What People Get Wrong About Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice is one of the most popular ideas in learning and training. But as this idea has filtered into the mainstream with books from Malcom Gladwell and Anders Ericsson himself, some things have been lost.

This video breaks down three things that many people get wrong about deliberate practice.

00:00 Introduction
00:21 Mistake #1: Is 10,000 hours legit?
01:30 Where did 10,000 hours come from?
02:59 Mistake #2: What is the first step, again?
04:39 Physics lab example
07:27 Mistake #3: On “putting in the time.”

References:

The “classic” piece on deliberate practice:

A comparison between what students do in introductory physics labs and what actual physicists do:

An explanation of where the 10,000 hour rule came from and why it’s wrong:

[mastershooter]

"The expert has failed more times than the novice has even tried" I agree it's about cycles of practice and feedback

[patrickgoetz]

Here's a concrete example of deliberate practice that neatly illustrates the idea. Beginning instrument students will practice by spending 20-30 minutes playing through a piece from beginning to end 2 or 3 times. A far more effective way to practice is to just focus on those sections of the music which are difficult for them to play, and practice those over and over again, skipping the parts of the piece which are easy to play. This is an example of deliberate practice. Great videos, btw!

[amandamate]

Actionable Summary:
1.Disregard the 10, 000-Hour Rule: It's a misleading metric. Focus on the quality of your practice instead.
2.Identify Expert Skills: Before diving into practice, take time to identify the skills that differentiate experts from novices in your field.
3.Engage in Practice-Feedback Cycles: Find a way to practice that challenges you and seek expert feedback. Use this cycle to continually refine your skills.

BONUS:
Practice-Feedback Cycle: Challenging Practice → Expert Feedback → Further Practice → Opportunities → Repeat

[matiasgaudenzi]

This is something I feel does get overlooked a lot- especially with the whole "hustle culture" that is so common today. You cannot have 18 hours of "deliberate practice" a day- quite simply because if you're doing it right it's uncomfortable and tires you out. After a while, it's not that the work you're doing is challenging- you're just tired.

[Simeulf]

An example of your first point: I played chess for countless of hours from ages 13-18 barely improving my rating at all (regular practice), then I bought a couple chess books and started to stud various skills (deliberate practice). After a year my rating improved about five hundred points. Suddenly, the games had a lot more depth, and I started to notice more of the patterns that expert chess players have built into their intuition.

Really interesting video. Before watching I have always believed in the 10, 000 hour rule. Weird how such concepts can become so widely acknowledged within a given culture.

[manishm]

I work as a software engineer, and have recently found developers that are good at debugging are great at adopting an exploratory, detective style approach. This was not obvious to me until i paired with them to solve some really challenging issues. A good example of how expert practice is not clear, and takes effort to identify.

[jeremyshull]

This video really resonated with me. I'm a software engineer, and I became better faster than any time before at a job where all the code I wrote was heavily reviewed by really good programmers. It was tough, but worth it.

[sheilawilliam]

I totally believe in the concept of the number of feedback cycles. I teach ADVANCED AUDIT in a professional accountancy program. And creating exercises for my students so that they can have FEEDBACK CYCLES has increased the pass rate for this exam significantly

[Alex-jslg]

You nailed it with this. It's exactly why promoting someone based primarily on the amount of time they have in an organization is a mistake. Time in is irrelevant if you've been closed off to new experiences during that period.

[matthewalan]

The importance of the 10, 000 hour idea is simply that many people do not know that expertise comes as a result of lots of hard work. I spent a dozen years as a math teacher and was surprised at the number of students who seemed to think that math skills came from some magical process that was invoked by people who were "good at math." Even with the best coaching and highest quality practice, you still need to put in the work. Many people go through life without ever becoming good at any challenging skill. I think this is unfortunate.

[guywithknife]

Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. It’s important how you practice, just as is said in the this video

[vijaygopal]

I have never written comments for YouTube videos, but I am making an exception with your video. And that is because of your third point: the right metric to use is the number of feedback cycles and not the time put in. I have read a lot about DP but this one point blew me away. I can now see where I was going wrong. I am going to drastically change how I have been going about my DP. Thank you Ben - this was a crisp and value adding video.

[jobaecker]

As a musician, you've provided some interesting new ways to look at this. I, like some other musicians, tend to start "noodling off" into other distractions as we practice, and I realize that I'd be better off having a very clear concept of the outcome of my practice AHEAD of time, rather than just "well, hopefully I'll improve a little."

[LuKiSCraft]

I work in a customer-facing technical software sales role. This advice most certainly applies there. Instead of just watching a bunch of endless training videos, reading documentation, etc, I cooked up my own Azure AKS cluster and started installing & configuring the software. I am speeding ahead of most people who have been at the company 2X as long as me. In order to sell the software, you have to understand intimately how it works. The only way to understand it intimately is to get hands-on and be willing to fail / get stuck for hours.

[lucthelazysquid]

Since you asked, yes, this video was very useful to me.

1. It gives a reframing on the path of mastery that is not focused on time, and for me that's very reassuring, cause I've heard many teachers saying again and again, "practice this a thousand times", "after 50k repetitions you'll get good don't worry". It's not that it won't take a long time to develop the skills, or improve beyond certain plateaus, but that I don't have to repeat something mindlessly a bazillion times just to reach a quota, to get better.

2. The importance of the practice-feedback cycle, and being aware of it even before starting a practice session. For example, I'm learning to draw on my own, so if I want to practice a skill without having to reach a teacher to get feedback (which for some I should and I will), I'll need some kind of ruleset or reference to compare my drawing to, so I can have feedback to see how correct I am, and in subsequent tries if I'm improving or not. I believe that is in part why drawing from live models is such a good practice to improve figure drawing and it's subset of skills.

3. The importance of identifying the expert skills before starting a practice session. That's surprisingly difficult, but I'll try to make a habit of it.

So thank you very much for the video.

[wesselcusters]

I found it very enlightening to hear you talk about misconceptions 2 and 3! (The first I was already aware of ;)). Asking yourself what makes an expert, is something that I should really do more often. And I noticed that focussing on time can result in a lot of pressure and disappointment which inhibits your learning and your fun while learning something. Thanks for making this video! :)

[jlofi]

As a college student taking physics I agree, I would love to have designed a lab to measure the acceleration of gravity rather than follow instructions after learning about it in lecture

[SoloRenegade]

"Perfect Practice makes Perfect"

[mhreinhardt]

There is a pretty famous study done in a photography class where in one group the professor said the students would be graded on a single photo they present at the end of class. The other group were solely graded on the number of photos they took, but still had the opportunity to select the best of the bunch to present in the final class. The result? The group that was told they'd be graded solely on quantity produced objectively better final photos than the class that was told they'd be graded on just the final photo. I'm not refuting this video, as I don't think any of the students were "experts" in photography by the end of class. However, I do think quantity of practice is more important than quality when moving up from beginner level because you don't even know enough about the subject yet to define what to be deliberate about to improve until you gain enough experience. In any case, thanks for the insights in the video!

[eV]

are you kidding me? These videos are insanely thought provoking and terribly helpful. keep making them please.