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Debunking the "1,000 hours of practice" myth
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 13, 2011 at 10:43 AM
Some thoughts after reading through this fascinating discussion:
- Sometime ago Daly wrote a post on getting up early http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2817 I believe in circadian body/mind rhythms and know that, regardless of the tools, I will be best at doing different things at different times of the day: 5:00-8:00 for texts, 8:00-11:00 for organisation, 11:00-14:00 for focused discussions, 14:00- 16:00 for physical exercise, 16:00-18:00 for social communication, 18:00-... for delving on technical problems (whose solutions will probably be manifest after a good night’s sleep) etc. These are indicative times but for me they work. Many of my productivity problems have to do with doing the wrong thing at the wrong time…
- Re focus / concentration: it may indeed be a matter of discipline, but the surrounding conditions can facilitate it or make it more difficult. Is it surprising that many of us look back to DOS days, JB swears by Emacs Org-mode and full text editors like ZenWriter, Q10, WriteMonkey etc. abound? I only switched from WordPerfect 5.1’s ‘darkroom’ environment to Windows editors when I could no longer run it… When working on texts early in the morning I will disable PopPeeper’s auto-checking of mails, because I find even its tiny static flag notification distracting.
- I believe that software can indeed help as Dr Andus suggested, even without AI; much of the software we discussed here offers specific views to our data. IMHO, the ideal tool would provide (a) different representations of structured relationships, i.e. concept mapping, tabular, outline etc. and (b) zoomable views to those representations. The latter is very important and surprisingly missing from most offerings. Even more, when zoomable views are provided e.g. in TreeSheets, they treat all info at a certain level as of equal value. Yet just as on a geographical map there are landmarks and we will often visualise France with an out-of-proportion Eiffel Tower at its centre, so we may need to have such ‘landmarks’ in our data too.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 13, 2011 at 10:50 AM
Hit ‘post’ too soon.
- Ken, I will fully agree with your praise for discussion as an invaluable means to get concepts further.
Posted by Chris Murtland
Nov 13, 2011 at 05:26 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>- Sometime ago
>Daly wrote a post on getting up early
>http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2817 I believe in circadian
>body/mind rhythms and know that, regardless of the tools, I will be best at doing
>different things at different times of the day: 5:00-8:00 for texts, 8:00-11:00 for
>organisation, 11:00-14:00 for focused discussions, 14:00- 16:00 for physical
>exercise, 16:00-18:00 for social communication, 18:00-... for delving on
>technical problems (whose solutions will probably be manifest after a good night’s
>sleep) etc. These are indicative times but for me they work. Many of my productivity
>problems have to do with doing the wrong thing at the wrong time…
Investing in this sort of self-awareness and self-management is exactly the type of thing that seems to have a higher payoff for me currently than any specific tool, because I have mostly ignored it in the past, just trying to plow through things with no regard for it. Like Dr Andus, I hit a wall in terms of productivity, and the bottleneck for me was not a software issue.
>- I
>believe that software can indeed help as Dr Andus suggested, even without AI; much of
>the software we discussed here offers specific views to our data. IMHO, the ideal tool
>would provide (a) different representations of structured relationships, i.e.
>concept mapping, tabular, outline etc. and (b) zoomable views to those
>representations. The latter is very important and surprisingly missing from most
>offerings. Even more, when zoomable views are provided e.g. in TreeSheets, they
>treat all info at a certain level as of equal value. Yet just as on a geographical map
>there are landmarks and we will often visualise France with an out-of-proportion
>Eiffel Tower at its centre, so we may need to have such ‘landmarks’ in our data too.
I agree completely - it seems that it would be possible to have one underlying data store of atomic items that is then viewed and manipulated in different ways (calendars, network graphs, timelines, outlines, pin boards, concept maps, spreadsheets, checklists, et al.). I think Evernote is on the right track here, by providing a ubiquitous storage and synchronizing mechanism and then an API where anyone can build different views on top of that data (there is a tool in beta called TuskTools that allows displaying your Evernote notes on a calendar, for example). Unfortunately, it’s really still in its infancy when compared to the speed and power most of us are used to from dedicated info apps. Evernote is already great for having certain info automatically accessible on all of your devices, but I wish the native desktop client was much speedier and that more innovative third-party tools for it would develop more rapidly.
Chris
Posted by JBfrom
Nov 13, 2011 at 05:45 PM
On the deliberate practice issue, here is another excellent post:
http://supermanpua.blogspot.com/2011/11/talent-is-overrated-book-review-notes.html
It’s a review of the book “Talent is Overrated,” and covers the same topics as the original post’s linked article. The conclusions fit nicely with Tim Ferriss’ strategy of achieving rapid talent acquisition.
Key quotes:
“What really makes the difference is a highly specific kind of effort-“deliberate practice”-that few of us pursue when we’re practicing golf or piano or stockpicking.”
“Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved.”
“One needs to work on skills and abilities that are just out of reach (learning zone) rather than those that are already mastered (comfort zone) or those that are too hard (panic zone). High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate practice of a task and performing the task for real.”
“Deliberate practice requires focus and concentration, which makes it mentally taxing and not likely to be a lot of fun. A finding across disciplines is that four or five hours a day seems to be the upper limit. ?If you?re practicing with your mind, you couldn?t possibly keep it up all day.?”
“Before-During-After
Before the work: Set goals that are attainable in the near future and make a specific plan for getting there. ...
During the work: You need to focus on what you are doing. This is called metacognition. ...
After the work: Practice is worthless without feedback. Try to compare your performance to your previous efforts and appropriate established standards. ... After you do this, decide how you are going to adapt your actions the next time you do the work.”
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 13, 2011 at 09:18 PM
Chris Murtland wrote:
>Investing in this sort of self-awareness and self-management is exactly
>the type of thing that seems to have a higher payoff for me currently than any specific
>tool, because I have mostly ignored it in the past, just trying to plow through things
>with no regard for it. Like Dr Andus, I hit a wall in terms of productivity, and the
>bottleneck for me was not a software issue.
Since we are at it, Bits du Jour will offer within the week a significant discount on the Get Focused Multimedia Course http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/get-focused-multimedia-course/ by Roger Constandse, developer of Achieve Planner, discussed positively here in the past.