K. Anders Ericsson Quotes

The reason that most people don’t possess these extraordinary physical capabilities isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them, but rather because they’re satisfied to live in the comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work that is required to get out of it. They live in the world of “good enough.” The same thing is true for all the mental activities we engage in,

you have to keep upping the ante: run farther, run faster, run uphill. If you don’t keep pushing and pushing and pushing some more, the body will settle into homeostasis, albeit at a different level than before, and you will stop improving. This

If you wish to become significantly better at something, you can.

Consider this: Most people live lives that are not particularly physically challenging. They sit at a desk, or if they move around, it’s not a lot. They aren’t running and jumping, they aren’t lifting heavy objects or throwing things long distances, and they aren’t performing maneuvers that require tremendous balance and coordination. Thus they settle into a low level of physical capabilities—enough for day-to-day activities and maybe even hiking or biking or playing golf or tennis on the weekends, but far from the level of physical capabilities that a highly trained athlete possesses.

And it works. There have now been many studies of elite performers—international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth—and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they’ve had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and expert on performance, notes that the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one’s willingness to engage in sustained training.

Similarly, the brains of mice that have learned many tasks are slightly different from the brains of other mice that have not learned these tasks. It is not so much that the number of neurons has changed, but rather that the nature of the neural connections has been altered by the learning process. In other words, learning actually changes the structure of the brain. This raises the old adage “practice makes perfect.” Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald Hebb discovered an important fact about the wiring of the brain: the more we exercise certain skills, the more certain pathways in our brains become reinforced, so the task becomes easier. Unlike a digital computer, which is just as dumb today as it was yesterday, the brain is a learning machine with the ability to rewire its neural pathways every time it learns something. This is a fundamental difference between a digital computer and the brain. This lesson applies not only to London taxicab drivers, but also to accomplished concert musicians as well. According to psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues, who studied master violinists at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music, top concert violinists could easily rack up ten thousand hours of grueling practice by the time they were twenty years old, practicing more than thirty hours per week. By contrast, he found that students who were merely exceptional studied only eight thousand hours or fewer, and future music teachers practiced only a total of four thousand hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin says, “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.… In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.” Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the book Outliers, calls this the “10,000-hour rule.

Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.

Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.

Tiger, what are you doing out here hitting balls at three a.m.?” “It doesn’t rain very often in Northern California,” replied the kid who went on to become one of the most successful golfers in history. “It’s the only chance I have to practice hitting in the rain.” You might expect this kind of diligence from the best athlete in his field. What is fascinating is how narrow the exercise’s scope was. He wasn’t practicing putting or hitting from a sand bunker. He spent four hours standing in the rain, hitting the same shot from the same spot, pursuing perfection in an intensely specific skill. It turns out that’s the best way to learn. K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, has studied the acquisition of expert-level skill for decades. The conventional wisdom is that it takes ten thousand hours of effort to become an expert. Ericsson instead found that it’s not about how much time you spend learning, but rather how you spend that time. He finds evidence that people who attain mastery of a field, whether they are violinists, surgeons, athletes,144 or even spelling bee champions,145approach learning in a different way from the rest of us. They shard their activities into tiny actions, like hitting the same golf shot in the rain for hours, and repeat them relentlessly. Each time, they observe what happens, make minor—almost imperceptible—adjustments, and improve. Ericsson refers to this as deliberate practice: intentional repetitions of similar, small tasks with immediate feedback, correction, and experimentation.

Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.

It is one of the most enduring and deep-seated of all beliefs about human nature—that natural talent plays a major role in determining ability. This belief holds that some people are born with natural endowments that make it easier for them to become outstanding athletes or musicians or chess players or writers or mathematicians or whatever. While they may still need a certain amount of practice to develop their skills, they need far less than others who are not as talented, and they can ultimately reach much greater heights. My studies of experts point to quite a different explanation of why some people ultimately develop greater abilities in an area than others, with deliberate practice playing the starring role. So let’s separate myth from reality by exploring the intertwined roles of talent and training in the development of extraordinary abilities. As we’ll see, innate characteristics play a much smaller—and much different—role than many people generally assume.

Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice. Analyzing the lives of geniuses in a wide range of intellectual, artistic, and athletic pursuits confirms this concept.

people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.

How much you improve is up to you.

If someone replaced this television time with growth activities, say, attending medical school or learning to compose music, he or she could become an expert in seven different fields according to Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s theory of 10,000 hours.[9]

when a branch of psychology, sometimes called performance psychology, began to systematically explore what separates experts (in many different fields) from everyone else. In the early 1990s, K. Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, pulled together these strands into a single coherent answer, consistent with the growing research literature, that he gave a punchy name: deliberate practice.

Blindfold chess offers one of the most dramatic examples of what is possible to accomplish with purposeful practice. And learning a bit about blindfold chess can give us a clear idea of the sorts of neurological changes that arise from such practice.

In many of the cases that have been studied, children with talented siblings also had one or both parents encouraging them as well. The Polgár sisters we know about, and Mozart too: his father was not far behind László Polgár in his focus on developing a prodigy. Similarly, Serena and Venus Williams’s father, Richard Williams, started them on tennis with the intention of turning them into tennis professionals. In such cases it can be hard to disentangle the influence of the siblings from that of the parents. But it is probably no coincidence in these cases that it is generally the younger siblings who have reached greater heights. Part of it may be that the parents learn from their experiences with the older siblings and do a better job with the younger ones, but it is also likely that the presence of an older sibling fully engaged in an activity provides a number of advantages for the younger sibling. By watching an older sibling engaging in an activity, a younger child may become interested in—and get started on—that activity much sooner than he or she might otherwise. The older sibling can teach the younger one, and it can seem more like fun than lessons provided by the parent. And competition between siblings will likely be more helpful to the younger sibling than the older one because the older one will naturally have greater skills, at least for a number of years. Bloom found a slightly different pattern in the early days of the children who would grow up to be mathematicians and neurologists than in the athletes, musicians, and artists. In this case the parents didn’t introduce the children to the particular subject matter but rather to the appeal of intellectual pursuits in general. They encouraged their children’s curiosity, and reading was a major pastime, with the parents reading to the children early on, and the children reading books themselves later. They also encouraged their children to build models or science projects—activities that could be considered educational—as part of their play. But

This is true even for something as mundane as insurance sales. A recent study examined knowledge about multiline insurance (life, home, auto, and commercial) in 150 agents. Not surprisingly, the highly successful agents—as determined by their sales volumes—knew more about the various insurance products than the less successful agents.

Which brings us back to Benjamin Franklin again. As a young man he was interested in all sorts of intellectual pursuits—philosophy, science, invention, writing, the arts, and so on—and he wished to encourage his own development in those areas. So at twenty-one he recruited eleven of the most intellectually interesting people in Philadelphia to form a mutual improvement club, which he named “the Junto.” The club’s members, who met each Friday night, would encourage each other’s various intellectual pursuits. Every member was expected to bring at least one interesting topic of conversation—on morals, politics, or science—to each meeting. The topics, which were generally phrased as questions, were to be discussed by the group “in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory.

But since we know that practice is the single most important factor in determining a person’s ultimate achievement in a given domain, it makes sense that if genes do play a role, their role would play out through shaping how likely a person is to engage in deliberate practice or how effective that practice is likely to be.

while innate characteristics may influence performance among those who are just learning a new skill or ability, the degree and the effectiveness of training plays a more significant role in determining who excels among those who have worked to develop a skill.

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, edited by K. Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Robert R. Hoffman, and Paul J. Feltovich

Suppose there was some group of people who selected beginning chess players for some chess program according to what seemed to be their “innate talent.” They would teach a group of youngsters how to play and then, after three or six months had passed, look to see who were the best. We know what would happen. On average, the kids with higher IQs would have an easier time in the beginning learning the moves and would be selected for further training and grooming; the others would not be offered a spot in the program. The end result would be a collection of chess players with much higher than average IQs. But we know that in the real world there are many grandmasters who don’t score particularly well on IQ tests—so we would have missed the contributions of all of those people who could become great chess players.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Purposeful practice is all about putting a bunch of baby steps together to reach a longer-term goal.

Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice. Analyzing the lives of geniuses in a wide range of intellectual, artistic, and athletic pursuits confirms this concept. From Mozart to Bobby Fischer to Bill Gates to the Beatles, their diverse journeys from nothing toward excellence in their respective fields shared a common denominator: the accumulation of ten thousand hours of unwavering “exercise” of their crafts.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized K. Anders Ericsson’s research showing that it takes approximately ten thousand hours of effort to become an expert at something. There is a natural reaction to so big a number: Why in the world would anyone do that? With the idea framed by the term “expertise,” we are quick to associate positive notions, like “dedication” and “passion,” but there’s little doubt that spending so much time and hard work on anything nonessential has an element of obsession to it. While the valedictorian treats school as a job, working hard to get A’s and follow the rules, the obsessed creative succeeds by bearing down on his or her passion projects with a religious zeal. In

K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, has studied the acquisition of expert-level skill for decades. The conventional wisdom is that it takes ten thousand hours of effort to become an expert. Ericsson instead found that it’s not about how much time you spend learning, but rather how you spend that time. He finds evidence that people who attain mastery of a field, whether they are violinists, surgeons, athletes,144 or even spelling bee champions,145 approach learning in a different way from the rest of us. They shard their activities into tiny actions, like hitting the same golf shot in the rain for hours, and repeat them relentlessly. Each time, they observe what happens, make minor—almost imperceptible—adjustments, and improve. Ericsson refers to this as deliberate practice: intentional repetitions of similar, small tasks with immediate feedback, correction, and experimentation.

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson argues that experts even see the world differently within their area of expertise: they see things that are invisible to a novice; they are able to discern patterns at a glance that are anything but obvious to an untrained eye; they see details as part of a whole and know at once what is crucial and what is incidental.

The average American watches almost three hours of television per day.[ 8] For someone born now who will live to age eighty, that’s a total of eight years of television watching –straight, not including time for sleeping. Said another way, TV-watching for the average American is like having a full-time, 40-hour-per-week job for over more than thirty years. If someone replaced this television time with growth activities, say, attending medical school or learning to compose music, he or she could become an expert in seven different fields according to Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s theory of 10,000 hours.[ 9]

In K. Anders Ericsson’s famous study of violinists, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell as “the 10,000-Hour Rule,” Anders found that the best violinists spent more time practicing than the merely good students.1 His finding supports Essentialist logic by showing that mastery takes focused and deliberate effort, and indeed it’s encouraging to learn that excellence is within our sphere of influence rather than a blessing bestowed only on the most naturally gifted.

So is stressing the idea of “deliberate practice,” a concept developed by the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson to describe how elite performers develop and maintain their expertise. “The right sort of practice carried over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement,” Ericsson explains. “Nothing else.”9