In my previous newsletter, I wrote about a mental state of productivity and learning called “flow.” Flow happens when you stretch your thinking just beyond your current mental ability, and you work on a project that is both difficult and meaningful. (If you missed that newsletter, you can read it on the archive.)
Unfortunately, many of us sabotage our opportunity to reach the “flow state” because we have unproductive habits such as multi-tasking and switching between tasks.
In this newsletter, I want to describe a few methods for focusing your training and achieving mastery.
In his best-selling 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of extraordinarily successful people, including The Beatles and Bill Gates.
You may not recognize these guys, but they are original members of The Beatles, photographed at the Indra Club in Hamburg, Germany in 1960: John Lennon, George Harrison, Pete Best, Paul McCartney, Stuart Sutcliffe. (Read the full article here.) Before becoming famous in Liverpool and the United States, The Beatles (like so many English bands) played the nightclubs of Hamburg. In 1960, The Beatles played 48 nights - 4 hours on week nights and 6 hours each day on the weekends. By 1962, they had played nearly 300 nights, and they sometimes played 12-hour shifts from 7pm to 7am.
As Gladwell explains, “By the time [The Beatles] had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times.”
This is extraordinary because it meant that The Beatles had accumulated a LOT of playing time as a band. By the time they came to the U.S., they were very experienced and ready for the Big Time!
Gladwell also tells the story of Bill Gates. We know that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and founded Microsoft. When we hear this, we are likely to think that he was born a genius and that he didn’t need an education - not even at Harvard.
But that’s not the full story. As a young child, Bill Gates attended a very elite private school that had an after-school computer club. And, as Gladwell explains, the computer club did not have just any kind of computer. It had a very sophisticated computer that could connect directly to a mainframe computer, and this gave Bill Gates a very unique experience that set him up for success later on.
“Bill Gates got to do real-time programming as an eighth grader in 1968.”
The 10,000 Hour Rule
By the time Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, he had already accumulated enough practice with computer programming on his own that he didn’t need to learn about it at college. And, by the time The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, they had already spent years playing together as a band in front of live audiences. Both Bill Gates and The Beatles may have had natural skills, but they also had a lot of practice before their Big-Time success.
In general, how much practice time does someone need in order to become an expert? According to Gladwell, they need about 10,000 hours.
Gladwell got this number from Anders Ericsson’s book Peak. Ericsson found this number by studying advanced concert musicians at top European music academies. He found that the best musicians had accumulated about 10,000 hours of practice time. This was an average … some had 8,000, some had 12,000 … but generally around 10,000 hours to become a master concert musician.
Deliberate Practice
Okay, so you may be thinking that all you have to do is put in 10,000 hours, and you’ll become a “master” in your field. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy…
Ericsson found out that it has to be the right kind of practice. In his book, he describes how people normally practice. In tennis, they’ll practice hitting the ball over and over using several swings (overhand, backhand, forehand, serves) until they get good enough to play a game, and then they stop learning. They keep playing, but they don’t push themselves to learn new swings or make more difficult shots.
Ten thousand hours of this kind of practice is not what makes someone an expert. Instead, what they need is “deliberate practice.” Deliberate practice is when you push yourself just beyond your current ability. You try to run a little faster, lift a little more, do another rep, hit a little more accurately… What’s needed is thoughtful practice that pushes you just beyond your current limit.
Unfortunately, deliberate practice is also very tiring work. You can’t “push yourself” during the whole training session. Instead, during each session, you’ll spend much of the time getting up to your limit, and then you’ll push yourself beyond your limit for a few minutes. Then, you’ll probably do that a few more times.
This means that it will take several years of deliberate practice to achieve your peak result. You can’t do non-stop deliberate practice … no 10,000 hours in a row. Instead, it is 10,000 of accumulated deliberate practice.
Objective (Measurable) Results
In many sports, you know what you have to do to get better - you try to run faster, jump higher, lift more, etc. You know this because there is only one standard for how the best person is selected - the best runners and swimmers are the fastest, the best goalie is the one who allows the fewest goals. In these sports, the pathway to mastery is obvious. This may be true in your field as well: the best salesperson has the highest sales figures, the best surgeon makes the fewest mistakes (or has the highest patient survival and full-recovery rate?), the best lawyer wins the most cases, etc.
But what about with knowledge work such as data analysis and creative or artistic thinking? In these situations, Ericsson admits that deliberate practice is hard to do. There is no clearly-established process for advancing your training. Instead, you’ll have to do a kind of “guess-and-check” or “trial-and-error” to advance your skills. In these situations, it may take more than 10,000 hours because you’ll be spending (wasting) time trying things that don’t work.
As much as possible, try to identify how success will be measured, which actions contribute to that success, and how to improve those actions.
Expert Feedback
When you don’t know, ask an expert.
One way to get around the “guess-and-check” and “trial-and-error” method is to ask an expert. Many experts (such as retired athletes) provide formal coaching and training sessions, either in-person, by video conference, online course, or published books. You can also reach out to high achievers in your field and ask to interview them.
Expert feedback is useful in the following ways:
Experts know what works, and they can save you time. Instead of trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, an expert can “tell you the secret,” and you can start improving the stuff that matters faster.
Experts can provide meaningful suggestions. Even if you know what works, you may not know what you’re doing wrong. An expert can observe your actions with a critical eye, and he/she can provide suggestions.
Summary
You can be successful by…
identifying the skills that matter
putting in about 10,000 hours of practice time
pushing yourself beyond your current ability through “deliberate practice”
getting expert advice and feedback
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