The Comfort Zone

 

How do you accelerate your acquisition of a skill? Leverage the science of “deliberate practice”

“Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born.”

Deliberate Practice is “Informed purposeful practice”. It includes:

1️⃣ Developing skills that others have figured out, i.e. relying on an established knowledge base about what training techniques and methods work.

2️⃣ Practicing with well-defined, specific goals in mind

3️⃣ Consistently moving outside your comfort zone

4️⃣ Using full attention and conscious actions,. Involves being fully present and engaged in your training.

5️⃣ Using feedback and modification to reach your goals

6️⃣ Developing effective mental representations, i.e. developing new cognitive frameworks that allow you to master the skillset. It has been found in study after study of expert performers that they have developed advanced mental representations that allow them to overcome limitations faced by other performers.

7️⃣ Building upon your preexisting skillset, i.e. building newly acquired skills on top of previously acquired skills. This is the way that most learning is done and highlights the importance of mastering ‘foundational’ skills

“It takes time to become an expert. Even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years of intense training before they win international competitions.”

Acknowledgment: Post based on the work of Anders Ericsson and the article The Making of an Expert by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely. Infographic source: PositivePsychology