Deliberate practice outside the comfort zone.
Yes.
If you want to appear like an expert, do not mention the 10000 hr āruleā almost everyone who quotes it gets it wrong
There are very few experts out there and unless you have significant expertise in the same subject matter, itās very difficult to recognize if them
4:03 - Definition of the expertise
5:00 - Repeated attemps with feedback
6:46 - Valid environment
11:21 - Timely feedback
Chunking is important in music for reading standard notation and why itās an effective way to communicate. Repetition with feedback is very important to improving and part of why children are very effective learnersā¦ āif I do this, then this happensā; itās generally the answer to every āhow do I get better at Xā question
After doing the 10,000 hour āthingā, then see if you can teach it clearly, precisely, and succinctly with the student(s) demonstrating complete understanding. If that happens, then Iād say yes, you are an expert. At least thatās what I learned through my 39 years of teaching special education high school students. Iām sure there are many, many examples of that not being the case, but for me thatās what makes an expert. Iām also sure that teaching is also a big part of the 10,000 hour āexperienceā. Thanks for listening!
10000 hrs just means ādo something a lotā; some people might need 1K, some might need 30K. Its like 10000 steps; the number isnt based on much more than its a nice big number between 1K (not enough) and 100K (too much) thats easy to remember and humans like that sort of thing.
āI fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.ā - Bruce Lee
Unless I am mixing up my books, one of the parts everyone leaves out is āopportunityā.
There are a lot of garage/local musicians out there that have played for 10,000 hours. Are they better than me? Hell yeah! Are they experts - nope. The opportunity, in terms of either ability to demonstrate their craft, or have a mentor that guides them properly, etc is a big part of getting to be an expert.
Hi, my name is John and I am a hobbyist musican, and damn proud of it. Fin.
Yes, having a mentor is one of the things mentioned in the video.
Yes, thatās the important part right there. Not so much just the opportunity though but the necessity. If youāre in a band, itās quite important that you perform well so youāre motivated to perform at a higher level plus you have a more clearly defined set of goals that you need to accomplish. Similarly here, if you post covers for critique, it gives you a good reason to improve your skills which relate to that. Ericsson discusses that most individuals rarely function at their maximum potential, even with significant experience, unless they have a good reason that pushes them to do that.
The original study by Ericsson as used by Gladwell to popularize the 10K hr āruleā is titled āThe Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performanceā, it focused on violin students. Now I think there are several things that Gladwell gets wrong with his assumptions but the biggest thing he leaves out (as you noted) is that the teacher is extremely important: what you practice is at least as important as how long you practice. Also, the 10K hrs (which I think was ~8400 hrs?) was an average of the participants. If you pick subjects who have reached a certain level of expertise, youāre likely to find that on average, theyāve done a thing for a significant amount of timeā¦ but instead, what if you pick people who have done a thing for a certain period of time and assess their level of expertise? There is a limiting factor here too in that people who are not very good at something tend not to do it for longā¦ except for golfers
At the end of all that, itās been suggested in several studies that practice still only makes up about 20-25% of the maximal level of performance that a person can reach. A significant factor for how good youāll be is your passion for doing the thing; I started off playing guitar when I was young and never really enjoyed it so I didnāt do it for that longā¦ I played violin for several years after that which I enjoyed and did very well. In high school I played bassoon (not my choice), enjoyed that and became proficient at that very quickly, as well with trombone. I tried French horn for a while, never enjoyed it and never did very well with that though I did pretty well with trumpet for the year or so that I played that. More recently I started playing guitar again. I played it for about 4 yearsā¦ I do ok but I just donāt love it so Iām not motivated to excel at it. Bass I love so itās pushed me to improve in areas that I wasnāt interested in before like theory and posting here on the forums has also given me another reason to study/improve.
There are many human factors that determine whether youāll excel at something or not and how long it might take you and thatās why science seems to enjoy studying this and trying to figure out just exactly what it is that makes certain people good at things but like we enjoy joking about at work, āall generalizations are false, including this oneā
A mentor is an amazing accelerator to becoming proficient at a particular activity. I played saxophone as my principal instrument in college. As a Theory & Composition major, sax was not my dream instrument, but since I had prior experience playing it, it was a logical means to an end.
By luck, my sax prof was a world-class maestro. Under his tutelage, I progressed so much that it was weird. Still, I never gelled with sax enough to continue playing it once I was out of school.
I played guitar since I was 14, and it was what I used to write songs. I never had a mentor in all the years Iāve played guitar, and I wish I had.
With bass, Iāve resolved to study with teachers that connect with me on a real level. It has been rewarding and successful.
Actually, the thing Gladwell leaves out (and this is the fourth time Iāve written about it, on this forumā¦) is that the study was on expert violinists who all had a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice.
The study wasnāt looking for people with 10,000 hours of doing something, to see if they were experts at it.
As such, you should all wipe the concept of 10,000 hours out of your minds and not mention it again, ever.
Itās just a very sad way how a simple and utterly wrong idea can get traction.
Gladwell is extremely popular and I have never understood quite why.
Oh, I like a lot of his work. Itās just THIS particular thing which I knew right away heād gotten wrong. Now it has a life of its ownā¦
Iāve read stuff of his I like, and I generally enjoy the New Yorker, but I wouldnāt say heās the most accessible author, and yet he seems to have gotten very popular, which I find odd.
Many people find absolute statements comforting. Comforting statements that easily fit in a box gain traction. The 10,000 hours thing is comforting because itās an absolute.
Kind of like the idea that Iām just a few push ups away from being fit. If only i could find the time.
That is definitely my view on life
What an expert knows is all the little tricks, all the little doās and donāts, that are acquired over the years. Kinda reminds me of being a Dad for a second and third time. I may not know everything about raising kids, but I do know what I can safely ignore
- Why did you charge me $279 for hitting that pipe with the hammer?
- It was $9 for hitting it, and $270 for knowing which pipe, where and how hard.
What an expert mentor does is that he provides those little doās and donāt as you are learning, without you having to arrive at them by repeatedly falling flat on your face.
Thanks @eric.kiser good find and another channel added to my already voluminous YT subscription portfolio.