#221： Reach Your Peak
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Anders Ericsson and I discuss the common misconceptions people have about talent, why the way most people practice leads to mediocre results, and how you can start implementing deliberate practice in your life to master any domain you choose.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Where does greatness come from? Why was Ted Williams the greatest hitter in the history
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of baseball? What made Mozart one of the history's most talented composers? And why was Shakespeare
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such a brilliant writer? The typical answer most people give is that greatness is innate.
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You're either born with certain gifts and talents or you're not. But recent research suggests
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otherwise. Greatness is in fact made through years of hard, deliberate practice. My guest
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today has been on the forefront of this research on the science of expertise. His name is Anders
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Ericsson. He's a professor of psychology at Florida State University. He, along with co-author Robert
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Poole, have recently published a book highlighting Ericsson's research into the true nature and
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malleability of talent. It's called Peak Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. And today
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on the show, Anders and I discuss the common misconceptions people have about talent, why
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the way most people practice leads to mediocre results, and how you can start implementing
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deliberate practice in your life to master any domain you choose. Great podcast with a
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lot of actionable points. After you listen to the show, make sure to check out the show
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notes at aom.is slash peak for links to resources to delve deeper into this topic. So without further
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ado, Anders Ericsson and Peak. Okay, Professor Anders Ericsson, welcome to the show.
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It's my pleasure to, and I'm really looking forward to it.
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Well, I've long been a fan of your work. You've done a lot of research about expertise, talent,
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deliberate practice. But the thing is, I've read about your work from other people writing
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about your work. There's lots of books about the research you've done. But you have a new book
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out where you, along with your co-author, Robert Poole, talk about the research you've been,
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you've dedicated your career to, and the sort of the science of expertise that the book's
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called Peak. Before we get into the details of it, I'm curious, at what point in your career
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did you start focusing on what makes experts experts? And why did you decide to focus on that
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in your academic or your psychological academic career?
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Well, you know, I think we can go back quite a bit of time, even to high school, where,
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you know, I was really interested in how people were thinking. And I was interested in how scientists
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were able to kind of come up with their discoveries. And so I think I've had that interest in understanding
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how some people seem to be able to think in a way that allows them to be more successful and
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productive. So actually, when I started, I started to become an engineer in nuclear physics. And then
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I kind of got more interested in the thinking part. So I moved over to study psychology.
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And my first work was essentially just having people think out loud while they were solving,
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you know, relatively simple problems. But what really fascinated me was, you know, how different
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people think and how many also similarities there are in how people have to think in order to
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successfully solve problems. So that was kind of the starting point of just studying thinking. And
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then I got an opportunity to go to the United States for a postdoc. And there, I basically then
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started the work that we describe in the book on, you know, taking a regular college student and just
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seeing, you know, what is it that happens if somebody gets a lot of training on a particular task?
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In this case, you know, your short term memory, how much can you actually, you know, be able to
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repeat back exactly? And what is it that happens to the thinking while you're actually improving your
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Right, because that research is interesting, because it's, you know, sort of, it's about working memory.
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And there's sort of like, there's long thought, there's a limit to it, right? Like you can only
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maintain seven bits of information in your working memory. That's why phone numbers are probably
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seven digits long. But through your experiments, you're able to help this one guy memorize digits,
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you know, number strands that were hundreds of digits long.
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Right. The first subject was able to do a little bit over 80 digits when you read them one per second.
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And I guess we had another, his friend, we trained him and, and he was able to get up to 110 digits.
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But I think the key finding was that if you're trying to find ways here of expanding how much you can hold
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on to, and we found that people actually were storing it in long term memory by making associations to
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things that they already knew. And, and, and, and, and our two subjects were using running times as,
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as a primary way of actually making sense of three and four digit numbers.
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But I think the kind of the key here is that if you commit to applying now the, and building skill in
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a given domain, and, and, and we found the same kind of finding here in chess and other types of
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domains that, that the experts were actually able not to have a more expanded working memory so they
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could keep track of what was happening and, and they could actually think and reason about what they
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might want to do in a way that was very dependent now on the particular domain. So I think that's kind
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of maybe one of the most interesting findings here is that when you focus your training on a particular
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domain, it seems that there's really no clear limit on how much information you can be able to sort of
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consider as you have engaged in training for an extended period of time.
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Okay. And we'll get later more into detail about this domain specificity of practicing and getting
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better. But before we get into like why we're able to do this, why we're able to, you know,
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we have limitless possibilities of getting better in a task. Um, I think it'd be useful to kind of talk
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about sort of the common misconceptions that people have about expertise, um, and talent. So what are
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those most, the common misconceptions that people do have about their ability to get, become better or,
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Well, you know, I, I think basically the, the most important kind of misconception is that
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you really have to have innate talent to even bother to try to become or try to become an,
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an expert performer. And, uh, and I think, you know, we've now reviewed a lot of research that shows
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that basically that kind of idea here that you show something before you actually started engaging
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in training, uh, it's not well supported. And, and, and, and we kind of argue that it's probably more
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important for you to kind of assume here that there aren't any innate gifts that you need to kind of
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discover by sampling all sorts of activities. It's more important that you kind of find a domain here
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where, uh, you would have support and help and be interested. And, and it's really up to you to
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build, uh, that performance that eventually then will, you know, allow you to reach very high levels.
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Right. And you talk, you highlight, uh, examples of skills that were once thought to be just innate,
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natural talent. Uh, for example, perfect pitch, uh, was thought to be something that you were just
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born with, but you and your researchers, fellow researchers have found that, no, you can actually
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through practice develop perfect pitch. Right. Perfect pitch is kind of a weird, uh, ability that,
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uh, people found that some musicians, uh, had. So if you basically play a tone on the piano,
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they can actually tell you exactly what tone that is. And more, maybe even more impressively,
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if you, you know, make a sound, uh, they can actually tell you what frequency, uh, that,
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that sound actually corresponded to in terms of notes. Uh, and, and one of the things that was
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sort of initially, uh, uh, kind of supporting that view that, you know, this is something that you
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either have and you don't, and it's sort of innate was that basically when older adults tried to acquire
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this, they found it extremely difficult and, and basically not something that would be easily
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acquired. And, and then research started to look at basically the development. And one of the things
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that people noticed was that the musicians that acquired this tended to actually had started playing
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music at an early age. And, and now I think it's pretty compelling evidence that there's an age period
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between three years and five years where it seems like any child, if you give them the appropriate
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training, uh, we'll be able to acquire, uh, the skill as you get older, it's almost like the brain
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is now getting into a different developmental phase where it's actually, you know, processing sound in
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terms of relationships. So we talk about relative pitch where you can judge two pitches and argue,
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you know, whether they're the same and how they're different, which is a quite different process from
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just getting a single note. Right. But, but that is to say though, uh, even as adults, it is possible with
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the right kind of training to move beyond just relative pitch, but actually acquire a perfect pitch.
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There are demonstrations of people who've been able to do that, uh, with very extended training. Uh, you know,
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they, they never really reach kind of the most extreme level of, of, of, uh, perfect pitch. Uh, but, you know,
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they certainly were able to do it. And what was interesting is that when they did it, uh, they
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actually had to kind of memorize a note or, or basically they needed some kind of fixed reference
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point. Uh, and, and basically that was kind of the focus of the training of being able to kind of
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self generate a standard that would allow you now to compare, uh, the note that you heard with your
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internal standard. Right. And going back to this idea that, um, you know, children in the, between
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the ages of three and five, their brain is sort of, uh, open to, you know, shaping through practice.
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Um, you talk about in the book, how this is probably why Beethoven was such a musical prodigy. A lot of
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times we think that, oh, he just had this genius that he was born with, but you kind of show throughout
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the book that, you know, in fact, Beethoven at a very young age began extensive musical training,
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uh, under the hand of his father that allowed him to become the Beethoven that we know today.
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Right. Uh, I think we were talking about Mozart. Oh yeah, correct. Mozart. You probably make a, uh,
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a related argument about Beethoven, but Mozart was famous, uh, for actually being one of the first
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documented cases here of this perfect pitch, you know, where he was able to name notes when they were
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presented in isolation. And, uh, uh, and obviously Mozart is viewed as a pretty remarkable, uh, musician.
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I, in the book, we kind of really, you know, talk a little bit about when you compare what Mozart was
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able to do in terms of playing music. Uh, it turns out that today's, uh, Suzuki train, uh, music students,
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that they actually, in some ways are, were even able to reach more prodigious level than Mozart.
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So it's not, you know, that Mozart was doing something that nobody else could replicate. Uh,
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and we also talked about the fact that Mozart's father, you know, may actually have been able to
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help Mozart with the early compositions. So when we're really talking about Mozart's ability to,
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you know, write compositions by himself, we're talking about something that was done when he
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was, uh, you know, in late adolescence. So, I mean, this is amazing. This, what your research
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is showing is that, um, you know, talent isn't innate. You know, we can actually, if we want to
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through our, our willpower and our, our choice and our commitment, we can improve ourselves in a,
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in specific skills, um, through a certain kind of practice, which we'll talk about later on.
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But, but so if practice is the key to becoming an expert, a lot of people practice, you know,
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say if they're a tennis player and they go to the courts every weekend and they play tennis,
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they think that's practice, but you argue in the book that are not really practicing effectively.
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So how is it that most people have practiced that kind of leads them to sort of this middling
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performance that they never actually get to expert level?
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Yeah. And I think most people know people have been playing golf two or three times a week for
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20, 30 years, and they don't seem to be getting any better. Uh, and, and I guess what the,
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probably the most important point that we make in this book is, you know, once you look at what
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people do and, and I think it's somewhat similar with people who are, you know, engaged in the same
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profession for decades, uh, they tend to just keep doing what they have been doing. Uh, and they're
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just doing more of it. And I think, uh, what we show here, you know, review after review, just
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basically the length of time that you've been spending in a domain. If we exclude the first
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year or two, when you actually do improve, when you're kind of getting into the domain, uh, it doesn't
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seem like additional experience is really improving your ability to, you know, uh, be effective here
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as a doctor in terms of how well your patients are doing, or if you're a teacher, how well you can get
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your students to improve their academic performance. Uh, and you can go wrong the line. And, and even when
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it comes to just playing chess, uh, if you're a tournament player, uh, the amount of time that you've been
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spending, uh, playing chess with your club, uh, uh, friends, uh, does not seem to improve your performance
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in chess. Uh, so basically just getting more experience, uh, is not automatically making you better.
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Gotcha. And then going back to that research on the doctors, you even found studies, research that's, that
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doctor's performance actually declines with age. Right. If we're talking about something like
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diagnosing, uh, heart sounds, uh, it actually turns out that the ability of a doctor to diagnose
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tape recordings here, where we actually know what the patient's problem was, uh, actually decreases as
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a function of how long they've been out practicing, uh, since they graduated. Yeah, that, that was really
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interesting. So, okay. If you want to get better at golf or tennis or whatever skill you want to get
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better at, it's not enough just to go play a lot. Um, you argue that you need to take your practice
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to something that you call purposeful practice. Uh, so what's involved with purposeful practice?
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Well, you know, so, so we kind of argue that the ideal type of practice is if you have a teacher
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who observes you performing, say, you know, watching you play, uh, tennis in a doubles game or
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whatever, and then, you know, they will actually notice here that when you get an opportunity to do
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a backhand volley or something, you know, that you basically are very unlikely to be successful.
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Now, if you just keep on playing, uh, the opportunities here for backhand volley is going to
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come, you know, when you're not really ready for it. Uh, so you're really not getting a very good
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chance here of developing better skills on, at improving that. So what we're arguing is, well,
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if a teacher observed you, uh, and then says, okay, so let's not train your backhand volley.
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Now the coach can basically have you stand there ready to take a backhand volley and you keep doing
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that until you're, you know, really having control over your shot and then basically make you step
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back and, you know, make it harder for you. So incrementally, you're building up your skill
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of actually being able to do the backhand volley. And, and the argument is that if, even if you have
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just a couple of hours training with a coach under those conditions, that's going to improve your
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backhand volley so much more than spending, you know, years or even decades of doubles tennis.
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So it's a matter of just honing in on a very specific skill and then purposely working on that
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skill. Right. And integrating it into what you would normally do because, you know, you don't want
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to make that change in a way that you're not relying on it when you're actually playing. Um, but that
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general principle here, and that that's true for musicians. So you have a musician who's preparing
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a piece for a public performance. And there's one section here where they have real difficulty,
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you know, really controlling and keeping up the tempo and, and the kind of variations here and, and,
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and, and loudness that is desired. Well, then you basically try to make that the target of practice.
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So, you know, the teacher would recommend here, maybe you would need to do some exercises to be able
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to speed up now, uh, basically certain types of finger combinations. Uh, and then you kind of keep
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working on it and then eventually you embed that now in your performance and now you can actually
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perform it at a higher level than you could, uh, previously. So what's going on in our brain when
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we practice purposefully? Well, the argument is that a skilled performer, and this is really key
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to be able to practice by yourself. You know, you're going to be able to sort of have an idea of what it
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is that you're aspiring to do. And then, you know, you know, the kind of sequence of finger movements,
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uh, that you're going to producing. And then you also need to be able to kind of listen to what it
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sounds like, uh, because you basically need to have some way of knowing if you're getting closer to what
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you're trying to achieve. And by iterating like that, maybe for hours, uh, you can basically now figure
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out ways in which you will be able to achieve that goal. So now you can produce something that sounds
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like what the teacher wanted you to be able to produce. And you can kind of hear that you're
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actually able to do that. And so even though purposeful practices step up from just sort of
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random practice that you might do, right? You play, go to the tennis court, go to the golf course.
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You, you say in the book though, that purposeful practice still has limits. What are the limits of
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purposeful practice? Well, you know, purposeful practice, the way we define it is that you have
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a goal and you're actually trying to change a specific aspect. Now you don't necessarily know
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if that goal is the best. And just to take one example here, let's assume that you're playing
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basketball and you want to learn how to dunk, you know, and one way to kind of improve now your ability
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to get higher up in the air, you know, would be to kind of keep jumping up and down. Uh, now it turns
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out that there's no kind of research showing that the most effective way of actually improving the
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height of your jump is not jumping more, but is, uh, essentially, uh, working with weights. So you
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actually are lifting weights and that now gives the stimulus to your legs, you know, so you're actually
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explosively getting up with the weight and that now puts much more pressure on your legs. And that type
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of training will eventually allow you now to actually get more success here in increasing your jumping
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height. Uh, so when we talk about deliberate practice, we argue that when the practice is actually
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recommended and the coach is actually diagnosing and saying, well, you know, at your current level
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of performance, uh, one thing that you can actually do to improve here within the next couple of weeks
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is by basically improving this. So let's focus in on trying to improve this. And here is some
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training activities that would allow you now to repeat and get immediate feedback here on your success.
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So once we have a teacher who actually has proven by bringing other people up to the level that you're
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aspiring to be at, then we're talking about deliberate practice because not only are you doing purposeful
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practice, but you're actually doing the kinds of sequence of purposeful practice that prior experience
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have shown, uh, is associated with you being able to reach a higher level of performance.
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All right. So that's a key point there. So deliberate practice requires that you're,
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that the, the results are, you can replicate the results.
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Right. And, and basically that, you know, the knowledge and training, and I guess in music,
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we have several hundred years of basically people trying to acquire very high level of skill on various
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instruments. So they've now developed training activities that are effective here of improving
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various things. Like for example, the speed of combinations, uh, the ability to, you know,
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move your hand in jumps and stuff like that. Uh, so, so as long as there is basically this science
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support that given activity will actually improve, uh, something better than we're actually calling that
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deliberate practice because a coach is more or less able to, because that coach, I've actually seen other
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people reaching these higher levels of performance. And in some ways, I mean, that's kind of the magic
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of skill. You know, you're at the given level. And the question is, can you get to this higher level?
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Well, if you see 10 other people who were at your level, who actually now with the help of this coach
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been able to reach this higher level, then I think most people would be convinced here, you know,
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that it seems likely here that this type of training will actually get me to this higher, uh, point.
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Gotcha. Um, so, you know, cause the deliberate practice requires you to focus on tasks or practices
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that we've, we know based on research will get you better. What are the other principles of deliberate
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practice? Well, you know, they basically, I guess for the purposeful practice, you know,
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you need to have a goal and you need to have a training activity that allows you now to kind of
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keep repeating and refining what you're doing. So you gradually will now be able to reach that goal.
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And you also need to have the opportunities here to kind of reflect on what happened when you try to
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do something slightly different to assess here, whether that really could be a path for you to reach,
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uh, this higher level of performance. So this idea here that you really need to do something,
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you get immediate feedback about whether this is actually not closer to the goal and, and basically
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you keep refining. And we find that, you know, so much of education and training doesn't really meet
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that criteria for purposeful practice. So I guess if you go and listen to a lecture or, you know,
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the coach is telling you about how to do things, that's very different from that individualized
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practice where you can actually do things and gradually, uh, improve, uh, your ability to do it.
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And, uh, so, so we basically argue here that most of the training that you see, even that's going on,
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uh, between teams, uh, you know, contain a relatively small proportion of what we would call
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purposeful purposeful. And in particular, if you have only one coach to 40, uh, soccer players or
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football players, then obviously very little, it's going to be individualized training. You know,
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the coach is going to be having everyone doing the same thing. And that may be useful perhaps
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to a few of the individuals, but you really are not kind of finding that optimal
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training difficulty that really would be effective for each individual.
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Um, so one thing I've read about deliberate practice and, you know, the articles and books
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that I've written about is that it's, it's hard. Deliberate practice is hard. It can be boring,
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monotonous. Why is that? Why does deliberate practice have to be hard in order for it to work?
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Well, you know, one of the preconditions of deliberate practice is that the task that you're
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setting yourself out to achieve is not something that you can already do. So, so basically it's
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almost like quote, setting yourself up for failure because there is a, a gap here between what you're
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trying to do and what you currently can do, uh, in a sort of consistent way. So anytime when you're
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actually trying to stretch yourself, you know, it's going to require a lot of concentration. And also,
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it seems that unless you're really trying to reach for this higher level goal, uh, basically just
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repeating, doing things is not going to make a difference. Uh, so that's why, you know, the
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deliberate practice almost by design, uh, is going to be difficult. And the number of times that you're
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not meeting the standard, uh, is going to be a very high and, and it is, you know, obviously once you
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get, so you can now actually reach this goal, then you're going to get that satisfaction of feeling now
00:27:14.160
that you can actually do things that you couldn't do maybe a week earlier. And that is kind of
00:27:20.380
enjoyable, but you know, there's a long path before you get there. And, and what we find is that,
00:27:27.240
you know, most of the musicians and other, uh, performers, they tend to have pretty stable
00:27:34.460
practice schedules. So they, you know, actually decide to always every day, you know, put in an hour
00:27:41.880
or two or whatever in the morning, perhaps. Uh, so they don't really have to do what amateurs do.
00:27:48.400
You know, I'm going to go out and jog today. Maybe not, you know, maybe I'll do it tomorrow.
00:27:53.980
Uh, these individuals have already made that commitment. And sometimes, you know, they,
00:27:59.240
they practice, uh, together with other individuals. Uh, so they, you know, the coach would keep track of
00:28:06.300
whether they practice or not. Uh, and then they're kind of focused here on this goal. So they're not
00:28:13.820
asking themselves, do I want to keep doing this or not? You know, you're just engaged here in this
00:28:19.560
process of trying to reach the goal that you set for yourself. And then when you're done and you have
00:28:25.840
reached a goal, well, then you can relax and enjoy it. And a lot of people find that that kind of
00:28:32.580
concentration is, is really enjoyable because it relaxes you. It's sort of your maximally focused
00:28:40.120
during the training, but afterwards, when you take the shower and stuff like that, you know,
00:28:45.360
you feel this relaxation and, and, and, you know, a very pleasurable, enjoyable feeling.
00:28:52.480
So, uh, is purposeful practice, deliberate practice, is it domain specific or if you,
00:28:59.740
or is there a sort of, can you increase your sort of generalized ability to improve performance in
00:29:04.100
other areas by taking part in deliberate practice in one specific area? You know, that's a really
00:29:10.480
interesting question. And I think it may depend a little bit on, you know, your level of, uh, uh,
00:29:17.560
skill. Uh, we know in some domains, uh, I, I contributed to a study looking at, uh, world-class
00:29:25.240
rhythmic gymnast. And what we, what they found in that, uh, case was that if you started, you know,
00:29:33.040
training in ballet, you were much more likely here to be, uh, you know, world-class when you were
00:29:39.520
an adult gymnast than if you actually started, uh, training in gymnastics. Because basically the
00:29:46.480
early training in gymnastics is much more, you know, free play where you tumble around and do things.
00:29:52.780
Whereas ballet has a little bit more structure where you, you know, learn how to keep your posture
00:29:59.600
and keep your balance and so on. Uh, so I think early on, you know, there may be, uh, you know,
00:30:07.360
activities that could potentially benefit you, like being able to have the right kind of posture
00:30:13.060
might actually be valuable in, in, in several different types of activities. Uh, however,
00:30:20.660
as you get more and more skilled, uh, I found less evidence that basically you would have that kind
00:30:28.820
of general transfer. Even when people do weight training, uh, in domains, team sports, uh, it seems
00:30:37.500
that now the most effective weight training at the highly skilled levels, it's actually designed,
00:30:43.460
you know, to get at strengthening the muscles in particular situations where, you know, increased
00:30:50.620
strength would be particularly useful in that particular sport. But that obviously would not
00:30:56.200
then, uh, be likely here to generalize across other types of sports.
00:31:01.900
Right. And Sammy, you even talk about the, uh, chess players, um, you know, they can get really good at
00:31:07.000
chess, um, but sometimes they don't get better in other activities that are similar to chess.
00:31:13.620
That's, that's true. And, you know, and, and I think we need to kind of distinguish it. Maybe
00:31:19.020
that a chess player, you know, when they start playing some other game may be at a advantage
00:31:24.740
compared to other players, but when it comes to actually transferring that high level of performance,
00:31:30.500
uh, I don't know of any evidence suggesting here that, you know, having been a world-class chess
00:31:36.620
player, you know, would actually make you more likely here to, uh, you know, uh,
00:31:42.260
be successful in this other game. So you somehow would be able to find some pathway here that
00:31:48.980
would shortcut that training that's required for mastery of this, uh, new game. Um, but,
00:31:56.840
you know, uh, I have to be honest here, very few world-class chess players, as far as I know,
00:32:03.160
have really taken on and tried to become world-class and bridge or, uh, you know, whatever other game,
00:32:11.080
uh, you would be, uh, thinking about. Uh, so basically, you know, uh, that's one of the
00:32:17.620
intriguing things is that it seems to be so time and energy and resource, uh, constrained to
00:32:25.900
achieve world-class level in a single domain that it's extremely rare, uh, that individuals are able
00:32:33.800
to reach that level in more than one domain. Um, throughout the book, uh, sort of the key
00:32:40.140
part that you and Robert Poole, um, carry throughout the entire book, that's key to deliberate practice,
00:32:46.720
why it works, is this idea of mental representations. Um, what are mental representations and what role
00:32:57.280
Mental representations is sort of that kind of organizing feature that, and what we find is,
00:33:05.120
as you get better in a domain, uh, you acquire this ability of being able to close your eyes
00:33:12.220
and actually mentally kind of see a, a picture or, or, uh, uh, kind of a, a mental image that you can
00:33:21.020
manipulate and think about. So if you wanted to have a music piece sound like something, you know,
00:33:28.120
you can hear that music piece before you start playing. And then you can also basically now use
00:33:35.680
that image that image that you want it to sound like as kind of a, uh, input here to how you play
00:33:42.520
it. And then you listen to it. And basically that ability of actually mentally, you know, listen to
00:33:50.320
piece of music, uh, and, and, and actually think about how you could do it slightly differently to get it
00:33:57.340
to sound even better, that kind of imagery. And, and, and that's what we basically refer to as
00:34:04.980
mental representation. And, and I guess it's sort of like key to improvement. So if you don't know
00:34:11.760
what you need, want it to sound like, or what you need, want to do, it's going to be very hard for you
00:34:19.020
to be able to do that. Right. Uh, so it seems that almost always people are able to hear, uh,
00:34:26.420
differences or when they look at other people, you know, doing something, they're aware of what
00:34:32.220
the difference is between how to do it the right way with the best success and how they currently
00:34:38.860
are doing. So that is kind of the starting point for you now to try to bridge that gap by engaging in
00:34:46.820
training activities. So it's almost like your ability to see what needs to be changed is actually being
00:34:54.360
developed in parallel with your increasing skill. And I think that's one of the things that I would
00:35:01.820
emphasize here when it comes to, uh, training children and adolescents, you know, the parent
00:35:07.480
and the coach really need to help the child and the adolescent to develop these representations
00:35:12.840
because they eventually need to be responsible for their continued, uh, development. Once they get to
00:35:20.340
a point here where they can now do what their parent or teacher is able to do, they need to kind of
00:35:26.860
continue that improvement if they're going to be competitive at the national international level.
00:35:33.620
So, yeah, it seems like that the coach or the teacher, they have the mental representations already,
00:35:38.300
and they're trying to impart that to their student. Um, but how can individuals apply deliberate
00:35:44.460
practice when they might not have a coach or a teacher available? Well, I guess what you need at
00:35:52.520
least is some kind of vision here of what it is that you would like to be able to do. And, and until
00:36:00.920
you basically have a clear way of explicating what it is that you want to do and a method by which you
00:36:08.860
will be able to tell if you can do that, uh, uh, then I think it's going to be really hard to design
00:36:14.880
purposeful, uh, practice. But I think, you know, pretty much any kind of activity that we engage in, uh,
00:36:23.200
we can at least find factors that can be, uh, converted into measurement. So, for example, uh, let's talk about,
00:36:33.460
for example, a doctor that listens to a patient. And then the question is, does a doctor, would they
00:36:40.680
be able to, after the interview with a patient to actually recall and describe what it is that the
00:36:46.280
patient was actually saying and what they were concerned with and whether the patient really
00:36:52.540
understood now how the recommended treatment would address the problem that they were experiencing.
00:36:58.620
Now, that is sort of an activity. You can have the doctor after seeing a videotape, you know, try to
00:37:05.920
really write down now, what was it that the patient was saying? And what they find is that some doctors,
00:37:12.920
they're just so, you know, in their own mind or focused in on what the medical problem is, that they don't
00:37:20.040
really have that ability of listening to the patient or what it is that they are, you know, having problems
00:37:26.540
with. And I think basically that listening skills is something that, you know, we can evaluate
00:37:32.900
relatively easily. And if we can evaluate it, we can also set up now training activities where
00:37:38.660
you would be watching a series of videotapes and we can kind of see here how your ability to actually,
00:37:45.460
uh, you know, uh, describe what the patient was saying, uh, uh, during, uh, that interview.
00:37:52.300
So yeah, that's great. So this is, you're kind of showing how, um, individuals can take sort of
00:37:58.540
amorphous skills like good doctoring or business management, where there's not a specific skill
00:38:04.640
that you can, you know, kind of pinpoint and say, if I work on this, I'll become a better business
00:38:08.860
manager. Um, but with this doctor example, you're showing that it is possible to apply deliberate
00:38:16.320
Right. You know, and I think another thing that doctors gets training on is how do you
00:38:22.960
basically, uh, talk to a patient that you're going to have to tell that they have a very
00:38:29.480
low probability of surviving for the next six months. And, and, and they actually have designed
00:38:35.700
now. So there are actually individuals that are trained to be patients. So you would have
00:38:41.060
a doctor here now, you know, given an assignment here to convey to this actor patient, you know,
00:38:48.200
and then basically that actor patient will try to behave in different ways that would now help the
00:38:54.660
doctor realize what some of the issues and problems. And then you would have a coach who
00:39:00.400
would actually be, you know, reviewing the videotape or, or the actual interaction that would then be
00:39:06.380
able to help the doctor here pointing out, you know, uh, here's something that you need to change.
00:39:12.400
I mean, you need to really help this individual, you know, do the best, uh, of a very difficult
00:39:18.740
situation. And, and, and what they find is that these difficult situation, if you get training,
00:39:25.020
uh, and actually helping people through them, you know, you can do a much better job. So the patient
00:39:31.100
actually now is able to more constructively deal with, you know, what would be in any case,
00:39:38.240
a very challenging situation. So Dr. Erickson, um, your idea of deliberate practice has been written
00:39:45.860
about extensively. Uh, I've read the, the talent code or talent is overrated. They've written about
00:39:50.480
it, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote about your work famously, and he came with this whole 10,000 hour
00:39:55.260
rule. And it's often become synonymous with deliberate practice. Uh, but you devote an entire section
00:40:00.340
and you and Robert Poole devote an entire section deal to detailing the misconceptions that people
00:40:04.620
have about this rule. Uh, what are the misconceptions about the 10,000 hour rule?
00:40:10.340
I think the most important misconception is this idea that if you just keep doing something for 10,000
00:40:17.480
hours, you magically become an expert. And I guess, uh, Malcolm Gladwell was talking in his book here
00:40:25.860
about the Beatles playing, you know, uh, very, very extended periods in Hamburg. And he was arguing
00:40:32.080
that maybe, you know, this thousands of hours of playing, you know, could possibly explain now why
00:40:39.320
the Beatles was developing into, uh, the music band that, you know, composed a lot of successful songs.
00:40:47.100
I guess we were arguing here that you really need to link it. And I think in my own mind,
00:40:52.880
and I think a lot of biographers of the Beatles would argue that, you know, their compositions,
00:40:58.060
I mean, it wasn't like they were instrumentalists that played other people's music. I mean, their fame
00:41:04.280
was, uh, and playing their own composed music that really made, uh, uh, a major impact. So what we need
00:41:12.000
to explain here is how these compositional skills were developed. And, and, and that's actually a
00:41:18.300
different task. So in our work, uh, and Gladwell was referring to it when he came up with this 10,000
00:41:25.800
hour rule, you know, we were talking about that activity that a music student is actually working
00:41:32.980
by themselves in their, you know, training room, uh, working on tasks that their music teacher has
00:41:41.200
assigned them. So if we just count those hours where they're spending, you know, working by themselves
00:41:47.740
on really trying to gradually improve their skill, that's the kind of time that we were talking
00:41:53.820
about. And, and, and I think that idea here that the body would know when you actually have done 10,000
00:42:00.280
hours of something, you know, it doesn't make sense. And, and it differs from domain to domain. And
00:42:06.900
in fact, when I try to estimate the amount of time that musicians, pianists had practiced alone before
00:42:14.360
they won an international piano competition, probably was, would be more closer to 20 to 25,000
00:42:20.740
hours of training. So there's several things here that I think are different, but I do think that
00:42:28.280
Malcolm Gladwell did a good thing here by helping people believe that the way even the most talented
00:42:35.260
become great is actually expending this very long period of time where they're actually working and
00:42:41.900
trying to develop their skills. And anybody who's looking for, you know, a secret where they can
00:42:49.180
become a world expert here after five hours of training, you know, I mean, that's sort of totally
00:42:56.400
ridiculous. And, and I think we need to help people realize what, what the path is going to have to look
00:43:05.300
like for them to be successful. And then they can make a choice, you know, uh, are they seeing here
00:43:12.120
that they would like to make that commitment? Uh, but essentially saying that they wouldn't be able
00:43:17.200
to, or that they wouldn't be able to do it with five hours of training, you know, that's a different,
00:43:23.640
uh, kind of idea. And, and all we can do, I think in science is to help people see, give them the best
00:43:31.220
possible information about the choices that they have about the careers that they might want to
00:43:37.360
pursue. Well, Dr. Erickson, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people learn
00:43:42.360
more about, uh, the book peak? Well, I think maybe the best source is, uh, uh, the peak, the book in
00:43:51.320
one word, uh, dot com, uh, Robert Poole and his wife have, uh, set up a website where you can also,
00:43:59.540
uh, you know, get in contact with us and also a lot of other connections here of, of related issues.
00:44:07.220
Fantastic. Well, Dr. Anders Erickson, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:44:11.000
I really enjoyed talking to you. It was wonderful. Thank you.
00:44:14.620
My guest today was Anders Erickson. He's the coauthor of the book peak,
00:44:17.560
the new science of expertise. Uh, you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:44:21.460
You can also go to peak the book for more information about the book. Also check out the show
00:44:25.740
notes at aom.is slash peak for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:44:41.660
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:44:45.860
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. If you enjoy
00:44:49.780
the show and have gotten something out of it, I'd really appreciate it. If you give us a review on
00:44:52.780
iTunes, it really helps us out a lot. As always, I appreciate the continued support. And until next
00:44:57.340
time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.