PDF Summary:Peak, by Anders Ericsson

Peak explores how peak performers in music, athletics, and other fields develop their abilities. Through purposeful practice and the development of effective mental representations, nearly anyone can become an expert in whatever field they choose. The book shatters many illusions about expertise—chiefly, that it comes from genius or “natural” talent. Instead, it comes from rigorous practice and a willingness to improve slowly over time through a series of baby steps. By embracing these principles, you can become whatever it is you wish to be. Your future is entirely in your hands.

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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.

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’ movements mattered the most, to whom they ought to pass the ball, and so on.

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—and vice versa.

The story of Russian chess master Alexander Alekhine shows how mental representations can drive extraordinary performance. He was one of the world’s best in “blindfold” chess—a 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.

Alekhine’s 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.

Applying the Principles

While it’s true that applying the principles of deliberate practice is most effective in fields like classical music and chess, you shouldn’t take that to mean that you can’t apply them anywhere else. Deliberate practice can improve your performance and that of your organization, in whatever field you’re in.

But it’s only possible if you and your organization let go of the idea that individual ability is solely determined by genetic characteristics. This belief isn’t 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 anyone can improve in any area they choose. You also have to recognize that it’s about more than just repetition or hard work. Simply “trying harder,” by itself, will not yield the desired results. There’s usually a right way and wrong way to do something. If you’re doing something the wrong way, but “trying harder,” you won’t see much difference (and, in fact, you might make things worse by doubling down on your faulty approach).

In a regular 9-5 job, the key is to transform regular time at the office into an opportunity for learning and skill-building. This gets everyone in the company used to the idea of practicing itself—it just becomes a normal part of the business day.

Mock scenarios are particularly good for professional skill-building. 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.

In diagnosing breast cancer, for example, radiologists are tasked with interpreting x-rays to determine whether cancerous cells are present or not. But they’re rarely ever told if their analysis was correct, as the results are typically sent to the patient’s personal doctor. Based on what we know about the need for feedback, this is not a recipe for improved performance. One way to correct this was establishing a digital library of past 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—and receive immediate feedback on the accuracy of their analysis.

The least effective medical training programs, meanwhile, were those focused on didactic or knowledge-based instruction, 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’s “continuing education” consists of.

More Tips On Deliberate Practice

The book offers more tips on achieving your goals with deliberate practice:

• Find a good teacher. You need someone who is well-versed in your field who can point out when you’re making mistakes and devise a practice regimen that will push and challenge you.
• Focus. Short, intense training sessions with clear goals are the most effective way to quickly develop new skills. (Unfortunately, these aren’t always fun). Set aside allotted time each day, devoted solely to deliberate practice, with full concentration—and that means turning off the computer, smartphone, TV, or anything else that can be a distraction.
• Stay motivated and don’t quit. Many people simply cannot maintain focus and discipline, especially when they reach temporary plateaus. But, like talent, motivation isn’t an innate, immutable quality—you can work on it and improve it. Some tips:
  • Believe in the possibility of improving your abilities. You need to believe you’re capable of accomplishing something to continue putting in the effort.
  • See the improvement and let that drive your intrinsic motivation.
  • If social motivation drives you, get praise and recognition from others.

Training from Youth

The world’s top performers usually start their training as children, continuing through adolescence and into early adulthood until true mastery is attained. As children, they are introduced to their field of interest in a fun, playful way, often by parents who are themselves highly achievement-oriented. Many future experts also have older siblings to look up to and use as models for improving their own performance. Even the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had his older sister, Maria Anna, who inspired him to pursue music. For people in advanced mathematics or neurology (which are fairly inaccessible to young children), the parents introduced the children to the general idea of intellectual pursuit, rather than the particular subject matter itself.

In adolescence, experts begin taking real lessons from a coach or teacher. These instructors knew how to properly motivate their young students and guide them along the path of deliberate practice. Praise from their teachers for reaching new levels of performance was a key ingredient in the early careers of these future experts.

Eventually, the motivation becomes intrinsic: the students begin to enjoy the fruits of their labor and wanted to experience it more. They relish being seen as swimmers or a tennis players or a musician. It becomes a major part of their identity and they begin to seek out the best possible teachers they can find—even if that means replacing their old ones. This often entails major personal and financial commitment, investing enormous sums of money in training and moving around the country to receive instruction at elite institutions.

There are some clear benefits to starting your training at a young age—young people have relatively few time constraints to interfere with their training, as well as a more flexible skeletal structure and greater resistance to injury (for those pursuing athletic fields). They also have more gray matter, the tissue that connects neurons in the brain. This enhances learning and may explain why it is easier, for example, for children to learn a second language than it is for adults.

It is not the case, however, that adults are incapable of mastering new skills later in life. Remember, all experts put in an enormous investment of time in deliberate practice to get to where they did. They may have had some innate talent or ability, but the discipline and willingness to practice counted for far more. None of them were “prodigies” or “naturals” who simply succeeded without having to train. And deliberate practice is something that everyone can do.

The Talent Myth

There exists a highly deterministic idea that your abilities are limited by your genetic characteristics. This is the old idea about “natural” talent: some people simply have it, and others don’t. It shows up in the defeatist statements people make when they don’t immediately achieve what they set out to: “I can’t manage people,” “I’m just not that creative,” or “I’m just not a math person.” We know this isn’t true: except for people who suffer from severe physical or mental limitations, with the right practice, just about anyone can improve in any area they choose.

The idea of prodigies—people born with natural talent that enables them to excel in a particular field with comparatively little effort—is, likewise, largely a myth borne of ignorance about how deliberate practice works. The idea of prodigies can actually be quite harmful. Accepting that there are those who simply have natural talent and others who don’t might discourage people from even trying to fulfill their dreams: “I’m not good at this, so why bother?”

And it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy—people who develop the idea that they’re “bad” at something never practice, and, therefore, never get good at it. Meanwhile, children who show early promise tend to be lavished with attention and praise from teachers and parents and receive more training and resources to help them develop their skills than children who struggle. The “gifted” students don’t possess some innate ability that others don’t, they’re just given more of an opportunity to develop. This has deprived the world of the talents of countless people who were deemed at an early age to be “no good” at something.

Even Mozart, often regarded as the very embodiment of a musical prodigy, relied on practice far more than raw talent. His father, Leopold, began his son’s training before the boy was even four—ample time for the young Mozart to soak up important hours of deliberate practice in his formative years. Moreover, his early childhood compositions, the supposed evidence of his unprecedented genius, have now been found to have been written in his father’s handwriting—a clue that perhaps the elder Mozart played a larger role in this stage of his son’s career than history cares to remember.

Through embracing the principles of deliberate practice and applying them to every area of human endeavor (not just chess or music), we could create a far more prosperous and happy world, one with profound implications for technology, healthcare, public service, and countless other fields. The lesson is clear. Fulfill your untapped potential. Work hard and practice to take control of your life and become whatever it is you wish to be. Your future is entirely in your hands.