backwards: Given C and D, can
we get Y that's either a substitute for X or something at least better than
nothing. First thing that popped in my mind was the Apollo 13 carbon dioxide
filter hacking. After some time, I stumbled across an article titled "The
Genius of the Tinkerer"
[[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487039893045755037...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703989304575503730101860838)]
and it appears there is a company called "Design that Matters" that does just
that. It also was interesting to see the Apollo 13 feat mentioned. Steven
Johnson has also some talks on Youtube and a book titled "Where Good Ideas
Come From".

Anyway, the point is you never know where a piece of content can lead to and
it can be frustrating to forget some of those references or the title of an
article.

Here are some useful resources, too:

[Book]: The Complete Problem Solver - John R. Hayes. [Book]: Make it Stick,
The Science of Successful Learning - Peter Brown et al. [Video]: Study Less,
Study Smart - Marty Lobdell ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-
zDU6aQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0)).

------
beefman
> The approach that he took, which we will call "purposeful practice," turned
> out to be incredibly successful for him. It isn't always so successful, as
> we shall see, but it is more effective than the usual just-enough method —
> and it is a step toward deliberate practice, which is our ultimate goal.

The article then concludes with a description of _purposeful_ practice. Where
is the promised description of _deliberate_ practice?

~~~
cjfont
I too was left disappointed and wondering the same thing when I came to the
end of an otherwise great article.

My best guess is that anyone can do purposeful practicing simply by changing
things up and staying out of one's "comfort zone", whereas deliberate practice
is more or less the same thing, with the difference being that you have an
experienced mentor guiding you through the process in a more structured manner
with a tight feedback loop.

~~~
nostrademons
In other articles I've read about deliberate practice, the other elements
include:

1\. Maintaining a difficulty level that is just barely out of your comfort
zone: not so hard that you flail wildly, but not so easy that it's trivial.
This is touched upon in the article, but presumably "deliberate" practice also
deliberately adjusts the difficulty level in response to performance.

2\. Mindfulness while you're practicing. The description of "purposeful"
practice in the article mentions seeking out errors and correcting them after
the fact. The descriptions of "deliberate" practice I've heard mentioned
paying careful attention to your performance _while you 're practicing_, so
you can instantly correct or rehearse trouble spots. (And this requires a
corresponding attention to the difficulty level so that you can spare this
attention to avoiding & fixing mistakes.)

------
krosaen
The article keeps hinting at deliberate practice including,

> The approach that he took, which we will call “purposeful practice,” turned
> out to be incredibly successful for him. It isn’t always so successful, as
> we shall see, but it is more effective than the usual just-enough method—and
> it is a step toward deliberate practice, which is our ultimate goal.

but then cuts off before it actually describes deliberate practice... guess
they want you to buy the book.

~~~
foxhop
I literally said the same thing to my wife after reading this article out loud
to her.

"I guess I will have to buy the book!" Laughing as I assumed there was a book.

I will likely research this topic further whether there is a book or not.

Slightly related, I'm trying to learn how to read faster. My first goal is to
become an average reader in terms of speed. My wife is an elementary teacher
with a master's in remedial reading. I'm going to see if she can help me.

One issue that she noticed with my verbal recitation is that I stumble when
reading sentences with conjunctions.

Now I have something to work on and fix which I hypothesize will increase my
speed, and likely comprehension, and should reduce my chances of stopping and
rereading sentences.

~~~
sml0820
The article did not do a thorough job pointing to the new book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-
ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-
ebook/dp/B011H56MKS?ie=UTF8&keywords=PEAK%3A%20Secrets%20from%20the%20New%20Science%20of%20Expertise&qid=1461467170&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-
text&sr=1-1)

Also, I would recommend Moonwalking with Einstein which has fair bit of
information on how to learn.

------
onion2k
Really interesting. I wonder how you could use a similar technique to improve
your code? Things like code reviews would give you the necessary feedback, but
I can't think of a rigorous way to make sure you'd always be on the limit of
what you're capable of, pushing a little further with each project.

~~~
ams6110
Most of the challenge in writing code is in understanding the problem you're
trying to solve. Not the act of entering statements into editors.

Yes it's important to know the capabilites of your language and deployment
stack -- but that just requires study, which in my mind is different from
practice. I've never found that coding well required the sort of intense
dedication that learning to play an instrument well, or play a sport well,
requires.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
> Yes it's important to know the capabilites of your language and deployment
> stack -- but that just requires study, which in my mind is different from
> practice.

I agree. Which is maybe why Stackoverflow solves so many problems for a
developer. You know what you want to do, you know how you want to do it. But
you're stuck because you can't make sense of an API or don't know where to
look for the functions you need.

------
6stringmerc
Argh, I wish I could find a citation right away but having trouble in search -
while I get the example (memorize X amount of numbers) and discovering there's
an upper bounds is understandable. But what I had in mind was a musical
instrument, in that there are a finite number of notes and how those notes can
be played in a harmonious fashion. The study I saw, or think I did, showed
that when performing a music solo some musicians were able to turn off the
'active' part of thinking about the notes to play. It was some different
mental channel. That would, to me, explain how a guy like Freddie King could
play a song like Hideaway for 45 minutes with his band and people would enjoy
it.

Quite a cool article. Lots to consider. Phrase around my 'woodshed' was always
"Practice makes better" though because perfect and guitars don't really ever
align.

------
synthematics
One of my trainers always said 'Practise does not make perfect - practise
makes permanence. Only perfect practise makes perfect'.

~~~
michaelcampbell
I'd wager most of us who have had training in something had a trainer that
said that. I can't imagine one that wouldn't; like "use the best tool for the
job", it's one of those trite sayings that makes one sound wise.

------
b1daly
A learning phenoma that I find fascinating is learning things that seem
impossible. I experienced most in music, learning rhythmic independence. Most
instruments require this skill, but where I really noticed it is trying to
play and sing songs where the rhythms are disimilar.

Upon first attempts, there is simply no ability to perform the task at all. No
purchase on which to begin efforts. But somehow the trying to do it eventually
does work, and will manifest as a breakthrough.

This is in contrast to practice if of skills where a path of incremental
improvements is followed. (As described in the article when learning to
memorize strings of numbers).

What's strange is that the beginning attempts feel like you're not learning
anything, because you actually aren't doing anything that seems similar to the
action you are trying to learn.

------
notacoward
For those who might have missed it, one of the authors (Ericsson) is the same
person who originally came up with the "expertise requires 10,000 hours of
practice" idea that Malcolm Gladwell later popularized. Unfortunately,
Gladwell mangled it as badly as he mangles everything else. As I had to point
out on another story here recently, Ericsson was talking about 10,000 hours of
highly focused and disciplined practice, carefully analyzing and correcting
errors etc. Thanks largely to Gladwell, many people have dumbed that down to
10,000 hours of any old thing, and it's no wonder that they find the idea
highly questionable. The original makes much more sense.

~~~
TheTrotters
Actually Gladwell presented the idea pretty well in "Outliers". However, it
quickly became a watered-down meme. People latched on the 10,000 hours and
forgot about the deliberate practice part.

------
echlebek
My father always said "Practice makes permanent" and I think he was right
about that.

------
fizixer
Just going after the title, "folk aphorisms" are such pseudoscience, it's not
even funny.

Not that they don't apply, they do. But "many" of the times, not "most", let
alone "all of the times".

And you have aphorisms that are exact opposites of each other, like "birds of
a feather flock together" and "opposites attract".

The end result? people use them more to support their opinions or gut feelings
rather than uttering them after a careful analysis of the situation.

In terms of rigor, they stand at the same level as anecdotal evidence, meaning
something that adds practically zero information to an ongoing situation.

------
xchaotic
To sum up: "it's pretty easy to become average at something just by following
instructions. Getting any better requires a different approach - well defined
baby steps beyond what you're capable of at the moment." From me: Theory is
easy, but altogether it still takes time and those baby steps on top don't
make it easier to excel at something, so few people do. The reward flattens
with level (big rewards early on, very little visible improvement later)

------
ruricolist
The stuff about Cortot is bizarre -- he belonged to a completely different
era, when technical perfection was simply not the goal.

------
e12e
Wasn't there an article on motor skill recently, how practising variations of
a motion (or two different motions) can be wildly more effective than simply
focusing on one single movement? I can't seem to find a hn posting, but this
one is along the lines of what I'm thinking of:

"The Fastest Way To Learn" [http://www.jonahlehrer.com/blog/2016/2/15/the-
fastest-way-to...](http://www.jonahlehrer.com/blog/2016/2/15/the-fastest-way-
to-learn)

While looking, I also came across:

"Why Slow Movement Builds Coordination":
[http://www.bettermovement.org/blog/2010/why-practice-slow-
mo...](http://www.bettermovement.org/blog/2010/why-practice-slow-movement)

"There are several excellent reasons to use slow and gentle movement as a
means to develop coordination. Probably the most interesting reason (I'll
start with that one) is based on an obscure principle called the Weber Fechner
rule. The Weber Fechner rule describes the relationship between the magnitude
of a particular stimulus and the brain's ability to sense differences in the
amount of the stimulus. The basic rule is that as you increase the stimulus,
the ability to tell a difference in the amount of the stimulus decreases. This
is a very common sense idea. Imagine you are in a dark room with only one
candle lit. It will be very easy to sense the difference when one additional
candle is lit. But if you are in a room with two hundred candles, you will
have no idea when an extra candle comes on.

This rule works for all varieties of sensory perception, including sensations
of muscular effort. So, imagine you are holding a one pound potato in your
hand while blindfolded. If a fly landed on the weight you would not know the
difference, but if a little bird landed you would know. Now imagine holding a
fifty pound potato. You wouldn't be able to feel the little bird landing. It
would have to be an eagle. The point is that when you increase the weight from
one pound to fifty pounds, you become about fifty times less sensitive to
changes in the amount of muscular force you are using to lift the weight."

I'm not sure how much it is possible to generalize from pure mental practice
like memorizing numbers to physical practice like playing the piano (like this
article does, without much substance beyond hand-waving about "brains will be
brains", so to speak).

But as mentioned in the comments here, and touched on in the article, it is
probably true that it is important to be able to understand your own ability
and progress (what you do right, what you get wrong), to continue to challenge
one selves (making no mistakes makes for bad practice, but making the _same_
mistakes over and over also makes for bad practice).

I think that for complex skills, one of the easiest ways to get direct
feedback, is to work with someone who is a master already: spar one-on-one
with a world champion, or play with a maestro, pair-program with an
experienced veteran of several successful projects -- and you'll get much more
from your sessions than if you practice alone, or with others that don't know
what they're doing.

We often don't have the luxury of practising one-on-one with a master, and
then the challenge becomes to a) still get correct feedback on what we're
doing, and b) find out what we should be trying to achieve. The latter can
sometimes be helped by looking at videos of people that preform at an
excellent level, reading great code etc.

~~~
tripzilch
Yes, I am reminded of having read the same. Was it not the first link in your
post? The skill subjects had to learn was based on a mouse-like control
operated by squeezing.

~~~
e12e
Quite sure that the link I found was not the one I was thinking of. But I
believe it probably was a link concerning the same paper.

~~~
e12e
Came across the link by accident, apparently I had posted it to my facebook
feed, here's the HN link:

"Researchers have discovered a much faster way to learn new skills"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11168515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11168515)

------
kmitrion
practice makes permanent

