Today I'll start reading the Book 'Peak - secrets from the new science of expertise'. I want to document the process as to make sure to thoroughly read and think through the concepts. The goal is to incorporate at least one learning into my daily life.
To start it might be helpful to gather what I think to already know about the topic of "expertise". Or rather to define what I understand under the word and what my expectations to the book are.
After the definition, I will start looking at the book and parsing the table of contents. The idea here is to apply the learnings from the book "How to read a book". The first stage here is "inspectional reading". Where I do not read line by line but rather try to quickly get a high level overview of the contents. To get a mental "map" of the book.
Expertise is an attribute which is used to describe the quality in a person which says about them that they possess of skills and knowledge which others do not. One is an Expert in her field when one can set oneself apart from others by means of the quality of ones skills.
Expertise is usually reached only through long and deliberate practice. A term that is used by Robert Greene for perhaps the same thing is Mastery.
There are multiple dimensions to expertise. One is knowledge as in the ability to recall facts and processes which aid in solving a specific problem. Another is skill as in the ability to perform certain processes in an expert fashion. Another yet is intuition as in the ability to quickly without conscious effort categorize and find solutions to novel problems based on extensive past experiences
I am trying to tie these dimensions to the terms procedural and conceptual but not sure this works out.
After reading the endorsements on the flap, I have some expectations of the book. The general theme seems to be on performance. This might indicate things like focus, learning and efficiency. One endorsement mentioned the importance of being able to practically accomplish something.
This might point to the learning technique as read about in Ultralearning: performing drills. This is a technique where one focuses on a very specific part of a skill and hones this part to a great degree. One example in the context of writing might be to improve ones typing speed by practicing with dedicated tools. Another might be to practice formulating sentences at great speed by setting a time limit and writing as fast as one is physically able and try to produce harmonious sentences. Lots of other examples could be found.
Another aspect that I expect to see is talk of recovery and spacing. As in correct sleeping habits and healthy lifestyle. Focus is likely also going to play a role. As is deliberate and deep work.
The greatest people of any profession have one thing in common: They put in more hours than their peers.
We now know that we aren't limited to just fulfilling our potential. Our potential is possibly limitless. Perfect pitch can be taught. And it turns out it can probably be taught to anyone.
But take Benjamin Franklin as an example. While he was a great inventor and diplomat, he was only a mediocre chess player. Even though he played a lot and for many years. So why didn't he become great? Because by simply doing what one can already do one won't improve.
So it takes more than putting in the time. It takes deliberate practice.
Given the right stimuli over an extended period of time our brains physiology changes. London's cab drivers need to learn amazing amounts of landmarks and routes. The training is sometimes referred to as The Knowledge. It has been shown that the Hippocampi - the areas in the brain responsible for orientation - are significantly enlarged in people who have successfully mastered The Knowledge. The same is true for many other areas of expertise and brain regions. Einstein had an enlarged region in the brain which is responsible for Visualization. This can be seen in many mathematicians.
Purposeful practice can be seen as a generalization of deliberate practice. The following properties describe purposeful practice:
Clear goal
To define a goal, two attributes should be given. The goal should be specific and measurable.
Focus
The task should occupy most of our mental capacities. If takes up too little, we will not be pushed to adapt and the extra capacity might easily be filled by other thoughts creeping in. If it takes up too much, we will be jittery and won't be able to sustain the effort for long enough. I think the Book "Hyperfocus" has something to say about that which I might need to revisit.
Feedback
In order to improve, we need to know what we did wrong and how we can improve it. This constitutes directed feedback or I think in the book Ultralearning it might be called something like mentoring feedback? In the book it is described as the best possible kind of feedback. It will not only show us what we did wrong, but show us a way to improve specifically tailored to our current level. The next best thing is probably directed feedback, which also shows us what to improve but cannot give us tailored advice.
One important part of purposeful practice is to find ways of receiving high quality feedback. When we do not have a mentor available, we can learn from other source such as books, videos, interviews and so on. By perusing the performance of experts we can build up our mental representation of how the result should look, and iterate forward to get closer to that ideal.
Outside of comfort zone
We need to do things in our training which we aren't yet able to comfortably do. In order to push our brains to adapt, we need to be working at the maximum of our capacity. This ties in with the focus part as described above. We can vary the exertion by cutting back or stepping up the effort to make sure we are in the sweet spot for adaptation. The parallel to weight lifting is useful here. When a body builder hits a plateau he will vary his training in small ways. We can alter our training in myriad ways and test whether the changes help us improve.
In order to learn something, one must have a clear mental representation of the thing to achieve. For example a diver must have a clear mental representation of the move he is going to perform. He needs to know where his body parts are at any given time and how that feels. He needs to have an understanding of where he is in space. Without this model the dive will be hard to accomplish.
This model does not pop out of the blue. People must inch forward toward a clearer representation. The practice builds up the representation and the representation improves the practice.
To put this into the context of my own learning: When trying to understand how a deployment works I will do two things. I will create the code, learning from the internet, and will inch my understanding forward by changing the code, going through trial and error. At some points I stop and check my mental representation of how a deployment should work. Maybe I learned something through my experimentation or a source at work or online which I will use to update my representation. This updated representation can then improve my code and so on. A virtuous circle.
What is the difference between purposeful practice and deliberate practice? Deliberate practice adds the following characteristics:
The challenge now seems to lie in the task of finding measures of progress and finding the most efficient way to learn something.
I'm thinking that GenAI enables us to receive fast feedback and help iterate toward a better mental representation of something.