I love what you are doing and find your writing and work inspirational. I had a massive haemorrhagic stroke just over a year ago (and out of the blue).
Although I was aware of deliberate practice and what it could do for you from my past career you have certainly helped reshaped my path in the present. Expert Enough is absolutely outstanding.

SOOO in the spirit of what a good friend of mine says, Embrace Life and being a multiplier. Rusyl (my wife) and I would love you to visit us in New Zealand and be our guest. So we can spoil you and show you what we do as well.

Let me know what you think,
Best Regards
Mark Harris

If you are’t challenging your comfort zone you aren’t improving…you’re just rehashing things that you already know. Whether it be in music, life, business, or anything else, without challenging yourself daily you won’t be better than you were yesterday.

Hope it helps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daSF_ztHAIw – you can hear me sing.

But more importantly I have read quite a bit on the topic of hard work and deliberate practise, but I have something questions that havent been answered.

My first question is how do you effectively measure how someone practises? Following on from that how to do effectively measure the application of practise in a domain?

My next question which can probably be answered the first one is how come people who receive the same amount of training from teacher of similar or the same ability have differences in their level ability.

I think its almost worth mentioning I do not believe that expertise translates into success or financial reward. many people make a living out of something at very high levels are not experts in their field. being an expert is v.helpful but we also remember in many domains esp arts more spec the music industry you need to the feed agenda of people being in higher positions than you in order to move forward in many cases.

Anyways write back to me, and let me know what you think. thanks

I completely agree with the post – I believe we will see massive increases in the average level of performance among hobbyists if and when this science percolates to the general public.

That; however, is the difficulty. To provide a few examples:

Using hours practiced as a gauge, I am a beginner pianist. However, using quality of play and difficulty of pieces, I am easily an intermediate player. The secret? Hard work applied in exactly the manner you described in your post – http://www.pianofundamentals.com/. To the gentlemen who wanted guidance on piano practice, this book is a gem. Traditional pedagogy has a student learn a piece at a slow tempo, and then slowly ratchet up the speed. This book instead has the pianist focus on extremely small chunks, which can by isolation be repeatedly practiced. By focusing on specific components, rather than a little bit of everything at once, technique is acquired much more rapidly. Nevertheless, my friends are quick to ascribe my rapid progression to ‘natural talent’, even when I tell them I believe it is because of deliberate practice.

Ballroom dance offers another story. The mark of promising student is one who practices technique in isolation. Why is it that this field has integrated this knowledge into common pedagogy, while music instruction rejects it? I have a few guesses, and they don’t reveal any useful knowledge, so perhaps a better question is this – are there any lessons which can be learned from fields like ballroom dance (in relation to percolating this knowledge, not specific techniques)? I’m not sure; I hope you touch on this in future posts!

Great Post!!! For eighteen years I was a high performance athlete. I know what it means deliberate practice. I am now in the process of learning to play piano, and I am trying to transfer all that knowledge to this new adventure. How to learn a skill and improve constantly, how to keep motivated and overcome boredom, how to identify your weaknesses and work on them. Since I am new at playing piano, it is not clear for me how to do it. This article gives me some light.

Thanks.