Deliberate Practice

• Part of performance psychology
• In the early 1990s, K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University
• Key components
  • (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master;
  • (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive

Neurological aspects

As the journalist Daniel Coyle surveys in his 2009 book, The Talent Code, these scientists increasingly believe the answer includes myelin — a layer of fatty tissue that grows around neurons, acting like an insulator that allows the cells to fire faster andcleaner. To understand the role of myelin in improvement, keep in mindthat skills, be they intellectual or physical, eventually reduce down tobrain circuits. This new science of performance argues that you getbetter at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevantneurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated.

Resources

• 2023-11-21 ◦ Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits by K. Anders Ericsson | Goodreads
• 2023-11-21 ◦ The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
• 2023-11-21 ◦ Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by K. Anders Ericsson | Goodreads
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World