Human skills are created by chains of
nerve fibers carrying electrical impulses. A simple skill involves a
chain of hundreds of thousands of nerve fibers and synapses. The faster and
stronger the signals, the more automatic is the skill. There is a
matter called myelin, which insulates the chains of nerve fibers.
Myelin keeps electrical signals from leaking out from the chains.
There is always an optimal way of doing things. When you repeat an
action in an optimal way, you add some myelin around the right chain
of nerve fibers. The more you do it in the right way, the thicker the
layers of myelin come and the faster and more accurate your movements
or thoughts become. There is a downside of myelin. If you practice in
a wrong way, you add myelin into the wrong chain and you get better at
doing the things in a wrong way. This doesn´t mean you cannot make
mistakes while you are learning. But it means you should avoid
repeating them.
All movements are made of chains of
nerve fibers and all the chains grow according to certain rules. The
chains decide the timing and the strength of each muscle contraption.
A fast, synchronous chain produces a fast, synchronous movement. The
more you develop a chain, the more automatic it will become and the
less you are aware of the chain. It takes a long time to learn a
complex skill. You have to remember the opportunity cost in learning a
complex skill. While your brains can probably handle any changes in
the nerve fiber chains, you don´t have enough time to improve all of
them. When you practice one skill, you cannot practice another.
Myths about developing skills
There are two common
myths about developing skills. First, you imagine some people have an
innate talent and without it, it is impossible to develop a skill to
the level of expertise. Second, when you practice enough in the right
way, we you be a top performer in any skill. Both of these myths are
partly right. The first one is more wrong than the second.
Lets start with
the first one. Truth is, a person with a mediocre talent, with a good
process will eventually beat the more talented person with a mediocre
process. What happens here, is that more talented person will first
beat the crap out of the less talented. Less talented person will
practice a skill with a better process and his nerve fiber chains
will eventually get stronger and faster. The reason for this is that
less talented person will eventually have enough more high quality
repetitions, which equalizes the difference. The more talented has an
advantage of needing less repetitions, but he will eventually fail to
use it for his/her advantage. There are some practical skills, in
which expertise can be achieved only by some people. There are some
natural properties of the body that cannot be improved. If you want
to be a good baseball hitter, you need to have a certain level of
vision.
The second myth
could be called the myth of 10,000 hours, which was popularized by
Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. His rule basically says,
everybody needs at least 10,000 hours to achieve a top performance in
any competitive field. He has found that rule from Anders Ericsson
who has done research on expertise. Gladwell´s problem is the
interpretation of the research. When Ericsson said you need on
average 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve expert
performance. Gladwell talks about minimum. He basically says, that
everybody needs about the same amount of time and the same way of
practicing to achieve expertise. This is not true. What Ericsson´s
research really means, is the amount of practice varies depending on
people´s talent, when other factors are the same. Less talented
people may need 20,000 hours of same practice to gain the same skills
as the world class talent may survive with only 5,000 hours. I am not
denying that you need to put thousands of hours into practice, or
saying that the right kind of practice isn´t needed.
Better mental models, better skills
When I introduced a latticework of
mental models, I mentioned a need to have two latticeworks and
combine them. First is a general latticework of mental models and the
second one is specialized to some area of expertise. It is hard to
have any expertise in practical skills without having more detailed
and accurate mental models in moving your body. Experts in physical
fields, have proper mental models to establish a clear picture what
the action should look like at every part of the movement. You need to
be able to think how it feels to perform the action part by part.
Mental models are held in long term memory and can be used to get
fast and effective responses in certain patterns of information like
a movement in opponents body while playing tennis. You always have to
hold on to and process lots of information simultaneously. Any
complicated action requires building mental models of one sort or
another.
Experts develop highly complex and
detail-oriented mental models of the different situations they are
likely going to encounter. They have an ability to see patterns in a
collection of things that would seem random or confusing for the less
skilled performers. In some physical actions, experts may use
movement that novices do not even see happening. Experts have mental
models that let them consider more things at once. They have a better
understanding, which enables them to separate the more important data
from the less important. They can see the relevant data as larger
pieces of larger patterns, not as some isolated bits of information.
They can select the best solution from the larger amount of
possibilities than less skilled people.
Choose your expertise wisely
You dont´have
enough time to learn everything. There is always an opportunity cost
between having a skill and time used for acquiring it. It costs less
to achieve an expert level in any competitive skill if you are
talented. 10,000 hours is almost 3 hours/day for 10 years. If you have
no talent, you will probably need at least 20,000 hours and it is too
much. And because you need to be concentrated while you are
practicing, there is not much possibilities of speeding up the
process. Physical and mental skills are different in this, because
mental skills do not deteriorate as fast as physical. All people need to
practice to achieve expertise and the best way to do it by following
the principles of deliberate practice.
Sources:
Peak, Anders Ericsson
The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle
Mastery, George Leonard
Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin
Bounce, Matthew Syed
Sources:
Peak, Anders Ericsson
The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle
Mastery, George Leonard
Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin
Bounce, Matthew Syed
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