This is probably not new news to most of you, but I found this article called “The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect‘” interesting. Author Annie Murphy Paul discusses the research on how improvement requires not a lot of practice, but deliberate and focused practice.
“Hundreds of thousands of people took music lessons when they were young and remember little or nothing,” he points out, giving lie to the notion that learning an instrument is easiest when you’re a kid. The important thing is not just practice but deliberate practice, “a constant sense of self-evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses, rather than simply fooling around and playing to one’s strengths. Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level. Most of the practice that most people do, most of the time, be it in the pursuit of learning the guitar or improving their golf game, yields almost no effect.”
The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ – Annie Murphy Paul
While this is really not new information, most of us still don’t practice deliberately most of the time. It’s not fun poking at your flaws and forcing yourself to address them. If you’re into an activity it’s probably because you find it fun and constantly finding things that you don’t do already well make it less so. It takes discipline to spend your practice time not sounding good, but it’s absolutely the best way to spend your time if you want to maximize your results.
There’s a lot of scholarly evidence to support this approach. Paul cites a couple of papers that are also interesting reads. I couldn’t find the original paper online, but here is a 2008 paper by Anders Ericsson, “Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview.”
Traditionally, professional expertise has been judged by length of experience, reputation, and perceived mastery of knowledge and skill. Unfortunately, recent research demonstrates only a weak relationship between these indicators of expertise and actual, observed performance. In fact, observed performance does not necessarily correlate with greater professional experience. Expert performance can, however, be traced to active engagement in deliberate practice (DP), where training (often designed and arranged by their teachers and coaches) is focused on improving particular tasks. DP also involves the provision of immediate feedback, time for problem‐solving and evaluation, and opportunities for repeated performance to refine behavior. In this article, we draw upon the principles of DP established in other domains, such as chess, music, typing, and sports to provide insight into developing expert performance in medicine.
Anders Ericsson
Paul also references research done specifically with musicians, “It’s Not How Much; It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills.” The researchers looked at how different pianists practiced a challenging passage and then rated their performances the next day to see what strategies worked best. You won’t be surprised to learn that the musicians weren’t the pianists who practiced the longest, but those who focused their practice in a way that they practiced the passage correctly, rather than reinforcing mistakes.
The lesson to learn here is to always practice with an ear towards what your mistakes are and make sure to fix them. It takes great effort and isn’t the most enjoyable way to practice, but it’s absolutely the best way to improve.
Speaking of which, it’s time for me to go practice.
This seems like an important post that I should take to heart. It would help me to take this approach in my programming career as well.
One challenge with trumpet is that even if you practice deliberately, it still might not”click” embouchure wise. But at least you increase your odds of success.
I have found also that if you aren’t always sure what to work on, or you are having resistance to practicing, or you are just low energy, there is value in just saying “I am going to play one hour every day no matter if it’s just long tones.” At least then you are staying in the game, and may find yourself spontaneously transitioning into deliberate practice when you didn’t think you had it in you.
Thanks for your thoughts, Gordon. I also find that what you say about staying in the game also holds true for writing and composing as well. Even if you don’t have the inspiration, putting some time in often “tricks” you into doing something creative after a bit.
This seems like a good angle to take, and would be pretty interesting to investigate, if possible. Does enforcing a strict practice regimen (e.g. 2 hours per day) correlate with time spent in deliberate practice? Perhaps, for example, spending 2 hours with your instrument means that, no matter what you do, some proportion of that time ends up being ‘deliberate practice’, except for the most useless or inefficient methods. With more intelligent approaches, perhaps you can raise your ratio of deliberate practice to aimless practice, but there is usually at least a little bit in play.
As a brass player, however, there are also myological considerations. Even unfocused practice can build response, strength, or endurance, in my experience, even though it certainly won’t make you a better musician.
Hey, Paul.
Right, but unfocused practice (or not focusing on the correct thing) can lead to problems. See my post today (and the one scheduled for Monday) for an example of how not focusing on the correct things have been giving me issues.
Dave
Excellent point! You have to be really secure in your fundamentals before this kind of thing can be relatively “safe” (much like endurance exercises, for example).