How to Practice to Become Better (Hint: It’s More than Repetition)

“If practice makes perfect, and no one’s perfect, then why practice?”
Billy Corgan

 

Practice makes perfect according to an old saying.

Or at least if you do it enough you will become an expert.

Or does it?

Experts vs. Being an Expert

There is, in fact, a big difference between “experts” and those “who are expert” in what they do.

In a 2006 book co-edited by Anders Ericcson called “The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance“, the authors conclude that great performance comes mostly from two things:

• Regularly obtaining concrete and constructive feedback
• Deliberate difficult practice

Two authors in the Cambridge Handbook (Janice Deaking and Stephen Cobley) analyzed diaries of 24 elite figure skaters to determine what might explain some of their performance success. They found that the best skaters spent 68% of their practice doing really hard jumps and routines compared to those who were less successful (they spent about 48% of their time doing the same difficult things).

Having raw talent is wonderful but it’s what you do with it that really seems to matter. “Only dead fish go with the flow” is an old saying–if you don’t work to get better it just doesn’t happen naturally. Ericsson and others use the words “deliberate practice” to mean focused, structured, serious and detailed attempts to get better. That means it has to be challenging and difficult (i.e., practicing the most difficult tasks).

As it turns out, expert performance requires about ten years, or ten to twenty thousand hours of deliberate practice. Little evidence exists for expert performance before ten years of deliberate practice in any field ((K. Anders Ericsson , ed., The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996, pp.10-11)).

What Kind of Practice is Best if You Want to Improve?

A practical test of this “10,000” rule is being done by Dan McLaughlin who quit is job at the age of 30 and has been practicing his golf game six days a week, living off savings and some wise stock picks and by renting his house.  He has about 6,000 more hours of practice to go in order to see if he will get good enough to play in the Masters Golf Tournament.  His results to date–4,000 hours have lowered his handicap to 7 which means he is better than 85% of the male U.S. golfing public.  Dan keeps an interesting Blog (TheDanPlan.com) which highlights his journey.

Dan is using the latest research on improving skill, motor performance and memory in how he practices.  He uses a training approach called interleaving which is “mixing up” the things you do instead of deliberately doing the same thing over and over (e.g., hitting 100 drives, shooting 50 free throws, giving 100 motivational speeches).  Instead he mixes up his clubs, targets and difficulty of his challenges.

Like the research suggests, interleaving causes performance in the short term to decrease but enhances overall success over time.  Therefore, practicing tasks in an interleaved (random) order generally results in inferior practice performance but induces superior retention compared with practicing in a repetitive order.  So, if you want your kid to become a better hitter in baseball, having them see a variety of pitches in an hour (e.g., slider, fastball, change up, curve) is better than just practicing trying to get the hang of dealing with one pitch for a prolonged period of time (now I find this out).

New research from a group of UCLA researchers, using brain imaging called functional MRI discovered that connectivity of specific regions of the brain were strengthened using interleaved practice (varied and diverse sessions) versus a repetitive conditions ((Lin, C., et al.,  (2012).  Interleaved practice enhances skill learning and the functional connectivity of fronto-parietal networks. Human Brain Mapping, DOI: 10.1002/hbm.2209)).

These results strongly hint that if you want to develop better skills, memory and psychomotor performance it is really better to spice up your deliberate practice with variety and not just spend a chunk of time doing the same thing over and over (e.g., practice a variety of dives in an hour versus just focusing on one type of dive).  Expect your practice sessions to be bad but over time your performance will actually significantly improve.

How Long Does it Take for New Habits to Form?

Research by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from the UK suggest that new behaviors can become automatic, on average, between 18 to 254 days but it depends on the complexity of what new behavior you are trying to put into place and your personality ((Lally, P. et al. (2009). How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.10002/ejsp.674)).

They studied volunteers who chose to change an eating, drinking or exercise behavior and tracked them for success. They completed a self-report diary which they entered on a website log and were asked to try the new behavior each day for 84 days. For the habits, 27 chose an eating behavior, 31 a drinking behavior (e.g., drinking water), 34 an exercise behavior and 4 did something else (e.g., meditation).

Analysis of all of these behaviors indicated that it took 66 days, on average, for this new behavior to become automatic and a new “habit” that seemed pretty natural. The range was anywhere from 18 to 254 days. The mean number of days varied by the complexity of the habit:

• Drinking / 59 days
• Eating / 65 days
• Exercise / 91 days

Although there are limitations in this study, it does suggest that it can take a large number of repetitions for a person’s new behaviors to become a habit. Therefore, creating new habits requires tremendous self-control to be maintained for a significant period of time before they become more “automatic” and performed without any real self-control. For most people, it takes about 3 months of constant practice before a more complicated new behavior gets “set” in our neural pathways as something we are comfortable with and seemingly automatic.

So, adopting a new physical workout routine or learning to become more participative as a leader might take quite a while with or without coaching to truly become more natural.

Learning Versus Fixed Mindset

In her latest book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck explains how her observations of children demonstrate that a person’s mindset can profoundly influence behavior and work/life success. She has discovered that people with fixed mindsets believe that their achievements are based on innate abilities.

As a result, they are reluctant to take on challenges. In fact, excessive concern with looking smart keeps them from making bold, visionary moves and learning new things. Simply, a fixed mind-set about one’s ability explains an aversion to risk taking and effort to become better.

For some individuals, wanting to look competent is the most important thing–even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image and each setback becomes a personal threat. As a result they tend to seek activities at which they’re sure to succeed—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in the face of challenge and failure. These individuals tend to have a fixed mindset and typically pursue “performance goals” rather than “learning goals” at work and in life.

People with growth mindsets believe that they can learn, change, and develop needed skills. They are better equipped to handle inevitable setbacks, and know that hard work can help them accomplish their goals. They basically don’t see their innate abilities as “fixed” and as a results are more often motivated to try new things and succeed more than those with a fixed mindset.

Dweck’s research has implications for the role of effort and practice with results and performance. Her research should not be interpreted that attitude is everything and effort always results in success.

But, the evidence shows that if we hold a fixed mind-set, we’re likely not to reach as high as we might given our fixed ability set points.

Idiot Savants Excel Without Deliberate Practice

Some new research suggests that deliberate practice is necessary but not sufficient to explain individual differences in skills ((Meinz & Hambrick (2010). Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but Not Sufficient to Explain Individual Differences in Piano Sight-Reading Skill: The role of Working Memory Capacity. Psychological Science, 21)). Across a wide range of piano-playing skill, deliberate practice accounted for nearly half the variance (45.1%) in sight-reading performance in the authors study.

However, working memory capacity (which is highly stable and heritable) accounted for a significant proportion of the variance (7.4%), above and beyond deliberate practice. Working memory is our short term memory which is an ability to remember information over a short period of time.

Their results challenge the view, advocated by Ericsson as well as other researchers, that basic capabilities and skills such as working memory capacity are unimportant for expert performance. Although it seems reasonable to predict that anyone who engages in thousands of hours of deliberate practice will develop a high level of skills in any field, it appears that our basic skills and abilities may actually limit the ultimate level of performance that can be attained.

Together, their research does indeed suggest that practice doesn’t always make “perfect” if you don’t have the minimal capabilities and the proper mindset to begin with.

So, vary your deliberate practice and just hope you don’t have a genetic ability set point that limits just how good you can be.  A lot of researchers and coaches will be watching the human lab animal Dan McLaughlin to see how he does….Be well….

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)