Check out ‘Peak’: An Interview With Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool in one of my Education Week Teacher columns.
Be sure to check out my interview with Daniel Coyle, author of “The Talent Code,” at Education Week Teacher.
Also: The Best Videos About The Importance Of Practice – Help Me Find More
Jonah Lehrer provides a good description of the “10,000 hour rule”:
The 10,000 hour rule has become a cliche. This is the idea, first espoused by K. Anders Ericsson, a pyschologist at Florida State University, that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice before any individual can become an expert. The corollary of this rule is that that differences in talent reflect differences in the amount and style of practice, and not differences in innate ability. As Ericsson wrote in his influential review article “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”: “The differences between expert performers and normal adults are not immutable, that is, due to genetically prescribed talent. Instead, these differences reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance.”
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About The 10,000 Hour Rule & Deliberative Practice:
I’ve written a post titled Sorry, Professors: Deliberate Practice Matters.
Deliberate Practice – Pt. 1: Knowing exactly what you want is from Psychology Today.
Is it true that 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert at something? is from Barking Up The Wrong Tree.
Are you experienced? Does it matter? is from Mind Hacks.
The Science of Experience is from TIME Magazine.
How much does natural talent control what you can achieve in life? is from Barking Up The Wrong Tree.
The Power of Practice is by Mark Sanborn.
Freakonomics has three good posts:
How Did A-Rod Get So Good?
Deliberate Practice: How Education Fails to Produce Expertise
The Science of Genius: A Q&A With Author David Shenk
Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything is from The Harvard Business Review.
The Secret of Great Men: Deliberate Practice is an unfortunate title, but it has good information.
How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? 8 Keys to Deliberate Practice. is from Mission to Learn.
Benjamin Franklin and deliberate practice is from Anecdote.
Guitar Zero: can science turn a psychologist into Jimi Hendrix? is from The Guardian.
The Grandmaster in the Corner Office: What the Study of Chess Experts Teaches Us about Building a Remarkable Life is from Study Hacks.
Talent or Practice – What Matters More? is by David Shenk
Talent or Practice – What Matters More? is by Gary Marcus.
Ray Allen Scores in the Nature-Nurture Debate
Is it true that 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert at something? is from Barking Up The Wrong Tree.
What is Deliberate Practice is from Farnam Street.
Deliberate Practice Infographic
Why talent is overrated is from CNN.
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance is the original paper on the idea.
Very Interesting (& Different) Post On “Fixed” Versus “Growth” Mindsets
Applying science to the teaching of science is from The Economist.
Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything is from The Harvard Business Review.
Why Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule is wrong is from The BBC.
10,000 Hours May Not Make a Master After All is from TIME.
The Complexity of Greatness: Beyond Talent or Practice is from Scientific American.
The Complexity of Greatness: Beyond Talent or Practice is from Creativity Post.
Becoming a Better Teacher by ‘Deliberate Practice’ is from huntingenglish.
How to Stop Being Allergic to Practice is by Daniel Coyle.
What’s Your LQ (Learning Quotient)? is also from Daniel Coyle.
Deliberate Practice, Myelin & The Brain
Quote Of The Day: “Complexity and the Ten-Thousand-Hour Rule”
New Studies Highlight Blurry Line Between Nature & Nurture
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect by Daniel Goleman might be the best short and accessible article on the concept that I’ve found. I’m definitely using it with my students.
WHY “DELIBERATE PRACTICE” IS THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP GETTING BETTER is from Fast Company.
Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? is from The BBC.
Two Things Experts Do Differently Than Non-Experts When Practicing is from The Creativity Post.
Are Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice Really All You Need? is from National Geographic.
Big New Study On Deliberate Practice
We’ve Been Thinking About Talent The Wrong Way All Along is by Daniel Coyle.
Actually, practice doesn’t always make perfect — new study is by Alfie Kohn.
Additional Resources On Deliberate Practice — Including Music & Videos!
Quote Of The Day: Sir Ken Robinson On The Value Of Practice
Priceless! http://t.co/FGXPbnFMFc pic.twitter.com/qPVjZja642
— Tom Peters (@tom_peters) April 25, 2015
A Perfect Quote To Begin A Lesson On Deliberate Practice – If Your Students Are Basketball Fans
The Economics of Practice is from SqueakTime.
Excellent Examples Of Deliberate Practice To Use With Students
Deliberate Practice & Red Herrings
The 4 Rituals That Will Make You An Expert At Anything is an interview with Anders Ericsson at Barking Up The Wrong Tree.
World-class expertise:a developmental model is by Scott Barry Kaufman1 and Angela L. Duckworth.
DELIBERATE PRACTICE: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT ISN’T is from 3 Star Learning.
When Practice Does Make Perfect is by Daniel Willingham.
Deliberate Practice, The Olympics & Red Herrings
The Elephant In The Room In The Talent vs. Practice Debate
Daniel Pink and Anders Ericsson: The Secrets of Top Performers and What It Takes to Be Truly Great is a good conversation, particularly related to deliberate practice.
Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect: Scott Barry Kaufman and David Epstein Reconsider the Science of “10,000 Hours” to Greatness is from Heleo.
New & Important Report On Deliberate Practice & Teacher Prep
When Practice Does Make Perfect is by Dan Willingham.
The Beginner’s Guide to Deliberate Practice is by James Clear.
I’m adding this new lesson and video from TED-Ed:
Forget The 10,000-Hour Rule; Edison, Bezos, & Zuckerberg Follow The 10,000-Experiment Rule appeared in Medium.
— Sarah Andersen (@SarahCAndersen) December 20, 2017
PRACTICE GOLD–PIANIST BARRON RYAN REFLECTS ON PRACTICE is from Doug Lemov.
Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Practice is from Arban’s Method.
New Useful Lesson On “Practice”
The Beginner’s Guide to Deliberate Practice appeared in Medium.
Deliberate practice: improving teacher decision making is from Improving Teaching.
How to Motivate Kids to Practice Hard Things is a really good piece from Greater Good Magazine. I like it a lot.
VERY INTERESTING VIDEO: “HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED – THE LOCUS RULE”
ANOTHER STUDY ON VALUE OF PRACTICE MISSES THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT
Effects of Practice on the Acquisition of Expert Performance: Why the Original Definition Matters and Recommendations for Future Research is a new study on deliberate practice.
DELIBERATE PRACTICE IN THE CLASSROOM is from The Learning Curve.
Is innate talent a myth? is a new video from The BBC.
Researcher Behind ‘10,000-Hour Rule’ Says Good Teaching Matters, Not Just Practice is from EdSurge.
RIP ANDERS ERICSSON – RESEARCHER OF “DELIBERATE PRACTICE” & “10,000 HOUR RULE”
Using Wise Interventions to Motivate Deliberate Practice is a research paper by Angela Duckworth and several other researchers. It’s a few years old, but it’s new to me. The paper (which is not behind a paywall) is interesting, but what is far more interesting and useful are the lesson materials they actually used in the classroom. In order to access them, you have to go to the end, prior to the footnotes, under “Supplemental Materials.” If you click on that link, you’ll gain access to a large file in Word that has more specific outlines of the lessons they did.
Yeah, but what often get overlooks in debates about deliberate practice is that most never said it was the most important element in success. It’s probably, however, the most important element that WE CAN CONTROL https://t.co/tcUTi4p6kY
— Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) November 25, 2020
DELIBERATE PRACTICE IN THE CLASSROOM is from The Learning Agency.
Deliberate Practice In The Classroom is from The Learning Agency.
WHAT IS DELIBERATE PRACTICE, AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? is from Inner Drive.
What Students Should Know About the Power of Practice is by Angela Duckworth.
The crystallization of memory: Study reveals how practice forms new memory pathways in the brain is from Science Daily.
Why Sufficient, Deliberate Practice Is a Critical Element of Literacy Learning and Retention is from the Collaborative Classroom. It’s very good.
All feedback is welcome.
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Thank you SO VERY MUCH for this post. I’ve spent many hours (not 10k, yet) studying Ericsson’s work, but always looking for more.
Side note: I wish they had not called it “deliberate practice” which sounds an awful lot like “practice that is deliberate”, which could so easily be misinterpreted to mean nearly ANY practice. Ericsson’s use of Deliberate Practice is quite precise and narrow, and though I don’t have a good optional label, my husband and I refer to it as “edge practice”. Qualifying practice with “edge” at least gets you closer to the actual meaning, vs. just that it is “deliberate”.
Sideways note: I have been exploring and experimenting with applying “deliberate/edge practice” principles to training horses, mapping some of Ericsson’s work as closely as I can to the things I am asking horse athletes to do. It has a profound effect, though keeping them motivated is tricky, given that edge work, by design and definition, is the most challenging and tedious of all forms of practice. Which brings me back to… finding and using what is *intrinsically* motivating when possible, and using extrinsic motivators for the things that will never be implicitly pleasurable.
Given how against the broad application of extrinsic rewards I am, deliberate/edge practice is the one area where it makes a lot of sense, and has a low risk of being harmful. But for most humans, by the time you become truly committed to something enough to willfully engage in deliberate practice, y no longer need extrinsic rewards because you moved up the continuum to “integration”… as in the athlete that chooses to do the less-fun thing today in order to prepare for the intrinsically rewarding thing they LOVE — the sport they’ll be participating in tomorrow. (integrated motivation in athletes and other motivated students is also covered well by Deci and Ryan)
Larry,
Sharing this article – The Expert Mind. A great though dense read about the importance of how we are made and become rather than just are talented or not.
http://www.cerebyte.com/articles/Scientific%20American%20Neuroplasticity.pdf
originally from Scientific American
That’s a lot of resources. In the end it seems like 10000 hours would make someone inevitably good! Thanks!
This is amazing! Thank you!