On deliberate practice (golf)

Thanks to Jason Kottke for the pointer to this site, where Dan McLaughlin is putting the "10,000 hours deliberate practice" idea to the test, to see if he can get up to professional standard in golf.

The principle is attributed to Malcolm Gladwell (who doesn't need any more free publicity--there's less to him than meets the eye) but the research is based on the work of K Anders Ericsson (here's a link to an accessible article.)

So what does correlate with success? [...] All the superb performers he investigated had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically by their families throughout their developing years. Later research [...] revealed that the
amount and quality of practice were key factors in the level of expertise people achieved. Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born. These conclusions are based on rigorous research that looked at exceptional performance using scientific methods that are verifiable and reproducible. (p.1)

Our research shows that even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training before they win international competitions. In some fields the apprenticeship is longer: It now takes most elite musicians 15 to 25 years of steady practice, on average, before they succeed at the international level. (p.4)

It's interesting to put the idea to the test in this way.

The definitive reference is: Charness N, Feltovich P, Hoffman R and Ericsson K (2006) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance Cambridge; C.U.P. (Beware, it's 900 pages!)

I've also discussed the idea here, here, and here.

On wire-walking and beyond...

On 7 August 1974, Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the (then) World Trade Center. He did so with no authority or sponsorship (and the financial backing remains unclear).

(Is the above plagiarised? Discuss in the light of the link from the heading.)

I have just watched this extraordinary film.

Its impact is largely based on the equally extraordinary variation between the practitioner's (Petit's) account, and that of spectators.

The spectator question is "Is he going to fall off?" (Spoiler; he didn't, otherwise he could not have contributed to this film.) For the participants or practitioners the question just does not arise. He spent 45 minutes on the wire and crossed and re-crossed eight times.

The point of this observation? It's a very vivid illustration of how the acquisition of a skill is capable of completely transforming a person. It would be nonsensical to listen to the Proms to see if you can catch out a player producing a note out of tune. Their performance concerns are utterly different, as a result of course of thousands of hours of practice. Richard Sennett, in his rambling and ultimately disappointing "The Craftsman" (2008), pronounces on what is becoming the received wisdom, that it takes 10,000 hours to produce a craftsman.

Random reflections;

• At what cost? Ten thousand hours which could have been spent doing something other than practising an instrument, or training on a track or walking on a wire. What kind of person would the craftsman have become without that obsessionalism?
  
  
• And related to that, it is not surprising that the craftsman does not just do something differently from everyone else; he or she now is different, and thinks of her- or himself differently.
  
  
• If it takes that long, and always has done, why are we so obsessed with doing it faster? It's just pushing on an automatically closing door. It takes an enormous amount of wasted energy.
  
  
• And as Sennett moots; can we afford it any longer? A few years ago there was a TV series called "Faking it", in which participants were given about three weeks to be transformed into passable imitators of a DJ, a hairdresser, a chef or such-like. Is that the paradigm for vocational education to come?