Part 1
When we see Virat Kohli score a century, we are tempted to say, “He’s so talented.” But we all know it’s not because of talent but instead, because he practiced. A lot. Not just regular practice but deliberate practice.
We are quick to tell someone that he is talented or that she is smart. But it only gives us an excuse to not be good. In their best selling book “Peak: How all of us can achieve extraordinary things”, Robert Pool and Anders Ericsson tell us why experts are experts and how all of us have the same ability to become experts.
I have divided the summary into three parts. So let’s get started with the first part.
Our Brain’s Adaptability
There was a time when even the best scientists in the world believed that adult brains don’t change. They believed that the nerve cells in our brains become rigid as we grow older and are unable to make new connections with other nerve cells. But a study on taxi drivers - not on scientists, nor chess players- but on taxi drivers, shattered that belief!
Researchers looked at the brain scans of London taxi drivers. London roads, like Mumbai, are extremely complicated. Even the GPS fails to navigate London roads effectively. To become a taxi driver in London, you not only have to remember the tourist places but also all the hospitals, parks, each one of the buildings, shops, and even statues that are just about one feet tall. The job is so difficult that to become a taxi driver you have to take a series of tests that have been dubbed as the world’s most difficult tests. Even with years of rigorous training, about half the taxi drivers fail the tests. When researchers looked at the brain scans of the taxi drivers who passed the tests, they found something very interesting. In their brains, the area that is responsible for a sense of direction and a sense of space, the rear part of the hippocampus, was significantly larger than other people. The more experienced a driver, the larger his posterior hippocampus. On the other hand, the taxi drivers who were just starting the training didn’t show any increase in the size of the hippocampus. This meant that when they studied for the tests, their brain actually grew, which indicates that when we learn something, we are actually creating that ability in our brains!
Even more interesting is the fact that the neurons in the brain can switch tasks. For example, in blind people, the visual areas of the brain don’t get input from the eyes. Thus, by common sense, they should remain idle for the lifetime. But instead, they start doing tasks that are usually done by other areas of the brain. Isn’t that awesome?
When we start exercising our biceps, they grow. After we stop exercising, they go back to how they were before. The same goes with the brain. We grow our abilities in our brain by practice, but if we stop practicing, the abilities go away.
Mental Representations
A mental representation is the pre-existing knowledge of a skill. It is the mental image, mental feel of the activity. They allow you to do the activity without conscious thought. Everybody has mental representations. If I ask you to think about a cat, you can easily bring to mind the image of the cat. This is a mental representation. Experts have such mental representations in their field, and they are very well developed. When Virat Kohli is batting, he has very little time to analyze where the fielders are, what the length and line of the ball is, and what shot he should play. He can choose the right shot because he knows in his mind how each shot feels, how different shots to different deliveries are played, and he has an intuitive sense of the field placement. He doesn’t have to think to play the correct shot, he just plays it. In other words, he has complex and sophisticated mental representations. The more he plays, the better his representations get. The better his mental representations get, the better he plays. The virtuous cycle goes on! However, if we keep on doing the same thing in the same way, again and again, we are not building better representations. We are worsening them. The way we develop our mental representations is through deliberate practice.
So what is deliberate practice? What is motivation? To know the answers, see you in the next part. Till then, try learning a new skill to apply these principles of deliberate practice. And keep reading, bye- bye!
Part 2
Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice does not mean doing the same thing over and over. Deliberate practice has some typical features. Let’s again take the example of Virat Kohli. His practice sessions will usually involve these typical features of deliberate practice. He knows what he’s going to work on, so he has specific and well- defined goals. He has his coach by his side, so he is getting continuous feedback. He pays full attention to the practice, so he has a very high level of focus. The practice sessions usually challenge him, they make him do something different, which means they push him out of his comfort zone. He is modifying his previous knowledge of strokes, so he is building better mental representations.
As we can guess from the above characteristics, deliberate practice is not fun. Often, deliberate practice is not the performance, but solitary practice done for improvement. For example, playing chess matches won’t improve your chess skills, but analyzing positions or analyzing games played by the grandmasters will indeed improve your skill. To become a true expert in any field, deliberate practice needs to be sustained for years, if not decades. If you are not really motivated to do what you are doing, you are not going to be able to keep up with the deliberate practice.
The Puzzle of Motivation
Since deliberate practice involves a lot of solitary effort, it is crucial that we know how to maintain our motivation. The most important motivation has to be a strong desire to improve itself. Parents, friends who believe that you can succeed play a huge role. Even a group of people who are in a similar position can help to keep your motivation. When we want to keep our motivation, we have to design our environment in a way that supports our goals. For example, as a reader, I need to keep my reading desk free from all the distractions. If a phone is buzzing every five minutes on my desk, I won’t be able to keep up with my reading. And lastly, our practice sessions need to be short in duration ( about an hour) because the longer the session, the more difficult it is to maintain motivation.
Deliberate Practice in Everyday Life
Deliberate practice isn’t just for those who want to be professional athletes or musicians, it’s for everybody. If you want to improve a skill as a hobby or for your professional work, deliberate practice will work just as well.
First and foremost, there is a need for a good teacher who’ll teach you the basic mental representations. A good teacher has some basic knowledge of the skill, he keeps you motivated to pursue the skill, and he gives feedback for your improvement.
However, when learning a skill, there comes a time when we feel stuck. We don’t improve as fast or we stop improving altogether. This is the OK plateau; where we reach an acceptable level of performance. The best way to get past this stage is to challenge yourself in a different way. Another way to cross the OK Plateau is to raise the difficulty level a little, but not a lot. In doing so, we can know what our weaknesses are and what we can do to improve them. For example, assume that you play tennis and you are stuck on the OK plateau. Then, try playing an opponent who is a little better than you the next time. He can take advantage of your weaknesses, which will let you know what you need to improve. So you can specifically work on that stroke. Often, improving that particular stroke will lead to an overall improvement in your tennis.
We haven’t discussed talent yet. So what is talent? Does talent have a role in success? How much can we improve with practice? To know the answers, see you in the next part. Till then, keep applying deliberate practice to your job or your hobby. And keep reading. Bye- bye!
Part 3
How Do Experts Become Experts?
The first step is, of course, interest. Every expert starts his journey by becoming interested in the skill. A future grandmaster might have been given chess pieces as a toy in his childhood or, as an adult, he might have a friend who talks a lot about chess.
The interest then becomes a little serious. This is the second stage. It is now that the future expert looks for a coach. In this stage, the expert is introduced to deliberate practice for the first time. In this stage, the future expert builds the skill necessary to be amongst the best.
Then we move on to the final stage of commitment. By this stage, the future expert is committed to be the best he can be. He seeks out the best teachers and prioritizes the skill above everything else.
But this journey is not reserved for those who are talented. Any one of us can take this journey if we know what talent is and what role it has in this journey.
What is Talent?
Talent is defined as an innate ability to do something. The role of such innate ability is much smaller than people think. Usually, in schools, we see some kids who are better than others in some subject, say math. We assume that they are smart and this smartness will continue even in the later part of their life.
But in a very interesting study, researchers first tested the intelligence of elite chess players. Then, they asked the players to keep journals about their practice routines for the next six weeks. After these six weeks, their chess skills were tested. There was no relationship between intelligence and chess skills, even though chess is considered the supreme test of intelligence! The only factor that made the difference was the amount of deliberate practice. The more they practiced, the better their skills were. Talent simply didn’t matter at the elite stage! However, when researchers performed the same experiment with amateur chess players, there was indeed a relationship between intelligence and chess skills. The players with higher intelligence had better chess skills. But this relationship went on diminishing as their level of chess skill improved. More surprisingly, at the elite level, the players with higher intelligence scores seemed to perform worse. Perhaps, they felt they were too smart to be needing hard work.
This means, talent can help us learn the basics quickly. Thus, in schools, some kids do better than others; because they are beginners! Once they get to higher education, this advantage is easily lost.
When it comes to expert performance, the only thing that matters is the amount of deliberate practice. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, but if you don’t practice deliberately, you are going to be just average.
The Greatest Gift
In the 21st century, jobs will keep changing rapidly. The young kids will need to keep learning new skills to survive. And the confidence that they can learn anything is the greatest gift we can give them. Deliberate practice is a way of knowing that we can learn anything, that there are no limits to our capacities; all you need to do is to put effort in it.