Something I recently discovered: the secret to deliberate practice is to consciously enjoy it by entering more deeply into the experience. This approach is the opposite of enforced drill. Thus, when you are bored and enjoyment starts to flag, you stop immediately (nothing is lost by this).<p>Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorising a phrase in a foreign language, you revel in the fruity sounds you are making and in the delicate dance your lips and teeth and tongue are performing; you marvel at the pattern of connections between the meaning of the phrase and other ideas you have learnt.<p>It goes against the grain because one of the legacies of schooling is the assumption that learning is difficult and painful. (Paradoxically, by continuing to believe this one makes it so.)
I actually disagree with the 'play perfectly' example. It emphasizes the beginning of the practice and de-emphasizes the end. If playing the whole thing 20 times is boring, imagine how boring it is to play the beginning over and over until you get the whole thing perfect 5 times?<p>Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.<p>I once had a teacher that took offense at the statement "Practice makes perfect." They always changed it to be "Perfect practice makes perfect." I think it's more in line with the article's meaning, too.<p>As another anecdote, I've been studying Japanese lately. Never before have I been so acutely aware that the only way to improve a skill is to use it. Reading English for me is -very- easy and enjoyable. Japanese started out extremely difficult, time-consuming and painful. A few years later, and I'm much better at it... But my listening skill (for Japanese) has hardly changed at all. Why? Because I almost never use it.
Here's a good piece by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson on <i>Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice</i>, he's the guy who's pretty much behind all this research on deliberate practice and the making of outliers - <a href="http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...</a>
For me the most important part deliberate practice losing all embarrassment about making mistakes. Practice should give a chance stumble at the edge of your ability and take chances you wouldn't in a live performance.<p>For more detail I highly recommend "The Perfect Wrong Note" by William Westney.
It's interesting that each of those practice scenarios he recommends are fairly dangerous from the point of view of the ego. I would be very apprehensive about learning the multiplication tables in a public fashion.
Part of what these suggestion contains are the basis for the emerging field of game learning. While the wiki is surprisingly weak on the matter -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_based_learning" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_based_learning</a> -- the idea is that structured conditions of gaming/sports success can be applied to teaching and knowledge acquisition. Some of these ideas include:<p>Coached practicing /
Competitive performance evaluation /
Transparent Scores /
Winning opportunities /
Final Awards.
I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I am not quite sure how to apply it, to say learning a new (programming) language (I have been playing with Clojure for a while now but am nowhere near productive in it).<p>I guess the part that confuses me is the first step - "R stands for Reaching/Repeating" - How exactly would you apply this to learning a new language, framework, algorithm?<p>Folks here on HN - Any words of advice?