Anders Ericsson on deliberate practice

The &quot;deliberate practice&quot; the article mentions is the &quot;ha&quot; in <i>Shuhari</i>.<p>&gt; In <i>shu</i>, we repeat the forms and discipline ourselves so that our bodies absorb the forms that our forebears created. We remain faithful to these forms with no deviation. Next, in the stage of <i>ha</i>, once we have disciplined ourselves to acquire the forms and movements, we make innovations. In this process the forms may be broken and discarded. Finally, in <i>ri</i>, we completely depart from the forms, open the door to creative technique, and arrive in a place where we act in accordance with what our heart&#x2F;mind desires, unhindered while not overstepping laws.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shuhari" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Shuhari</a>

This author did an excellent podcast with James Altucher. Really crystalized a lot of the principles in his book and made it actionable.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jamesaltucher.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;anders-ericsonn-peak&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jamesaltucher.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;anders-ericsonn-peak&#x2F;</a>

I recommend this book. Just an excerpt of the notes I took:<p>Ineffective practice is usually just repetition, expecting improvement without focusing on correcting problems<p>Purposeful Practice - has well-defined, specific goals - Is focused (giving practice your full attention) - Involves feedback (success or failure) - Requires getting out of one’s comfort zone (is not easy, pushing barriers)<p>Harnessing Adaptability - Practice and training can actually change the brain - London taxi drivers that master the standard training develop larger hippocampus - Regular training leads to changes in the parts of the brain that are challenged by the training - Younger brains are more adaptable than adult brains, training can have larger effects - Development in one area may come at the price of regression in another - Trained abilities fade after lack of use<p>Mental Representations - Blindfold chess illustrates the importance of pattern memory - Experienced chess players can remember chess positions from a real game, but are not skilled at remembering random arrangements of pieces - they remember patterns, familiar arrangements of several pieces - Short-term memory can be extended by referring to familiar patterns or chunks - Much of deliberate practice involves developing ever more efficient mental representations for the activity under practice - Familiar patterns are internalized so that they can be automatically recognized and fluidly give rise to the appropriate actions - Knowledge of a domain has to be organized and accessible in a way that can be used in expert performance - Planning separates novice performance from expert performance - Experts tend to have detailed planning processes that can be refined - Experts have higher quality mental representations that help guide them in performance, and can help provide them with feedback to adjust their practice - Physical activities are mental too

Deliberate practice has received an almost obsessive following by the HN community - I feel like I see articles about this at least once a week.<p>What I fail to see are any recommendations of how to apply this to software development. In my own personal investigations, things like programming competitions have shown not to translate well to professional software development (outside of maybe the search or AI algo developers at Google). Practice problems like Eulers and Programming Pearls are a bit contrived and limited, so I&#x27;m not sure where else to turn. Do others wonder the same thing?<p>Working on side projects may be practice, but not necessarily deliberate, and many side projects may not be addressing our individual weaknesses.

i used to work in the adult entertainment industry... i was always amused(and shocked) at who they would pick as &quot;experts&quot; when doing interviews on TV. it really ruined all &quot;experts&quot; for me, as now i assume they are the equivalent in their field as the goons whom were &quot;speaking&quot; for the adult industry were.

I&#x27;m looking forward to reading the book.<p>In my experience with deliberate practice, there are a couple of ingredients from that brief article:<p>* Breaking a skill down into achievable progressions<p>* A roadmap of how progressions lead to different &quot;sweet spots&quot; of expertise within that practice

Who knew? If you work a good trainer&#x2F;mentor, you can get better at what you do.

So, practice is necessary but not sufficient. It cannot compensate for lack of talent. We don&#x27;t know why some people are talented and some aren&#x27;t. We can only recognise it in certain fields (e.g. athletics, music). However, and switching to personal speculation: although people know different things and are interested in different things, there is only <i>one</i> kind of talent, is my guess.