Anders Ericsson had a brilliant career and renewed his interest in the study of an idea as simple as the world: “How to become expert.” To try to provide an answer to this question he studied sports champions, violinists from the best schools, chess masters and many other super-performers. He has written books with compelling titles such as “The road of excellence” (1996) or “The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance” (2006). He has studied for decades the structure and acquisition of expert performance and in particular how experts learn and maintain excellent performance over time through what he called deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice is a purpose-oriented activity and, therefore, one knows the goals and how to meet them.
In music, few students can have a full-time violin teacher, the standard is to take lessons during the week and do the teacher’s homework. Therefore at home, students practice to improve their level of competence.
It therefore requires the existence of a teacher who provides practical exercises to improve one’s skills.
In short, deliberate practice:
- develops the skills that others already have by following a specific training.
- puts the person out of the comfort zone, constantly looking for improvement with a quasi-maximal level of commitment
- provides for specific objectives and not for generic improvements
- requires full attention and conscious action
- needs feedback and commitment changes, according to the teacher’s comments and instructions
- provides for the improvement of the mental representation of one’s performance
- requires changing previous skills to provide better performance
Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology, Florida State University and Conradi Eminent Scholar was born in 1947 and passed away a few days ago, June 17, 2020.
