[shadowsun7]

I think you'll be surprised to learn that most applied expertise research in the years since DP was first discovered has focused on training methods that do not depend on mature pedagogical development, which DP does. This is the primary point that I make, and realising this was what led me down the alternative path in the year since I wrote this post.

In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Well, has there been a few decades of pedagogical development in your field so that you can be coached like with chess or math or tennis? NO? Ok, you're tough out of luck. No DP for you!

So the real question is: if you are working in marketing or management or leadership or computer programming, all of which are domains that matter to our careers, these domains do not have good pedagogical development — so how do you get good?

The answer to this, at least from one branch of expertise research, is to extract mental models of expertise from the heads of domain experts, and then turn those into training programs. This is a far more tractable training approach. See: https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/ for a summary (note: Paul Feltovich is one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson; he's one of the authors of the book).

For a full survey of the approach, see the Oxford Handbook of Expertise https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/978019... (as opposed to the Cambridge Handbook, which is the Ericsson school.)

[Arisaka1]

As a self-taught web developer switching careers in his 30's I was interested to learn more about deliberate practice. I remember my extreme disappointment when I found out that it's only applicable to well-developed fields where there are established pedagogical practices. It's not that the common-given advice "just build stuff" isn't true, I just wanted to take the extra mile and choose projects in order to maximize my personal growth.

Finding someone who went through the extra mile to research for ways to apply DP in the relatively unexplored territory is such a breath of fresh air so, thank you for this!

[wiki_me]

> In sum: DP simply has too high a bar to clear. Want to do DP? Well, has there been a few decades of pedagogical development in your field so that you can be coached like with chess or math or tennis? NO? Ok, you're tough out of luck. No DP for you!

I actually read "The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" and if i recall correctly it's not that simple, , Expert practitioners can develop themselves better methods (it is argued the reason world records keep getting broken is not because our genes become better but because of better training methods ) , the main thing about deliberate practice is detecting points you can improve (e.g. failing to answer a coding question in a job interview), developing a method to improve the sub skill (trying at home with less stress and more time, going over a piece of knowledge you forgot, e.g. how BFS works), going over "socially accepted good enough" to "the best you can be" (e.g. you might fail some interviews and think maybe the interviewers don't like you, or you could double check your answer and find better solutions which might help if you will interview to more demanding companies such as facebook or google).

There is another interesting book called "the psychology of problem solving" (see http://www.al-edu.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Davidson-St...) where Ericsson argues iirc that deliberate practice is a form of problem solving.

[TameAntelope]

You mean these? https://i.imgur.com/2tWApHA.jpg

I've not done more than cherry-pick from them, admittedly, but I've always had a pipe dream of writing articles about concepts within, as a way of teaching myself.

I don't think practicality is a necessary component of truth. It may be true that, should you stumble upon a way to deliberately practice something, you will grow your mastery of that thing regardless of talent, and it may also be true that finding a way to deliberately practice something is nearly impossible without decades of effort.

What I believe you're talking about is called "tacit knowledge" and the work around how people can effectively transfer that knowledge from one person to another. One classic anecdote is of the pilots who were able to find success by "pretending" to be their instructors -- doing exactly as they thought their instructor would do, without really knowing why, and obtaining more positive evaluation results than by trying to do everything "as themselves".

[shadowsun7]

<3

I've actually been putting some of the CTA methods mentioned in the Oxford Handbook to practice! See: https://commoncog.com/blog/john-cutlers-product-expertise/ for one accounting; I'm currently trying it out with an international Judo coach right now, on technique analysis. (We can't meet due to COVID, since I cannot fly to him, so what I want is to extract his ability to perform video analysis, so that I can perform it on myself and on other competitors).

If I were to summarise why the CTA/Oxford Handbook approach is more tractable, it is this: you don't 'stumble' into a way to deliberately practice something — you do 'pedagogical development'. But pedagogical development is hard! One of the things that I've found most perplexing about Ericssons's work is that, in Peak, he provides an accounting of a skill domain (memorisation competitions) that experienced pedagogical development during his time. Thanks to that pedagogical development, DP techniques could be used in the domain. But he spent no time talking about the pedagogical development!

So I've concluded that it's simply too hard to do good pedagogical development. Better to adopt CTA methods, which already work, and use those to design training programs for myself.

And while it's too early to tell (check back in a few years) I think it's more fruitful.

[TameAntelope]

Okay, I'll admit I was too harsh initially, you and I are certainly both interested in this topic, and I suppose I'll keep reading as you write more about your exploration here. :)

Good luck, if I ever find more free time I hope to do a lot of the same work you're doing here, I find this topic extremely fascinating!

[kqr]

I just read that review of Accelerated Expertise. I didn't know which link to click in all of this comment thread so I just picked that one at random, and -- wow -- that was one of the most interesting things I've read in a while. Thanks for posting!

[vaylian]

Thanks for the additional explanation! Could you give a short definition of what you mean by "pedagogical development"?

[shadowsun7]

Pedagogy means 'methods of teaching'. Pedagogical development means that there is a some body of knowledge around how to teach the skills of the domain. For instance, in tennis, there is some understanding of how to teach serves, and a coach may be able to break down your technique into subskills and assign you specific exercises that are known (have been developed) to work on building those subskills, before building it back up to the full serve.

This body of knowledge is built up over time, usually through trial and error. It is then passed from coach to player and coach to coach.

The dirty little secret of DP is that it cannot be done in domains where no good pedagogical development exists. This is a definitional thing. You may read more about it in Peak, Ericsson's popular science book on the topic (summary: https://commoncog.com/blog/peak-book-summary/)

I want to repeat this, so it is very clear: you cannot do DP in a domain where there is no good pedagogical development.

So: rock music, jazz, some aspects of computer programming, software architecture, marketing, leadership, management — all of these are domains with under-developed pedagogical development. Don't get me wrong — there are experts in all of these domains. But they got there through trial and error and reflection, not DP (see: cognitive transformation theory for an explanation of how that occurs here: https://commoncog.com/blog/the-hard-thing-about-learning-fro...)

If you want to do DP, you would have to come up with training techniques for all of these skills, and test them over a long period of time. In other words, you would have to do pedagogical development yourself before you can do DP.

One other implication: anyone who says "oh, just go do DP" is likely someone who has not a) looked at the research closely, or b) not actually tried to put it to practice.

Applying DP is a lot harder than you might think.

Anyway, once you understand this, you may now pursue two different lines of inquiry:

- How do good coaches do pedagogical development? I recommend John Danaher to give you a taste: https://youtu.be/ktuw6Ow4sd0?t=2396 (on developing new techniques) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktuw6Ow4sd0&t=6211s (on his creation of the leg-lock system)

- How do you develop training without pedagogical development. And for that I recommend my tacit knowledge series (https://commoncog.com/blog/the-tacit-knowledge-series/) and my summary of Accelerated Expertise (https://commoncog.com/blog/accelerated-expertise/)

[asplake]

Thank you for that first link, a really interesting read and timely for me. I will probably buy the book