Amazing content but not a blue print for trainers

books:

	• The Road To Excellence: the Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games K. Anders Ericsson Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

5 Star for some 3 star for me

Good book but not for everyone i.e. me. I agree with the major points of the work but it was a tough read.

Deliberate practice is the best tool

Is the highest level of expertise attributable to innate talents or to hard work? K. Anders Ericsson, the editor of the book declared that "experts are always made , not born". "With the exception of some sports, no characteristic of the brain or body constrains an individual from reaching an expert level." According to Ericsson's research, people who reach the peak practice differently from people who stagnate. Here, the same amount of time put in does not mean the same quality of experience gained. Deliberate practice is Ericsson's big idea. It is the "practice that focuses on tasks beyond your current level of competence and comfort." "When most people practice, they focus on the things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can't do well--or even at all." It demands high concentration, and much reflection and feedback analysis. And it is important to "identify the aspects of your performance that will need to be improved at your next level of skill".

The book is a collection of 15 academic papers for a symposium on "The acquisition of expert performance: Implications for optimal professional development". The studies of the expert performance in the book range from disciplines in arts and science, sports and games. With many regression equations, data tables, and data graphs, it is not a leisure read. However, the topic is immensely interesting to me and I think it's well worth the time to digest the information.

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Perhaps the best education book written

Having been an educator physician for some time, Dr. Ericsson reveals the nature of expertise as opposed to good, OK, mediocre, learners. He also lends insight into the difference between casual practice and dedicated or focused practice - which is the key to mastery. Anyone who wishes to be the best learner or the best teacher should read this book - every year.

Amazing content but not a blue print for trainers

This is an amazing book. . It covers skill mastery in many domains (golf, wrestling, chess, music), showing the commonalities that lie at the heart of exceptional, as apposed to average, performance (e.g. consistent, focused practices over years characterized by high quality feedback, the need for the individual to master self-regulation if he or she wants to increase skill over time, etc.) It also provides a cautionary tale, in the form of a golf pro who developed exceptional skill but who never achieved the type of fame or wealth of say a Jack Nicholas. Why? Because skill too narrowly defined, no mater how great, does not lead to achievement. You have to take in the total context (social, political, etc) if you want your "skill" to lead to widespread recognition. At least that's what I took away from my reading. While the book doesn't lay out an explicit "blue print" for applying it's information, it is still a wonderful resource for trainers or teachers looking to develop high level instruction and to mentor those pursuing peak performance.

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This book tells you how to be a genius.

I'm not done reading it, but it's painful all the way, but painful in the way of the detail. I'm sure if you try hard enough you could figure this stuff out on your own, like people have done for thousands of years, but to see it there in front of you, it's a real short cut for getting to doing what you're trying to do. It's not some lame motivational book like if some nobody wrote, "How to be Successful," in the hopes of being successful by selling it. No, this is real science. It's doesn't tell you what to do at all, and the language is all technical like a robot, because they're psychologists and that's how psychologists talk, I guess, but it's living robot-matter, and they're talking about what they're doing, which is doing things, so there's a reflective aura all around the words, because it's a meta-subject. This is the subject of all subjects.

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Excellence and the highest levels of performance in the arts and sciences, sports and games have always been an object of fascination to both scientists and lay people. Only during the last 20 years have scientists studied levels of performance in the laboratory in order to identify their mediating mechanisms. Contrary to the common belief that innate talents are the critical factors for exceptional performance, investigators have found that acquired skills, knowledge and physiological adaptations in response to intense practice are the primary mechanisms, mediating the highest levels of performance. This book examines how elite performers effect their exceptional accomplishments. Leading researchers on expert performance and creative achievement review theories and recent findings from many different domains of expertise on how experts optimize improvements in their performance and eventually attain excellence. Elite performers are shown to have engaged in deliberate-practice activities specifically designed to improve their performance from an early age. By age 20 they have often accumulated over 10,000 hours of practice! The essential elements of deliberate practice, such as specific goals to improve performance, successive refinement through repetition, feedback and instruction, are explicated for different domains. Although the content of practice tasks will necessarily differ from domain to domain, investigators have found invariant characteristics for the optimal duration of practice sessions, maximal amounts of daily practice, the length of intense preparation (around 10 years), and ages of peak performance.

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