The Art of Manliness - #221： Reach Your Peak

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.600 Where does greatness come from? Why was Ted Williams the greatest hitter in the history

00:00:23.400 of baseball? What made Mozart one of the history's most talented composers? And why was Shakespeare

00:00:29.160 such a brilliant writer? The typical answer most people give is that greatness is innate.

00:00:33.980 You're either born with certain gifts and talents or you're not. But recent research suggests

00:00:38.460 otherwise. Greatness is in fact made through years of hard, deliberate practice. My guest

00:00:44.180 today has been on the forefront of this research on the science of expertise. His name is Anders

00:00:47.780 Ericsson. He's a professor of psychology at Florida State University. He, along with co-author Robert

00:00:52.460 Poole, have recently published a book highlighting Ericsson's research into the true nature and

00:00:56.240 malleability of talent. It's called Peak Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. And today

00:01:00.680 on the show, Anders and I discuss the common misconceptions people have about talent, why

00:01:05.000 the way most people practice leads to mediocre results, and how you can start implementing

00:01:08.760 deliberate practice in your life to master any domain you choose. Great podcast with a

00:01:13.460 lot of actionable points. After you listen to the show, make sure to check out the show

00:01:16.680 notes at aom.is slash peak for links to resources to delve deeper into this topic. So without further

00:01:22.740 ado, Anders Ericsson and Peak. Okay, Professor Anders Ericsson, welcome to the show.

00:01:33.560 It's my pleasure to, and I'm really looking forward to it.

00:01:36.800 Well, I've long been a fan of your work. You've done a lot of research about expertise, talent,

00:01:42.940 deliberate practice. But the thing is, I've read about your work from other people writing

00:01:47.100 about your work. There's lots of books about the research you've done. But you have a new book

00:01:51.780 out where you, along with your co-author, Robert Poole, talk about the research you've been,

00:01:57.560 you've dedicated your career to, and the sort of the science of expertise that the book's

00:02:01.620 called Peak. Before we get into the details of it, I'm curious, at what point in your career

00:02:08.140 did you start focusing on what makes experts experts? And why did you decide to focus on that

00:02:13.820 in your academic or your psychological academic career?

00:02:16.460 Well, you know, I think we can go back quite a bit of time, even to high school, where,

00:02:25.500 you know, I was really interested in how people were thinking. And I was interested in how scientists

00:02:31.480 were able to kind of come up with their discoveries. And so I think I've had that interest in understanding

00:02:39.640 how some people seem to be able to think in a way that allows them to be more successful and

00:02:46.720 productive. So actually, when I started, I started to become an engineer in nuclear physics. And then

00:02:57.700 I kind of got more interested in the thinking part. So I moved over to study psychology.

00:03:04.100 And my first work was essentially just having people think out loud while they were solving,

00:03:11.600 you know, relatively simple problems. But what really fascinated me was, you know, how different

00:03:17.960 people think and how many also similarities there are in how people have to think in order to

00:03:25.900 successfully solve problems. So that was kind of the starting point of just studying thinking. And

00:03:32.720 then I got an opportunity to go to the United States for a postdoc. And there, I basically then

00:03:40.000 started the work that we describe in the book on, you know, taking a regular college student and just

00:03:47.260 seeing, you know, what is it that happens if somebody gets a lot of training on a particular task?

00:03:54.360 In this case, you know, your short term memory, how much can you actually, you know, be able to

00:03:59.680 repeat back exactly? And what is it that happens to the thinking while you're actually improving your

00:04:07.400 performance?

00:04:08.960 Right, because that research is interesting, because it's, you know, sort of, it's about working memory.

00:04:14.020 And there's sort of like, there's long thought, there's a limit to it, right? Like you can only

00:04:17.380 maintain seven bits of information in your working memory. That's why phone numbers are probably

00:04:23.800 seven digits long. But through your experiments, you're able to help this one guy memorize digits,

00:04:31.120 you know, number strands that were hundreds of digits long.

00:04:35.080 Right. The first subject was able to do a little bit over 80 digits when you read them one per second.

00:04:42.340 And I guess we had another, his friend, we trained him and, and he was able to get up to 110 digits.

00:04:53.440 But I think the key finding was that if you're trying to find ways here of expanding how much you can hold

00:05:02.560 on to, and we found that people actually were storing it in long term memory by making associations to

00:05:10.280 things that they already knew. And, and, and, and, and our two subjects were using running times as,

00:05:15.960 as a primary way of actually making sense of three and four digit numbers.

00:05:23.120 But I think the kind of the key here is that if you commit to applying now the, and building skill in

00:05:31.760 a given domain, and, and, and we found the same kind of finding here in chess and other types of

00:05:38.040 domains that, that the experts were actually able not to have a more expanded working memory so they

00:05:45.640 could keep track of what was happening and, and they could actually think and reason about what they

00:05:51.740 might want to do in a way that was very dependent now on the particular domain. So I think that's kind

00:05:59.860 of maybe one of the most interesting findings here is that when you focus your training on a particular

00:06:05.460 domain, it seems that there's really no clear limit on how much information you can be able to sort of

00:06:13.240 consider as you have engaged in training for an extended period of time.

00:06:19.420 Okay. And we'll get later more into detail about this domain specificity of practicing and getting

00:06:24.160 better. But before we get into like why we're able to do this, why we're able to, you know,

00:06:29.480 we have limitless possibilities of getting better in a task. Um, I think it'd be useful to kind of talk

00:06:37.180 about sort of the common misconceptions that people have about expertise, um, and talent. So what are

00:06:44.620 those most, the common misconceptions that people do have about their ability to get, become better or,

00:06:50.040 or, you know, develop their talent?

00:06:51.900 Well, you know, I, I think basically the, the most important kind of misconception is that

00:07:00.400 you really have to have innate talent to even bother to try to become or try to become an,

00:07:07.360 an expert performer. And, uh, and I think, you know, we've now reviewed a lot of research that shows

00:07:14.740 that basically that kind of idea here that you show something before you actually started engaging

00:07:22.100 in training, uh, it's not well supported. And, and, and, and we kind of argue that it's probably more

00:07:29.220 important for you to kind of assume here that there aren't any innate gifts that you need to kind of

00:07:34.580 discover by sampling all sorts of activities. It's more important that you kind of find a domain here

00:07:41.160 where, uh, you would have support and help and be interested. And, and it's really up to you to

00:07:48.240 build, uh, that performance that eventually then will, you know, allow you to reach very high levels.

00:07:55.460 Right. And you talk, you highlight, uh, examples of skills that were once thought to be just innate,

00:08:00.820 natural talent. Uh, for example, perfect pitch, uh, was thought to be something that you were just

00:08:05.380 born with, but you and your researchers, fellow researchers have found that, no, you can actually

00:08:09.580 through practice develop perfect pitch. Right. Perfect pitch is kind of a weird, uh, ability that,

00:08:17.400 uh, people found that some musicians, uh, had. So if you basically play a tone on the piano,

00:08:24.700 they can actually tell you exactly what tone that is. And more, maybe even more impressively,

00:08:31.060 if you, you know, make a sound, uh, they can actually tell you what frequency, uh, that,

00:08:37.860 that sound actually corresponded to in terms of notes. Uh, and, and one of the things that was

00:08:45.820 sort of initially, uh, uh, kind of supporting that view that, you know, this is something that you

00:08:51.020 either have and you don't, and it's sort of innate was that basically when older adults tried to acquire

00:08:58.700 this, they found it extremely difficult and, and basically not something that would be easily

00:09:05.900 acquired. And, and then research started to look at basically the development. And one of the things

00:09:13.660 that people noticed was that the musicians that acquired this tended to actually had started playing

00:09:19.520 music at an early age. And, and now I think it's pretty compelling evidence that there's an age period

00:09:27.240 between three years and five years where it seems like any child, if you give them the appropriate

00:09:34.180 training, uh, we'll be able to acquire, uh, the skill as you get older, it's almost like the brain

00:09:41.160 is now getting into a different developmental phase where it's actually, you know, processing sound in

00:09:48.080 terms of relationships. So we talk about relative pitch where you can judge two pitches and argue,

00:09:54.600 you know, whether they're the same and how they're different, which is a quite different process from

00:09:59.620 just getting a single note. Right. But, but that is to say though, uh, even as adults, it is possible with

00:10:07.740 the right kind of training to move beyond just relative pitch, but actually acquire a perfect pitch.

00:10:13.260 There are demonstrations of people who've been able to do that, uh, with very extended training. Uh, you know,

00:10:19.900 they, they never really reach kind of the most extreme level of, of, of, uh, perfect pitch. Uh, but, you know,

00:10:27.380 they certainly were able to do it. And what was interesting is that when they did it, uh, they

00:10:33.760 actually had to kind of memorize a note or, or basically they needed some kind of fixed reference

00:10:39.960 point. Uh, and, and basically that was kind of the focus of the training of being able to kind of

00:10:46.580 self generate a standard that would allow you now to compare, uh, the note that you heard with your

00:10:53.920 internal standard. Right. And going back to this idea that, um, you know, children in the, between

00:10:59.840 the ages of three and five, their brain is sort of, uh, open to, you know, shaping through practice.

00:11:06.640 Um, you talk about in the book, how this is probably why Beethoven was such a musical prodigy. A lot of

00:11:12.440 times we think that, oh, he just had this genius that he was born with, but you kind of show throughout

00:11:17.060 the book that, you know, in fact, Beethoven at a very young age began extensive musical training,

00:11:22.300 uh, under the hand of his father that allowed him to become the Beethoven that we know today.

00:11:27.840 Right. Uh, I think we were talking about Mozart. Oh yeah, correct. Mozart. You probably make a, uh,

00:11:33.260 a related argument about Beethoven, but Mozart was famous, uh, for actually being one of the first

00:11:40.580 documented cases here of this perfect pitch, you know, where he was able to name notes when they were

00:11:47.240 presented in isolation. And, uh, uh, and obviously Mozart is viewed as a pretty remarkable, uh, musician.

00:11:56.580 I, in the book, we kind of really, you know, talk a little bit about when you compare what Mozart was

00:12:03.560 able to do in terms of playing music. Uh, it turns out that today's, uh, Suzuki train, uh, music students,

00:12:12.320 that they actually, in some ways are, were even able to reach more prodigious level than Mozart.

00:12:19.840 So it's not, you know, that Mozart was doing something that nobody else could replicate. Uh,

00:12:26.300 and we also talked about the fact that Mozart's father, you know, may actually have been able to

00:12:32.660 help Mozart with the early compositions. So when we're really talking about Mozart's ability to,

00:12:39.240 you know, write compositions by himself, we're talking about something that was done when he

00:12:44.440 was, uh, you know, in late adolescence. So, I mean, this is amazing. This, what your research

00:12:50.380 is showing is that, um, you know, talent isn't innate. You know, we can actually, if we want to

00:12:55.700 through our, our willpower and our, our choice and our commitment, we can improve ourselves in a,

00:13:01.960 in specific skills, um, through a certain kind of practice, which we'll talk about later on.

00:13:06.580 But, but so if practice is the key to becoming an expert, a lot of people practice, you know,

00:13:12.100 say if they're a tennis player and they go to the courts every weekend and they play tennis,

00:13:17.080 they think that's practice, but you argue in the book that are not really practicing effectively.

00:13:22.820 So how is it that most people have practiced that kind of leads them to sort of this middling

00:13:27.980 performance that they never actually get to expert level?

00:13:30.800 Yeah. And I think most people know people have been playing golf two or three times a week for

00:13:37.600 20, 30 years, and they don't seem to be getting any better. Uh, and, and I guess what the,

00:13:45.860 probably the most important point that we make in this book is, you know, once you look at what

00:13:51.000 people do and, and I think it's somewhat similar with people who are, you know, engaged in the same

00:13:56.660 profession for decades, uh, they tend to just keep doing what they have been doing. Uh, and they're

00:14:03.520 just doing more of it. And I think, uh, what we show here, you know, review after review, just

00:14:10.340 basically the length of time that you've been spending in a domain. If we exclude the first

00:14:15.340 year or two, when you actually do improve, when you're kind of getting into the domain, uh, it doesn't

00:14:22.080 seem like additional experience is really improving your ability to, you know, uh, be effective here

00:14:29.400 as a doctor in terms of how well your patients are doing, or if you're a teacher, how well you can get

00:14:37.240 your students to improve their academic performance. Uh, and you can go wrong the line. And, and even when

00:14:45.560 it comes to just playing chess, uh, if you're a tournament player, uh, the amount of time that you've been

00:14:51.900 spending, uh, playing chess with your club, uh, uh, friends, uh, does not seem to improve your performance

00:15:00.640 in chess. Uh, so basically just getting more experience, uh, is not automatically making you better.

00:15:09.140 Gotcha. And then going back to that research on the doctors, you even found studies, research that's, that

00:15:13.580 doctor's performance actually declines with age. Right. If we're talking about something like

00:15:19.380 diagnosing, uh, heart sounds, uh, it actually turns out that the ability of a doctor to diagnose

00:15:27.780 tape recordings here, where we actually know what the patient's problem was, uh, actually decreases as

00:15:35.880 a function of how long they've been out practicing, uh, since they graduated. Yeah, that, that was really

00:15:43.500 interesting. So, okay. If you want to get better at golf or tennis or whatever skill you want to get

00:15:49.780 better at, it's not enough just to go play a lot. Um, you argue that you need to take your practice

00:15:56.140 to something that you call purposeful practice. Uh, so what's involved with purposeful practice?

00:16:03.500 Well, you know, so, so we kind of argue that the ideal type of practice is if you have a teacher

00:16:09.000 who observes you performing, say, you know, watching you play, uh, tennis in a doubles game or

00:16:17.400 whatever, and then, you know, they will actually notice here that when you get an opportunity to do

00:16:23.800 a backhand volley or something, you know, that you basically are very unlikely to be successful.

00:16:29.880 Now, if you just keep on playing, uh, the opportunities here for backhand volley is going to

00:16:36.960 come, you know, when you're not really ready for it. Uh, so you're really not getting a very good

00:16:42.380 chance here of developing better skills on, at improving that. So what we're arguing is, well,

00:16:49.380 if a teacher observed you, uh, and then says, okay, so let's not train your backhand volley.

00:16:54.720 Now the coach can basically have you stand there ready to take a backhand volley and you keep doing

00:17:02.660 that until you're, you know, really having control over your shot and then basically make you step

00:17:08.840 back and, you know, make it harder for you. So incrementally, you're building up your skill

00:17:14.580 of actually being able to do the backhand volley. And, and the argument is that if, even if you have

00:17:21.100 just a couple of hours training with a coach under those conditions, that's going to improve your

00:17:26.160 backhand volley so much more than spending, you know, years or even decades of doubles tennis.

00:17:33.520 So it's a matter of just honing in on a very specific skill and then purposely working on that

00:17:38.840 skill. Right. And integrating it into what you would normally do because, you know, you don't want

00:17:44.720 to make that change in a way that you're not relying on it when you're actually playing. Um, but that

00:17:51.800 general principle here, and that that's true for musicians. So you have a musician who's preparing

00:17:57.900 a piece for a public performance. And there's one section here where they have real difficulty,

00:18:04.360 you know, really controlling and keeping up the tempo and, and the kind of variations here and, and,

00:18:12.560 and, and loudness that is desired. Well, then you basically try to make that the target of practice.

00:18:19.900 So, you know, the teacher would recommend here, maybe you would need to do some exercises to be able

00:18:26.380 to speed up now, uh, basically certain types of finger combinations. Uh, and then you kind of keep

00:18:33.280 working on it and then eventually you embed that now in your performance and now you can actually

00:18:39.460 perform it at a higher level than you could, uh, previously. So what's going on in our brain when

00:18:45.780 we practice purposefully? Well, the argument is that a skilled performer, and this is really key

00:18:53.980 to be able to practice by yourself. You know, you're going to be able to sort of have an idea of what it

00:18:59.660 is that you're aspiring to do. And then, you know, you know, the kind of sequence of finger movements,

00:19:06.540 uh, that you're going to producing. And then you also need to be able to kind of listen to what it

00:19:12.040 sounds like, uh, because you basically need to have some way of knowing if you're getting closer to what

00:19:18.700 you're trying to achieve. And by iterating like that, maybe for hours, uh, you can basically now figure

00:19:26.300 out ways in which you will be able to achieve that goal. So now you can produce something that sounds

00:19:32.680 like what the teacher wanted you to be able to produce. And you can kind of hear that you're

00:19:37.880 actually able to do that. And so even though purposeful practices step up from just sort of

00:19:44.200 random practice that you might do, right? You play, go to the tennis court, go to the golf course.

00:19:49.920 You, you say in the book though, that purposeful practice still has limits. What are the limits of

00:19:55.380 purposeful practice? Well, you know, purposeful practice, the way we define it is that you have

00:20:01.580 a goal and you're actually trying to change a specific aspect. Now you don't necessarily know

00:20:08.560 if that goal is the best. And just to take one example here, let's assume that you're playing

00:20:14.780 basketball and you want to learn how to dunk, you know, and one way to kind of improve now your ability

00:20:21.300 to get higher up in the air, you know, would be to kind of keep jumping up and down. Uh, now it turns

00:20:29.380 out that there's no kind of research showing that the most effective way of actually improving the

00:20:37.080 height of your jump is not jumping more, but is, uh, essentially, uh, working with weights. So you

00:20:45.300 actually are lifting weights and that now gives the stimulus to your legs, you know, so you're actually

00:20:51.560 explosively getting up with the weight and that now puts much more pressure on your legs. And that type

00:20:59.820 of training will eventually allow you now to actually get more success here in increasing your jumping

00:21:07.000 height. Uh, so when we talk about deliberate practice, we argue that when the practice is actually

00:21:13.880 recommended and the coach is actually diagnosing and saying, well, you know, at your current level

00:21:20.540 of performance, uh, one thing that you can actually do to improve here within the next couple of weeks

00:21:25.880 is by basically improving this. So let's focus in on trying to improve this. And here is some

00:21:32.060 training activities that would allow you now to repeat and get immediate feedback here on your success.

00:21:38.340 So once we have a teacher who actually has proven by bringing other people up to the level that you're

00:21:46.520 aspiring to be at, then we're talking about deliberate practice because not only are you doing purposeful

00:21:54.140 practice, but you're actually doing the kinds of sequence of purposeful practice that prior experience

00:22:01.540 have shown, uh, is associated with you being able to reach a higher level of performance.

00:22:06.940 All right. So that's a key point there. So deliberate practice requires that you're,

00:22:10.860 that the, the results are, you can replicate the results.

00:22:15.260 Right. And, and basically that, you know, the knowledge and training, and I guess in music,

00:22:20.820 we have several hundred years of basically people trying to acquire very high level of skill on various

00:22:28.160 instruments. So they've now developed training activities that are effective here of improving

00:22:34.280 various things. Like for example, the speed of combinations, uh, the ability to, you know,

00:22:41.100 move your hand in jumps and stuff like that. Uh, so, so as long as there is basically this science

00:22:48.480 support that given activity will actually improve, uh, something better than we're actually calling that

00:22:55.680 deliberate practice because a coach is more or less able to, because that coach, I've actually seen other

00:23:02.900 people reaching these higher levels of performance. And in some ways, I mean, that's kind of the magic

00:23:07.980 of skill. You know, you're at the given level. And the question is, can you get to this higher level?

00:23:14.180 Well, if you see 10 other people who were at your level, who actually now with the help of this coach

00:23:20.740 been able to reach this higher level, then I think most people would be convinced here, you know,

00:23:26.180 that it seems likely here that this type of training will actually get me to this higher, uh, point.

00:23:32.820 Gotcha. Um, so, you know, cause the deliberate practice requires you to focus on tasks or practices

00:23:39.360 that we've, we know based on research will get you better. What are the other principles of deliberate

00:23:45.040 practice? Well, you know, they basically, I guess for the purposeful practice, you know,

00:23:52.380 you need to have a goal and you need to have a training activity that allows you now to kind of

00:23:58.460 keep repeating and refining what you're doing. So you gradually will now be able to reach that goal.

00:24:05.260 And you also need to have the opportunities here to kind of reflect on what happened when you try to

00:24:11.940 do something slightly different to assess here, whether that really could be a path for you to reach,

00:24:18.440 uh, this higher level of performance. So this idea here that you really need to do something,

00:24:24.520 you get immediate feedback about whether this is actually not closer to the goal and, and basically

00:24:31.740 you keep refining. And we find that, you know, so much of education and training doesn't really meet

00:24:39.660 that criteria for purposeful practice. So I guess if you go and listen to a lecture or, you know,

00:24:45.840 the coach is telling you about how to do things, that's very different from that individualized

00:24:52.160 practice where you can actually do things and gradually, uh, improve, uh, your ability to do it.

00:24:59.780 And, uh, so, so we basically argue here that most of the training that you see, even that's going on,

00:25:08.120 uh, between teams, uh, you know, contain a relatively small proportion of what we would call

00:25:15.520 purposeful purposeful. And in particular, if you have only one coach to 40, uh, soccer players or

00:25:23.240 football players, then obviously very little, it's going to be individualized training. You know,

00:25:29.500 the coach is going to be having everyone doing the same thing. And that may be useful perhaps

00:25:34.900 to a few of the individuals, but you really are not kind of finding that optimal

00:25:40.960 training difficulty that really would be effective for each individual.

00:25:47.300 Um, so one thing I've read about deliberate practice and, you know, the articles and books

00:25:52.380 that I've written about is that it's, it's hard. Deliberate practice is hard. It can be boring,

00:25:57.360 monotonous. Why is that? Why does deliberate practice have to be hard in order for it to work?

00:26:04.440 Well, you know, one of the preconditions of deliberate practice is that the task that you're

00:26:09.460 setting yourself out to achieve is not something that you can already do. So, so basically it's

00:26:16.140 almost like quote, setting yourself up for failure because there is a, a gap here between what you're

00:26:24.220 trying to do and what you currently can do, uh, in a sort of consistent way. So anytime when you're

00:26:32.260 actually trying to stretch yourself, you know, it's going to require a lot of concentration. And also,

00:26:38.560 it seems that unless you're really trying to reach for this higher level goal, uh, basically just

00:26:46.220 repeating, doing things is not going to make a difference. Uh, so that's why, you know, the

00:26:52.080 deliberate practice almost by design, uh, is going to be difficult. And the number of times that you're

00:26:58.920 not meeting the standard, uh, is going to be a very high and, and it is, you know, obviously once you

00:27:07.520 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

00:32:53.760 do they play in your theory of expertise?

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

00:38:13.580 practice, even in more amorphous soft skills.

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 0.94

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.

The Art of Manliness - July 29, 2016

#221： Reach Your Peak

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