Is the simple act of practice going to get you closer to expert status or is perfect practice the only way?
About a month ago, Inc.com ran an article by Geoffrey James detailing the simple steps for “mastering any skill“.
In this essay, he discusses a strategy made popular by Greg Wingard that states:
“Your mind goes through six specific stages when mastering a skill–three in the “theory” segment, and three in the “practice” segment.
The Theory Segment
- Unawareness: You are unaware that there is a skill to be learned.
- Awareness: You realize you need to learn that skill.
- Clarification: You understand what you need to do differently.
The Practice Segment
- Awkwardness: You attempt the new behavior and find it difficult.
- Familiarity: The new behavior is easier but still not automatic.
- Automatic: You no longer think about the behavior but simply do it.”
Once you’ve reached the “automatic” sixth stage you have supposedly “mastered the skill”.
But, is this in fact the best way to build skills rapidly?
Can Expertise Be Broken Down Into Simple “How to” Steps?
The article then goes on to claim that there are five simple steps you should follow to stay on track:
- Script the new behavior.
- Practice it… perfectly.
- Rebound and fix.
- Accelerate through mental rehearsal.
- Make it part of your identity.
While this is not extremely detailed, the general outline of practice, adjust, and repeat is what you’ve been taught since you were a kid.
This list also perpetuates the widely held believed that “perfect practice” is the ultimate way to get better at something.
But, is there a better way to perfect a skill? Are there shortcuts to becoming an expert?
No Single Path to Expert Exists
We’ve already discussed how you should actually stop being a perfectionist and start making more bad stuff and how your good taste is actually holding your creativity back, so there really seems to be a wide range of opinions on what the best way to becoming an expert really is.
Should we all just agree to disagree? 
Or, is there an ultimate path for perfecting a skill that someone should be seeking out before they get started?
We’d love to hear what you think in the comments of this post or on the Expert Enough Facebook page.
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This is very interesting. I like how it is broken down into two segments as I can think of times in my life that those points have applied to me.
One thing that stands out comes from my experience in a mastering a musical instrument (saxophone).
The old saying was “Practice makes perfect”. My teacher would tell me that “Practice actually makes Permanent”.
In other words, if one is practicing it wrong, then it will be permanently wrong. I think that this is to simplified for real life situations. Instead, the practice/revamp/practice senario seems much more valid.
This also allows for creativity an resourcefulness to flourish which can always make the mastering of a skill better.
Brooklyn
Practice makes permanent was something my father always used to say too.
Mostly when I was practicing skills in sports that weren’t what I would actually be doing in a game time situation.
Thanks for sharing Brooklyn.
Some comments.
The breakdown into theory then practise is false. It reflects the school room rather than real life. Sometimes doing comes first and then the person wants to understand what they are doing. Whichever comes first there is always a back and forth. Who do you know who learned to drive this way?
It is vital to have ‘in task cues’. That is you have stuff to watch while doing the task to know if you are doing it right. The task itself gives you feedback – a good guide or teacher will direct you to these cues in any particular task that is learned.
The thing about perfect practise has validity – if we habituate doing something badly this is hardly likely to help. However the examples are usually extremely simple things like winning a race. This has little relevance to the rest of life – How would you practise eating perfectly? Starting a blog perfectly? And the practise needs to be done in a way that you feel it – to the point where your muscles are ready for action.
Expertise is a repertoir of ‘typical situations’ – see What Computers Can’t Do by Dreyfus; when they don’t have these (a new situation or they are out of their domain) experts are no better than beginners. Expertise pertains to a task – though some tasks are more general than others (eg. designing, writing, thinking etc all have components which can be mastered). For problem solving experts spend most time on understanding the problem – once you know the problem there are generally solutions available.
Hope this adds to the discussion.
I love the mention of “in task cues” Evan. Great point.
Doing, learning, practicing, and progressing all depends on what type of activity you are trying to get better at.
Thanks for the insightful thoughts Evan.
How quickly a skill can be learned, for me, is governed by what an ‘expert’ is deemed to be. Tim Ferriss shows how you can learn a new language in 3 months, but this is basic conversational stuff – is this an expert?
I’d say this applies to skill mastery also, both in what mastery means and what the skill isused for. For example, I want to learn a new language and in my view, the quickest way to learn, say, French, is to surround myself with French speakers. Will this help me master the skill? Conversational French is mastery to me, but perhaps not to somoene else.
I like the idea that you can master a skill once it becomes automatic – or the fear of failure is dramatically reduced. Using the language example, if my confidence in conversing in French is the same as conversing in English, then I have mastered the skill.
-Razwana
Hi,
I think all of you have very good points.
Still, my biggest question is: at what point is one considered an expert?
Does it really and 100% depend on other people’s judgement?
Plus, the way I see it, failing a lot (therefore not being the perfectionist whose creativity is held back) can be part of the five steps to stay on track while building expertise (fix and rebound). And the whole thing is iterative, we do not do just simply theory and then practice. Neither do we learn everything 100% empirically.
The amount of theoretical and practical exercice done by each person depends on their own needs, I guess.
Personally, I need to see practical application of something so that the theory makes some sense in my head and I do need to experiment a lot to see what fails and what works, map it to the theoretical concepts for validation. All this goes through several iterations.
And the more verbal communication exists in the process, the better. Reading and doing is not enough.
- Susana