To get better at something, we practice, right? So what happens when we don't seem to be getting any better?
Fundamentally, there's two explanations: you are actually getting better (but it just doesn't feel like it) or you're practicing incorrectly. The first has to do with the typical trajectory of skill acquisition and our performance measures. The second has to do with deliberate practice.
00:00 Introduction
00:24 Linear change is not a good model
01:14 Performance plateaus
01:57 Sometimes it's hard to measure skills
03:00 Deliberate practice
03:07 Identify expert skills
04:23 Challenging practice
05:13 Self-evaluation
06:08 Feedback
07:25 Repeat the steps (especially steps 2-4)
If anyone wants some one-on-one laundry basketball action, I'm game.
Sign up to my email newsletter, Avoiding Folly, here: [ Ссылка ]
References:
For a general guide to deliberate practice, check out my article, here:
[ Ссылка ]
The classic study is:
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363. (currently at [ Ссылка ])
The idea of deliberate practice has been applied to a lot of different domains.
Chess:
de Bruin, A. B., Smits, N., Rikers, R. M., & Schmidt, H. G. (2008). Deliberate practice predicts performance over time in adolescent chess players and drop‐outs: A linear mixed models analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 99(4), 473-497.
(currently at [ Ссылка ])
Typing:
Keith, N., & Ericsson, K. A. (2007). A deliberate practice account of typing proficiency in everyday typists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 13(3), 135. (currently at [ Ссылка ])
Ballet:
Ureña, C. A. (2004). Skill acquisition in ballet dancers: The relationship between deliberate practice and expertise (Doctoral dissertation, The Florida State University). (currently at [ Ссылка ])
For some solid criticism of the concept, see:
Hambrick, D. Z., Oswald, F. L., Altmann, E. M., Meinz, E. J., Gobet, F., & Campitelli, G. (2014). Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert?. Intelligence, 45, 34-45. (currently at [ Ссылка ])
Note that Hambrick and his colleagues still think that deliberate practice is critical for developing expertise. But they do differ with Ericsson over the relative importance of some other factors. There’s also some important points made by Ericsson on how they’re measuring deliberate practice, although I tend to think this is a problem endemic to the deliberate practice literature. Many researchers will just log practice hours (or “time spent working alone”) as deliberate practice when the concept is considerably more nuanced.
The piece below also digs into some of these inconsistencies in the definition of deliberate practice:
Macnamara, B. N., & Maitra, M. (2019). The role of deliberate practice in expert performance: revisiting Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993). Royal Society open science, 6(8), 190327.
(currently at [ Ссылка ])
Chess image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.
