The Humanevi newsletter
Weekly
Once a week: 5 things worth your time.
1 story, 1 idea, 1 discovery, 1 tool, 1 book.
The Humanevi newsletter
Once a week: 5 things worth your time.
1 story, 1 idea, 1 discovery, 1 tool, 1 book.
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool explain deliberate practice, drawn from decades of research on how experts develop their skills.
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Ericsson spent his career studying musicians, chess players and athletes, and here he summarizes the central finding: innate talent explains less than the quality of training. The book distinguishes naive practice, purposeful practice and deliberate practice, and discusses mental representations, feedback and specific goals. It also corrects the popular reading of the 10,000-hour rule.
Anyone who wants to learn an instrument, sport, language or profession with method, plus teachers, coaches and training managers. It also helps readers who distrust easy promises of fast learning and want to know what research says about practice.
Released in 2016, it presents the author's work in accessible language, with stories such as that of a student trained to memorize long strings of digits. The academic debate over how much practice explains performance remains open, and the book firmly defends the author's position. Examples lean heavily on music and sport.
The title is the same in the original and in translation, so confirm the subtitle and both authors' names on the cover. Any complete edition will do. To see the idea applied to careers, read So Good They Can't Ignore You, which builds its argument on deliberate practice.
