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.