{"id":29448,"date":"2021-03-18T20:03:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T00:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=29448"},"modified":"2026-04-27T16:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T20:26:14","slug":"peak-secrets-from-the-new-science-of-expertise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/peak-secrets-from-the-new-science-of-expertise\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> about? How can Anders Ericsson teach you how to master any skill<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To truly improve at a skill, you need to change how you practice. Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise <\/em>explores how humans develop skills and the process by which peak performers in music, athletics, and countless other fields develop their abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue on to learn more about Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em>, Explained<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise <\/em>explores how humans develop skills and the process by which peak performers in music, athletics, and countless other fields develop their abilities. While it may seem as though figures like Chopin, Beethoven, or Roger Federer rely solely on an innate talent<\/a> that makes their extraordinary feats seem effortless, what they do actually requires a great deal of effort. Indeed, the secret to their success was practice<\/strong>. They practiced a lot and they practiced the right way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us think of \u201cpractice\u201d as the simple repetition of a task. And, to be sure, this kind of practice will yield some results. If you\u2019re learning how to play tennis, for example, you\u2019ll probably be able to iron out your most embarrassing mistakes and figure out how to serve the ball somewhat competently. But this approach actually stunts your learning. Once you reach your accepted level of performance, you\u2019ll plateau and stop improving. To truly improve, you need to change <\/strong>how <\/em><\/strong>you practice. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purposeful Practice<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> starts out with an explanation of purposeful practice<\/a>. Purposeful <\/em>practice is distinct from merely repetitive practice in a few specific ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals<\/strong>. If you\u2019re learning to play a piece of music, your practice regimen shouldn\u2019t be \u201cI\u2019ll just play for an hour every day.\u201d It should be, \u201cI\u2019ll play the piece until I can do it without any mistakes three times in a row.\u201d The key to purposeful practice is putting a series of small steps together as you work toward a longer-term goal. Each subsequent step challenges you just a bit more than the previous one.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    1. Purposeful practice demands complete focus<\/strong>. You need to give the task at hand your full attention and keep your mind squarely on the thing you\u2019re trying to achieve.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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      1. Purposeful practice involves feedback<\/strong>. You need someone who can guide you, praise you when you do something right, tell you precisely how <\/em>you\u2019re falling short\u2014and how you can improve.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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        1. Purposeful practice requires you to step out of your comfort zone<\/a><\/strong>. You\u2019re never going to improve if you only do the things that are already easy for you. Once you\u2019ve gotten comfortable, it\u2019s time to challenge yourself further. The quality <\/em>of practice matters<\/a> much more than the quantity.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

          For example, research has shown that doctors who have been practicing for 30 years actually do worse <\/em>on certain measures of performance than their colleagues who are only a few years out of medical school. This is because the senior doctors aren\u2019t engaging in purposeful practice. Most of their day-to-day activities keep them squarely in their comfort zone: they aren\u2019t being challenged at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Purposeful practice can be remarkably effective. Anders Ericsson, author of Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em><\/em>, <\/em>once conducted an experiment to see how many digits a test subject, named Steve, would be able to memorize and recite in a numerical string. At first, Steve couldn\u2019t memorize strings longer than nine digits. It seemed that he had reached some sort of natural plateau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The author decided to try purposeful practice to help Steve push through this barrier<\/strong>. He would present Steve with five-digit strings: if Steve repeated it back correctly, the author would add one more digit to the string to make it six digits. If Steve got it wrong, the author would drop the length of the string by two digits. And it worked: in a few days, Steve managed to memorize an 11-digit sequence, two better than his previous record. After hundreds of sessions, Steve was able to successfully recite back 82 digits! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Deliberate Practice<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

          The core of Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> is deliberate practice<\/a>. Truly effective practice<\/a> goes a step beyond <\/em>purposeful practice, to deliberate <\/em>practice. Working hard and pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone, by themselves, are not enough. Deliberate practice builds on the principles of purposeful practice, but it applies them in a systematic, rigorous framework that leads to the kind of performances we see from acknowledged experts. Unlike purposeful practice, deliberate practice isn\u2019t about fulfilling your potential\u2014it\u2019s about building <\/em>it, making possible what was once impossible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          With deliberate practice, you are working with highly developed and well-accepted training methods that have been proven effective in getting results. These methods have been honed and perfected by those who came before you into a near-science. With purposeful practice, if you push yourself<\/a>, you might see improvement. With deliberate <\/em>practice, you\u2019ll become an expert<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

          There are a few key features of deliberate practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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          1. Deliberate practice can be measured precisely. <\/strong>Whether it\u2019s a win\/loss record in chess or your finish times in a sprint, there are objective ways for you to evaluate your performance.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          2. Deliberate practice is competitive<\/strong>. This provides aspiring experts with a motivation to keep practicing and improving. You want to be the best in your field.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          3. Deliberate practice is time-tested.<\/strong> You\u2019re not trying to do something that no one else has ever done before. Instead, you\u2019re operating in a field where best practices have been developed over a long period of time\u2014even centuries<\/em>. You\u2019re following the template that experts before you have followed successfully.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          4. Deliberate practice is done under the tutelage of teachers and coaches. <\/strong>With deliberate practice, you\u2019re working in a field whose high level of development and venerable history of best practices have produced a highly skilled and sophisticated cadre of professional mentors who can guide you every step along your path<\/a> to expertise.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
          5. Deliberate practice demands maximal effort<\/strong>, which is often unpleasant.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

            Deliberate practice is how experts become experts.<\/strong> In a study of violin students at the Berlin University of the Arts, a team of researchers set out to determine whether the best performances were the product of deliberate practice or innate talent. Given the extreme difficulty of playing the violin, it requires a great deal of solitary practice time to master the instrument. It is crucial to practice outside of scheduled sessions with one\u2019s teacher. While acknowledging that it wasn\u2019t fun, the students saw practice as being crucial to their development as musicians, so they kept to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The researchers found that the only major difference between the students they had deemed \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cbetter,\u201d and \u201cbest\u201d was how much time they devoted to solitary, deliberate practice.<\/strong> They calculated that the \u201cgood\u201d students would practice an average of 3,420 hours on the violin by the time they turned 18; the \u201cbetter\u201d students would practice an average of 5,301 hours; and the \u201cbest\u201d students would practice an average of 7,410 hours. There were no shortcuts to becoming an excellent violinist. All of the top achievers had devoted several thousand hours of practice to the instrument: none of them were \u201cprodigies\u201d who simply surpassed their peers without putting in any practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            There are no big leaps or breakthroughs with deliberate practice. What looks to an observer like a sudden leap forward is actually just the last in a series of baby steps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Mental Representations<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

            Critically, deliberate practice depends on effective mental representations<\/a>, which show you how to do your task properly and correct yourself when you make mistakes. Mental representations are templates that correspond to objects, ideas, or anything else that the brain might be thinking about<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You may not realize it, but you use mental images every day. Think about a famous image, like da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa<\/em>. When someone mentions it, you can \u201csee\u201d the painting in your mind\u2019s eye\u2014this is a mental representation<\/a>. Mental representations are key to memory, pattern recognition<\/a>, and all the other highly developed abilities needed to be a top-ranked pitcher, chess player, or pianist, providing meaning and context that aids us as we assimilate and process information.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A key part of forming good mental representations is the ability to recognize patterns where others see only random and formless data. Most of us are only seeing a collection of trees: experts see the forest. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In one experiment, soccer players were shown video footage from a soccer match and then asked to predict what was going to happen next on the field. The results showed that the more accomplished players were more accurate in their predictions of what the next move would be than were the less accomplished players participating in the experiment. The better players were able to take a full assessment of the conditions on the field and see patterns that enabled them to predict what the optimal next move would be. They had a mental representation of which players\u2019 movements mattered the most, to whom they ought to pass the ball, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Deliberate practice and mental representations reinforce one another: the more skilled or knowledgeable you become in a given subject through deliberate practice, the more effective your mental representations will be\u2014and vice versa. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The story of Russian chess master Alexander Alekhine shows how mental representations can drive extraordinary performance. He was one of the world\u2019s best in \u201cblindfold\u201d chess\u2014a version of the game in which one of the players does not have the board in front of them, and must make all their moves and strategic calculations from memory. Through his mental representations, Alekhine had developed the ability to visualize the entire chessboard in his memory and move the pieces around in his head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Alekhine\u2019s aptitude for blindfold chess grew out of his extensive, deliberate practice in standard, non-blindfold chess. Like many chess masters, his abilities in blindfold chess were a product of the years of experience he had in the game: because he knew it so well, he had the ability to draw an extraordinary mental representation of a chessboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Applying the Principles<\/strong> From Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

            While it\u2019s true that applying the principles of deliberate practice is most effective in fields like classical music and chess, you shouldn\u2019t take that to mean that you can\u2019t apply them anywhere else. Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> says that deliberate practice can improve your performance and that of your organization, in whatever field you\u2019re in.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But it\u2019s only possible if you and your organization let go of the idea that individual ability is solely determined by genetic characteristics. This belief isn\u2019t true: deliberate practice matters much more than raw talent or ability. Indeed, apart from people who suffer from severe physical or mental limitations, with the right practice, just about <\/strong>anyone <\/em><\/strong>can improve in any area they choose. <\/strong>You also have to recognize that it\u2019s about more than just repetition or hard work. Simply \u201ctrying harder,\u201d by itself, will not yield the desired results.<\/strong> There\u2019s usually a right way and wrong way to do something. If you\u2019re doing something the wrong way, but \u201ctrying harder,\u201d you won\u2019t see much difference (and, in fact, you might make things worse <\/em>by doubling down on your faulty approach). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In a regular 9-5 job, the key is to transform regular time at the office into an opportunity for learning and skill-building<\/strong>. This gets everyone in the company used to the idea <\/em>of practicing itself\u2014it just becomes a normal part of the business day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Mock scenarios are particularly good for professional skill-building. <\/strong>They allow team members to practice over and over again, receive lots of feedback, and perfect their skills without the usual costs of failure. These sorts of simulation programs have proven particularly effective in medicine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In diagnosing breast cancer, for example, radiologists are tasked with interpreting x-rays to determine whether cancerous cells are present or not. But they\u2019re rarely ever told if their analysis was correct, as the results are typically sent to the patient\u2019s personal doctor. Based on what we know about the need for feedback, this is not <\/em>a recipe for improved performance.  One way to correct this was establishing a digital library of past <\/em>mammogram images to use as a training tool for radiologists, allowing them to look at the images to determine whether or not they represented the tissue of a patient who had cancer\u2014and receive immediate feedback on the accuracy of their analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The <\/strong>least <\/em><\/strong>effective medical training programs, meanwhile, were those focused on didactic or knowledge-based instruction,<\/strong> usually involving doctors sitting at a conference and listening to a lecture. These offer little opportunity for feedback and correcting mistakes. Unfortunately, such programs are what much of the medical profession\u2019s \u201ccontinuing education\u201d consists of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            More Tips On Deliberate Practice<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

            Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise<\/em> offers more tips on achieving your goals<\/a> with deliberate practice:<\/p>\n\n\n\n