To a first approximation, if you ever read a piece that argues for deliberate practice without mention of how difficult it is to actually put DP to practice in most domains, you’re probably dealing with someone who has never tried.
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Deliberate practice is a specific, technical term that refers to a particular kind of practice. It is very effective, but:
- requires a coach
- who focuses you on specific sub-skills
- with good feedback
- therefore only possible in a domain with sufficient pedagogical history
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If the domain you are in doesn’t have sufficient pedagogical development, then DP isn’t possible (at least, according to Ericsson’s definition) because it is unclear what the sub-skills are, or how best to teach them!
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So the irony is that if you want to use DP in your (under-developed) domain, you first have to learn the skill of identifying good subskills!
Unfortunately, this skill ALSO isn’t amenable to DP!
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This paradox lies at the heart of why DP is so difficult to put to practice.
That isn't to say that there aren't people who have tried, and have had some success. Max Deutsch is interesting to me because he's had some success with coming up with DP programs from scratch.
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For instance, in Peak, Ericsson says that you can't use deliberate practice to solve crossword puzzles. Deutsch took this on as a challenge and proved that you can:
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To my knowledge, Deutsch's ability to identify sub-skills and quickly iterate until he finds a workable DP approach is a tacit skill. He has never successfully explicated it. Which is why I find his write-ups so fascinating, because he describes HOW he comes up with his programs.
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I think with the right level of metacognition and mindfulness, you can pretty quickly get to _some_ kind of DP in any field where you can observe other people doing the work.
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But how do you identify the right sub-skills to focus on? Or the best practice activities for each sub skill? You need more than DP to do DP properly.
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I'd say: there is no "right", only distinctions of varying effectiveness. Metacognition lets us identify + articulate the distinctions we're already making. Mindfulness allows us to recognize + react to the consequences of those distinctions as we're making them.
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e.g., a big part of what a teacher/coach does is see what the student's approach _actually is_ and then point that out to the student, so that they can contrast it with other possible approaches.
A highly metacognitive student can do the first part themselves, at least.
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