Is deliberate practice all wrong?

Deliberate practice is the key to reaching high levels of expertise. Right? Not according to David Hambrick. New research from him and his colleagues argue that deliberate practice is not really as important as most people think it is. Are they right? Or does the evidence in favor of deliberate practice still fly? Let's get to the bottom of this academic battle!

00:00 Introduction
00:51 Where did the idea of deliberate practice come from?
3:32 David Hambrick's position.
4:38 There are two questions here.
5:37 A flexible definition?
7:23 How do we measure deliberate practice?
8:18 My take.

****GAH! David Hambrick is actually faculty at Michigan State University (MSU) NOT UM. My sincere apologies to him and to MSU.

Watch my other videos on deliberate practice:

Practice more efficiently -

David ("Zach") Hambrick's photo was taken from:

Anders Ericsson's photo taken from:

For David Hambrick’s (and colleagues’!) papers, see:

For Ericsson’s responses to Hambrick’s arguments, see:

For a non-Hambrick and non-Ericsson joint on the Hambrick meta-analysis, see:

For the original piece on deliberate practice, see:

The spelling bee research I mentioned is here:

[benjaminkeep]

For my other videos on deliberate practice, check out:

[gurupartapkhalsa]

@benjaminkeep here's something meta to consider: programming practice. I have about 20 years in the industry. Sometimes, I can write actual "pages" of a program in minutes, other times it can take hours, want to know the difference? It's certainty. Sometimes, you just need to be certain to follow-through without being mentally impeded, even if you know what you're doing. I believe this applies to all arts and trades. Some of the "useless" practice will build a rote mental framework which can be followed with zero resistance, giving the impression of ease. The problem is that if I spent "10, 000 hours" doing only that, the framework I created would be trash. Similarly, if all 10, 000 hours were deliberate, I think the outcome would also be trash, like a violinist who only practiced scales (ad absurdum, I'm sorry), but you get the jist: now, how do I compose a brand new symphony?

[justprocrastinating]

I wish that more channels would cite their sources! It is time consuming but I think it sets a great example as well as providing a basis for further exploration for people that are interested. Thank you for creating this video, it seems like you have a scientific and rational approach to creating your videos.

[toolguy]

A very stimulating video. From my own perspective as a classical musician who "mastered" one instrument and is now working on mastering a new one, I have to say that what one practices and what one considers to be "key skills" are VERY different from one person to another when it comes to something like music. So, generalizing is, well difficult. Also, the assumption that one musician is still an amateur, while another is a master after the same number of years of study is a really inaccurate data point. Even the definition of a "master" is pretty subjective. If someone gets up and plays a difficult piece perfectly for an audience, are they a "Master?" I can point to a number of touring performers in the classical music world that can play about 20 pieces, and they just play those same 20 pieces over and over and over again, and you never see them working with various ensembles. Some of them can barely read music on their instruments. I know others who are unsung heroes who can sight read really difficult music, play extraordinary pieces extremely well with real musicality and understanding of the performance practice, and can improvise a decent accompaniment from just about any given figured bass. We keep coming back over and over again to the fact that a human brain is trying to understand itself, which one could say mathematically is not possible in a finite amount of time. Personally, I am still trying to learn how to learn, and it has been going on for nearly 60 years now. Hmmm.

[RajJohal]

I find your videos quite helpful, in particular the deliberate practice and the expertise attainment. Please continue exploring this subject. Thank you.

[neighbor]

This video is so in alignment with what I want to learn about! As a skateboarding teacher I’m always wondering, how can I improve my teaching methods. Thank you for making this

[noself]

Thanks very much for this video. As a 62-year-old learning how to play guitar, I’m always looking for ways to improve the process.

[KathySierraVideo]

I used to be all-in on the Deliberate Practice train, and embraced the Ericsson version of practice design for more than a decade… teaching both computer science and physical/sport skills based entirely around the linear, incremental, successive approximation model.
But the research coming from both modern Skill Acquisition and artificial intelligence dragged me (kicking and screaming) off that train.
The work on Non-Linear Pedagogy, Ecological Psych, Dynamical Systems Theory in skill acq, Differential Learning, etc. all cast serious doubt on Deliberate Practice for deep skill building in anything that’s truly complex.
If Deliberate Practice reflects a mechanical view of learning, as if mammals were merely *complicated* systems. But research on things like random vs. blocked, whole vs. part, external focus of attention (the most robust finding in the past 40+ years of motor learning research), Differential Learning, Constraints-Led Approach, Perceptual Learning, and especially (for me at least) the newest AI algorithms on Expiration (MAP-Elites is my favorite) ALL cast severe doubts on the underlying assumptions behind Deliberate Practice.
I think Survivorship Bias led us to believe highly-skilled people got there *because* of their Deliberate Practice, rather than *despite* it. Or at the least, a correlation/causation thing.
It was hard for me to let go .
FWIW, I teach both computer science topics and horse rehab 💁‍♀️. Having both human and equine “students”, surfaced a lot of flaws in my earlier beliefs.
This talk I gave many years’ ago is when I was still making the transition:
It’s over 300k views, but now I’m kinda cringe because the Deliberate Practice stuff is still in there AND I was only just scratching the surface of non-linear stuff…
Forgive the rambling 🙏… it’s just rare for me to find places/people talking about this.

[tomdis]

Superb, insightful coaching is the royal road to building the level of discernment and skill required to be a successful "deliberate practitioner". Discernment is king. The self-taught virtuoso violinist has never really existed (with the possible exception of outliers like Ossy Renardy and Albert Sammons).

[episnod]

Thought provoking video. There are very specific skill sets at the deep level of any domain. As a professional musician, I know what needs to happen for my own success, but applying any of it cross domain raises many questions. Are you familiar with distributed practice? Using the entire day to spread out many intense sessions. The interval between focused attention seems to solidify learning.

[NewSuperPaul]

Ericsson provides many examples in his book 'Peak: For Fans of Atomic Habits' to show how deliberate practice should be tailored to the individual, which needs to be flexible. It's mindful, purposeful, and individual. Would also recommend Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers: The Story of Success' to help complete the picture in terms of opportunity, learning environment, and the importance of the right kind of support. For me, the key ingredient is always passion, which is entirely individual and cannot be forced. Without passion, the amount of time you are willing to dedicate to a pursuit is less, and the focus within that time is dimmed. The people we so much admire in sport, music, science, dance and more are compelled to succeed at the highest level. It can become a torment. To quote Pelé :“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.”

[MrKrtek]

just for the record: the wicked vs kind learning environment researchers also put deliberate practice to a very different position (and also there are a lot of documented cases where deliberate practice actually negatively correlates with results)

[srishtyarun]

Thank you, Benjamin, for sharing your thoughts on deliberate practice. :) A question I have is how do we measure difficulty of the practice? Another is how would we know what characterises expert skill?

[bryangrounds]

@benjaminkeep
It's been a few years since I last read Peak, but I think I remember Anders Ericsson highlighting mental models as the real key to expert performance. (Of course, deliberate practice is what most of the book is about - I'm not downplaying the value of deliberate practice.)

For example, someone he worked with to learn how to memorize digit strings developed a lot of little tricks (mental models) for remembering numbers in various contexts. I think this memorizer was able to drastically speed up the path to expertise for a novice by explaining these tricks, rather than the novice having to discover them on their own.

Do you have anything to say about the importance of, or strategies for identifying impactful mental models in the development of expert performance? Or do you disagree with my vague recollection?

(BTW - loving your channel. Thanks for sharing your high quality expertise!)

[fstlniw]

Hambrick is a professor at Michigan State University, not U of M.

[ZupaTrpa]

Deliberate practice was clearly defined, at least in Anders' Book Peak, as using an expert to guide and give immediate and targeted feedback and education with the aim to stretch beyond their current ability. The other version you mentioned here which is done individually is clearly defined as Purposeful practice. I don't think when you say the line was blurry, at least coming from the ideas in the book, that that is wholly true. I do think that within purposeful and deliberate practice that there's huge fluctuations in efficacy etc. but to say that deliberate practice wasn't clearly defined, in my eyes, is a bit of an untruth.

What makes me question deliberate practice is the story of people like Stephen Hendry in snooker with 7 world titles - currently tied for the most ever and that was only after Ronnie got 7 this past year. He states that he had a baseline ability that came to fruition over a few weeks, being able to hit big scores on his little table when he was a kid. Most of his professional development came from practicing 6-8 hours a day, on his own, locked away in a snooker club with a manager watching over him telling him he had to be in there. No coach and therefore no 'deliberate practice' but he goes on to be arguably the most successful snooker player in his generation and arguably ever. That's surely an anomaly to the deliberate practice idea?

I'm always trying to optimise learning and learning about learning so great content from you for sure! Be interested in your views on Andrew Huberman's learning protocols as that's all based in the neuroscience and comes at things from a different angle for sure.

[hakametal]

Here's my uneducated opinion on the matter: it comes down to a level of passion.

Passionate people tend to obsess over their field, and are mostly in a deeper state of flow (shout out Csikszentmihalyi). I agree that 10k hours is a poor metric, it's simply a by-product of loving what you do. Most masters are just obsessed with their work.

"Find what you love and let it kill you" - Charles Bukowski

[npc_code]

I think that Deliberate practice is what makes the difference, but only if its done in the right environment. For example, you can learn 8h a day, but if you only sleep 4h a night your brain has no real chance to learn new information. Stress can be also a big factor.

[ssssssstssssssss]

The core idea doesn't sound novel. Like a master/apprentice relationship is an implementation of the concept which has been around for ages. Unfortunately, such relationships are not fostered in the US anymore with the present work culture.

[tonykirk]

As a musician, part of the problem that I have with deliberate practice is that it doesn’t really account for everything that actually happens in a practice session. The original study doesn’t have any qualitative assessment of the what the violinists do in their practice sessions (whether they used research backed techniques, etc) and purely judges the best group based on more hours of practice alone - which is obvious, but not very specific.

Is deliberate practice only doing the activity that the instructor recommended for you? Even if that strategy or activity is highly effective, only part of your practice each day is spent directly on activities your instructor told you to do. You typically meet with an instructor for 1 hour each week - you cannot possibly cover every thing you have on your plate musically in this amount of time.

Additionally, you become more advanced, your instruction sessions become less prescriptive about technique and musical knowledge and become more open-ended, investigative, and ambiguous as your mental representations are more highly defined.