Practice makes Perfect.. What type of Practice ?

 How does Ericsson`s 10,000 Hour Rules apply to the expression of "Practice makes perfect" ?, Previous blog looked at the PodCast of "Good Life Project" and how the original research of Anders Ericsson began into the development of expertise.

   Jonathan Field, the founder of GLP in his podcast interview asks Anders Ericsson to explain the two practices " Purposeful practice" and "Deliberate practice".

Field: "Deliberate practice is very difference than just the notion of "practice". "Tell me if I am wrong" Deliberate practice is the type of very precise practice which leads most efficently to ,, growth, to mastery, to expertise" 

Ericsson: "To Clarify, people have been using 

"Deliberate practice" in ways that is a little bit different from what we originally proposed when we looked at musical students". "Musical students were working with individual teachers which actually guided their practice into "Detail Practice" activity which they could go off and do by them self and monitor the outcome". 

       "And we call "purposeful practice" when you have a training task with a goal, and then you have something you can do over with immediate feedback and you have opportunities here to repeat it and  you can reflect and figure out way you can do it differently to reach the goal you set for yourself". 

Field: "So the big difference than.. is one has more external guidance by a teacher"

Ericsson:  "Exactly,  So "Deliberate practice" would be "purposeful practice" which is now supervised or actually guided by a teacher".... "If you actually have a teacher who has worked with a lot of other individuals; they would be able to access"... "Well here is where you`re at and lets first correct your fundamentals first before we start moving into the higher levels". "To adjust what you are doing incorrectly because eventually that is going to be a real limiting factor".

Field: And the big difference between  weather it is purposeful or deliberate ... between those two categories (of practice) and just regular practice" ?

Ericsson: Right, that is a big difference between purposeful practice and .. practice or play" Using playing doubles in tennis as example Ericsson explains that in play you miss a backhand volly but of course play just continues. But if you coach was to define a meaningful list of routines to practice and build your perfection of your back hand volly. After the several different exercises of the coach; you would have a expertise in your back hand volly.

Ericsson: "The idea here is that with that purposeful practice where you are actually help to focus in on a specific aspect; you can probably gain as much in two hours as you would in a couple of years of just playing with friends".

Field: "You get together with friends... but the reason you do it is because it is fun".

Ericsson: If you are working with a teacher, they would be able to set up a

Game play practice

sequence of  different things you should make adjustments and what is important is that the teacher is confidence you are able to make these adjustments with these activities". "And if you run into problems than the teacher is going to diagnose what is needed to fix first before you can achieve the goal".

Professor Ericsson suggest that instead of looking for that gifted ability which may occur magically while you are playing; that  "nobody actually finds the gifted and instead take the view that this is what I would like to do and then figure out what is the path".

Next blog, third of this series; will discuss where one gets that movivation and the value of a mentor and your teacher`s confidence in you and your abilities.

Anders Ericsson on Expertise

 

In a 2016 Good Life Project Podcast, founder, JonathanFields interviews K. AndersEricsson, PhD, about his research into the Psychology of developing one`s abilities as it pertains to becoming an expert in your field.  As Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, Amders Ericsson did research which  is probably the start of what is today the science of "Sport Psychology" and the relationship between an athletic`s mind and personal or physical development.

What started as a research project on a question of "How would one develop an ability to receit a long list of numbers; later advanced to a similar  study of violin and piano music students and resulted in what is now known as " 10,000 Rule of Expertise"  This suggests that. "To become an expertise one must invest at least 10,000 hours of practice" But the question then arrives as to what type of practice.

"If we take the task of reproducing a list of numbers.. at first a person recites to memory the numbers and can reach about 10... then it is found that a method has to be develop to remember more" Ericsson discovered that "humans have an inability to pay attention to a lot of things at the same time" "and we were interested in how could training really change that". The volunteer whom was being studied had reached a point of 10 numbers when he began a strategy of remembering the 1st three numbers and recalling from memory the remaining numbers and "eventually came up with a system which would allow him to do like 20 of these groups"

First important point is that eventually there was a need to develop a system or strategy to achieve the expertise wanted to be developed.  "But if you were sticking to doing more of the same you would never get beyond (a certain point) "but by shifting the strategy of using long term memory he was able to open up the space or possibilities" "and we studied others of his colleagues which also got to about 100 digits" "And now the current record (in 2016) is over 450 digits"

Secondly, "the amount of time it took to develop the skill to be able to do it". "This was over 400 hours during a couple of years" doing one hour a day. But "that intensity of being able to focus while being tested" "is part of the success of his training". "One of the things we saw here, and with many other experts; is the ability to concentrate during short periods".

"We are making a point between "purposeful practice" and "deliberate Practice". Those who have been able to reach the 450 ditits level are being taught the fundamentals and then like a music studiant work to practice these principles, they can achieve a high level of expertise. "By executing that system they are able to do vasely more than that individual that had to figure out for himself".

"That is a powerful idea.. if you can draw on what teachers have learned over time... about the best way of doing things... and as you get high and higher .. there are going to be few and few things which will allow you to reach one step further" toward your expertise.

Another interesting point is that although similar task or expertise in individuals, it may not be applied to different aspects of similar tasks. For example: The current Guinness World Record for recitual of the digits of π’s (pi)  is held by Lu Chao of China, who, in 2005 recited 67,890 digits of the value of pi. However,  about the same time, "Ericsson and his colleagues gave Lu as well as a group of people of the same age and education level, a test that measured their "digit span". (how well they could remember a sequence of random digits presented at a rate of one digit per second)". (Life Science) .

How did Lu do ? "Lu`s digit span was 8.83, compared with the average of 9.27 for the rest of the group"(published in 2009 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.) Why ? Lu was using a method  "called the "memory palace"   which has (been) applied since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans and which involves using spatial visualization (as a mental method) to remember information such as digits, faces or lists of words. ( read how at Life Science) .

Further in the podcast interview Ericsson states " I know of historial examples of people who had to relearn how they were doing things in order to advance to the next level of mastery" 

  Sometimes an mental ability can be transfer to a similar newly defined ability by translation of that ability but often the individual on reaching his plateau of performance must now find a new mental application to build his future advancements. " 

Next blog will look at the type of practice and the mental development which this podcast suggest is possible.

Making yourself a Champion in Bowls

"When someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him good?” was the seemingly primordial

question which  Professor Anders Ericsson attempted to answer in his 1993  paper  published in the "Psychological Review". Remember that research in the  field of Human Behavior is difficult because volunteers for research are not willing to commit to several years of trials. 

Ericsson`s most recognized research was what is today called the "10,000-hour rule". Although misinterpreted by many like Malcolm Gladwell it suggests that 10,000 hours of practice is needed to become an expert in a field or sport. 

In his early research, Ericsson by using "violinists at the Academy of Music in Berlin, divided the selected music students into three groups: those who had the chops to be world-class performers, those who were very good and those who planned to become music teachers." 

Professor Ericsson and two colleagues  discovered that what separated the violinists’ skill levels was not natural-born talent but the hours of practice they had logged since childhood. 

The future teachers registered around 4,000 hours, the very good violinists 8,000 and the elite performers more than 10,000 hours. The same study was conducted with pianists, with similar results, thus creating what became known as the "10,000 hour rule".

Using  the next few blogs I will look first at the  Podcast " titled "Anders Ericsson: Dismantling the 10,000 Hour Rule" by  the "Good Life Project founder Jonathan Fields who interviews K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, and discuss his last published book "Peak" on the "Secrets from the New Science of Expertise". (2016).

The first miss interruption of Ericsson work was by Malcolm Gladwell, author of best-selling "Outliers" (2008)

 actually popularized Professor Ericsson’s research;  but to many in the field of  "Human Behavior" research, it was consider to oversimplified  the findings of Ericsson`s 2009 research paper. 

Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of

actually popularized Professor Ericsson’s research;  but to many in the field of  "Human Behavior" research, it was consider to oversimplified  the findings of Ericsson`s 2009 research paper. 

Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of

As far back as 2006, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, authors of the book “Freakonomics,” attempted to explained Ericsson research in their NY Times profile of Professor Ericsson and stated that his lifetime work was "on defining what makes an expert in their field."  

Their book “Freakonomics, suggests that data analysis and incentives can explain a lot about human behavior. Using their tools of economics; they attempted to explain real-world phenomena that are not conventionally thought of in terms of "economics". (by Shortform) 

Good Capitalistic Sports Information

 In  the year 2020 when the CoVid 19 virus scorched the earth and closed Lawn 

Bowls Clubs the individual`s love of their sport has place "Stay-at-Home" Armchair athletics on the Internet searching for new articles or information on Lawn Bowls.

Yes there are a few countries which have returned to the Greens like Australia and New Zealand and a few social media sites like Australian Lawn Bowls Facebook which streams 2020 Championship games, but the most common Lawn Bowls watching has been the "Friday RePlay" of extremely good past Championships on Club`s Facebook.

I speak of Capitalistic Sports Information because with the Internet in almost everyone`s home the Search for Lawn Bowls instruction other than Learn-to-Bowl videos on Youtube is almost impossible. 

Depending upon your browser and it`s "search structure" you may never find that specific sport information you thought to seek out; without hours of searching or investment into a on-line service.  I use the word  "Capitalistic" to describe the information we are seeking is because websites and social media structures are build and maintained for one big purpose -- "to make money". Yes from obvious things advertising to the less obvious "Cookies" data collection. These things are what drives and give our results in the first choice of your search engine.

An example of such surfing and searching, I started with a good point of depart. The web page of a great Coaching icon.  Lachlan Tighe Bowls and with an interest in his notes on mental development for the athletic. A small reference which Lachlan had written  when in 2012 to 2014 he was Head Coach for Bowls Canada. 

He speaks of reading the works of  Anders Ericsson on "solitary practice" as a method of developing the top athletic perfection of their skills. ( Mr. Ericsson a psychologist who was reconize for his research into the skill development of experts) 

  Searching for"solitary practice" on an Microsoft EDGE browser gave me the introductory description of "A solitary practitioner is an individual who chooses to practice their spiritual faith in the privacy of his or her home or other designated space, without the need to participate in a group such as that of a Wiccan coven". obviously to general so I then modify the request  to "Solitary Sport practice".

This finds 3,040,000 results and mainly based upon two Search criteria,  I am in Canada, Canadian websites and "Sports Practice".  Immediately I am suggested sites like Canadian Research in Sports such as SIRC (Sport Information Research Center) and it forums or topics and secondly  suggestion of-sites on leadership or sport practices. 

Obvious I need a more unique Search  likes "Works of Anders Ericsson"  which catch on the name "Ericsson" and reveals news of his death ( June 17 this year in Tallahassee Fl at the age of 72) and  finally further down I find a few interlinks of his works and  research with published results. 

Stats of Blogger Sept 2019

In a study by Cloudfront.net Cote,Baker and Abernethy published  20 pages on researching  perfection by athletics under detail solitary practice which I will blog and review in the next few days as my future blogs for December tackle this subject.

We can see from the Blog Stats (photo at right) of Sept 2019 that there is a sudden increase in readership and the topic of concern was a 2015 blog  "Being a Leader Bowler".  Also we can see that the search was a Google.com search. This sort of information allow a blogger to choose their topics for future blogs based upon the interest of their reader base.

The photo (right) show my second dissatisfaction of the recent Capitalistic changes of the Internet. Compared to the previous stats (Above) this stat is useless to  a sport blogger, I have been happy to leave my  over 200 writings with Blogger.com which supplied me enough  personal satisfaction to continue to write. But to Google.com, these detail statistics add no revenue to the company, so now the simple new stats show a graft increase from 28th Nov 29th  of over 60 readers but no longer with  reference . It is  obvious that for blog writing, a new format of information is needed puts less value on the " save money" and more on the satisfaction of the contributor and the reader. 

As a blogger, my articles were based upon the statistics  I received from Blogger.com  and clearly identified my readers and the area of the world where the sport of lawn bowls is being developed. to the topic which the search had brought reader to the site and even less information now with no indication of the  location of reader.

Maybe I will do like Mr. Tighe and build my own website. But than again, I am not a professional coach using my knowledge to write books; which are to be sold or using my website to obtain employment in some international bowls organization.   

The need to make money by website owners means the Internet is not longer showing an interest toward the needs of the reader. Maybe we will soon see all these free information blog site began to charge us with an access fee.  I have started backing up my nearly 200 blogs to my private USB and will begin printing a club coaching binder; but at 76 it may be my last project but I will continue to blog..

But for the rest of this CoVid 19 Shut-in period I will tackle Lawn Bowls on the Mental Performance and Subconscious Mind development.  Ty 4 following