How to practice 10 thousand hours

With the popularity of the best-selling book "heterogeneous", the slogan "exercise 10 thousand hours into a genius" is now widely known. There may still be a lot of people who believe that the genius will have the inherent mysterious ability, but scientists have reached a consensus through a lot of research and research, that is, all the top experts are trained. Not only that, but for the first time, people may have a unified theory about how to make a genius.

The good news is that, except for some sports that have special requirements on natural height and shape, mysterious natural qualities do not exist. That is to say, everyone may become a top professional. As early as more than 20 years ago, Benjamin Bloom, an educator at the University of Chicago, inspected 120 elites in many fields from music to mathematics and found that they had nothing special in their childhood. Future studies prove that in multiple fields, even IQ has nothing to do with whether a person can reach the expert level.

A Hungary psychologist has long believed that anyone can be trained as a master in any field as long as the method is proper. To prove this, he chose a project that traditional women are not good at, that is, chess. As a result, he and his wife trained both their three daughters as masters of the world of chess, which is the famous Three Sisters of polga. This experiment even proves that even if you do not like this field, you can be trained as masters in this field, because one of the three sisters does not like chess very much.

The bad news is that it takes a long time to become a master. It takes 10 years to practice three hours a day and complete 10 thousand hours, but this is only the minimum requirement to reach the world level. Statistics show that for musicians, world-class training is required to take 15 to 25 years. But the most important thing is not the exercise time, but the practice method.

How is a genius made? Traditional Chinese thinking emphasizes the word "bitter", the winter training, the summer training, and even the spam. While modern life conditions are getting better and better, people begin to emphasize a word of "love", saying that interest is the best teacher, emphasizing entertaining, and that "Harvard girls" have written books, this article describes how your children can join a prestigious school.

Many inspirational stories and popular success books most emphasize "Epiphany". They think that a person fails because he does not think about it and he does not realize his true self! It seems that once a person realizes his true self, he will easily become a talented person in his own field. A salesperson may think that he is actually a novelist, A doctor may think that he is actually a painter-the only problem is that he has never written a novel or painted a painting-but they think that he is only one step away from the true one. yao, once you try it, a genius will pop up.

All these personal experiences and inspirational stories about success are unscientific. Assume that a successful person has done one hundred things, including participation in a speech contest, personalized clothes, listening to English songs, and green colors, he will write all these one hundred things into his autobiography very self-satisfied, and may have to add the influence of his girlfriend. However, there may be only four things that play a decisive role. The problem is that neither he nor the reader knows which four of them are.

Scientists do not believe in inspirational stories. They only believe in research. Over the past 20 or 30 years, psychologists have systematically investigated Training Methods From beginners and general experts to world-class masters in various industries, including athletes, musicians, chess players, doctors, mathematicians, with a strong memory, and so on, try to discover the common characteristics. Their research is even meticulous enough to precisely record every small task done by all students in a music school every day, how much time they spend doing everything, their parents, and their family environment, to compare what makes those music talents stand out.

Now this job is mature. In 2006, the Cambridge Handbook of expertise and expert Performance published a book with more than 900 pages. This is a milestone academic book on "How to Make a genius". This book directly led to the emergence of a series of popular books, including the heterogeneous book by gerradwell and the talent is overrated by Geoff Colvin, and the talent code of Daniel Coyle. Scientists not only proved that the experts are trained, but also summarized a set of unified practice methods by examining the commonalities of the best training methods in various fields, this is the so-called "deliberate practice" (deliberate practice ).

Over the past years, training methods have been constantly improving. For example, if a normal student uses the normal training method for six years to achieve the level, the other student can use the new training method for three years, we can say that the "effective index" of this new training method is 200%. Statistics show that his effective index for his current training was 130%. The genius of the 20th century may not be famous as Mozart, but its training level can reach 300% to 500%! In the 13th century, the philosopher Bacon once believed that no one could grasp mathematics within 30 years, but now students have learned much more mathematics and their teaching methods have improved. In fact, today we are doing better in all fields than in the past. The world record of sports is constantly broken, and the artist's skills are unimaginable in the past.

Another manifestation of the importance of training methods is the emergence of "genius". For example, there was a time when Russia played women's tennis and South Korea played Women's Hockey, not to mention China's absolute superiority in table tennis. Furthermore, even if your country is traditionally not good at this project, as long as a coach explores the scientific training method, then he can bring out a generation of peerless experts, such as Yao bin, a Chinese skating coach. People often feel that more than million people in China cannot find 11 football Talents-if they are born, then more than 10 million people will be able to produce many geniuses, but they are trained, china lacks an effective practice environment, and its population is no longer comparable to that of small European countries.

Deliberate exercise

K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at the University of Florida, first proposed the concept of "deliberate exercise. The core assumption of this exercise method is that the expert level is gradually developed, and the key to effective progress is to find a series of small tasks for trainees to complete in order. These small tasks must not be done by trainees, but can be learned. The completion of such exercises requires the trainee to be highly concentrated, which is totally different from those exercises that are regular or entertaining. The theory of "deliberate exercise" has been widely accepted. We can summarize its characteristics.

1. Exercise only in the "learning area"

Scientists have investigated the training of Figure Skating Athletes and found that during the same exercise time, ordinary athletes prefer to practice what they have mastered, top athletes practice various difficult jumps more. Regular fans play golf simply to enjoy the playing process, while professional athletes concentrate on playing hard balls in extreme uncomfortable positions. The real exercise is not to complete the amount of exercise. The essence of the exercise is to constantly do what you do badly.

Psychologists divide people's knowledge and skills into three nested circular areas: the top layer is the "comfort zone", which is the skills we have mastered; the outermost layer is the "panic Area", which is a skill that we cannot learn for the moment. The middle layer is the "learning area ". Only by practicing in the learning area can one person make progress. Effective exercise tasks must be carried out accurately in the "learning area" of the trainee, with a high degree of pertinence. In many cases, this requires a good teacher or coach to better find out what we need to improve from the perspective of onlookers.

Exercise only in the learning area is a very strong requirement. Generally, dozens of students in a school often learn at the same progress, which is not targeted. For some students, there is no need to practice in the comfort zone, but for some students, it is a panic zone. Scientific Teaching must teach students in accordance with their aptitude, study in small classes, or even one-to-one teaching. True master training is not so much a teacher teaches students as an apprentice.

Once you have learned something, you should not continue to spend time on it. You should immediately move it to the next difficulty. Training using this method for a long time will inevitably get twice the result with half the effort. A study in 2004 showed that the academic performance of college students is not directly related to the total time they spent on learning. The key is the learning method.

2. A large number of repeated trainings.

The secret is repetition. The shyness clinic exists in California to help those who, for example, do not dare to speak to the opposite sex to overcome their shyness. Psychologists in this clinic do not believe in any psychological suggestion therapy, childhood memories, and so on. They believe in practice. They don't think that what is shy is what we think about it. How to treat terrorism and female? The practice is to design dialog training for various difficult occasions. Initially, it was a group conversation in the room and role-playing. Then, I ran directly to the street to ask for a appointment with a strange beauty. The most difficult thing is to embarrass yourself in public, such as dropping a watermelon on the ground in a supermarket.

This method of repeating uncommon difficult events is exactly the essence of the MBA program. A student in a business school may face 20 real business cases every week. The students first study how to make decisions, propose solutions, and finally give the actual results and comments. The best way to learn about business decisions is not to observe the boss making two decisions every month, but to make 20 simulated decisions every week. In the simulated war of the military school, pilots simulated various rare air dangers on the computer, including Churchill's practice speech in the mirror, all of which were repetitive training.

In sports and music training, we emphasize "multipart" exercises. First, you should repeat the entire action or the whole song to see how the experts did it. Then it is broken down into many small pieces to learn and grasp them one by one. In this kind of training, you must be slow. Only when you slow down can you perceive the internal structure of the skill and pay attention to your own mistakes. In one of the best violin schools in the United States, students are even prohibited from playing a piece of music in a consistent manner, specifying what you are playing if someone else hears it, it means that you have not practiced correctly. Professional Sports Training is often aimed at technical actions, rather than the competition itself. A high-level American football player spends only 1% of its time in internal competitions, and the rest are related basic training.

Conversely, without such repetitive training, a person is often at a loss in the face of uncommon events. Statistics show that doctors who have worked for many years diagnose rare diseases by reading X-rays are not as good as medical school students who have just graduated-because they rarely encounter such cases, they have forgotten what they have learned in medical school. The best practice is to regularly train doctors on old X-rays instead of expecting them to work.

3. continuous and effective feedback.

What is the greatest use of preaching, teaching, and confusing teachers and coaches? Perhaps the primary school teacher's biggest role for ordinary people is to stimulate his interest in learning and teach him something. Real masters have strong self-learning ability. For them, the most important role of teachers and coaches is to provide immediate feedback.

A coach is recommended to point out that I must be able to understand the exercise results at any time. If you do not see the results, you will not be able to get better, but you will not care about the quality. To some extent, deliberate exercises are error-centered exercises. Exercise must be highly sensitive to errors. Once you find that you are wrong, you will feel very uncomfortable and continue to exercise until you make corrections.

From the perspective of training, what is a really good coach? John Wooden is the most legendary college basketball coach in the United States. He once led the ucia team to win the NCAA Championship 10 times in 12 years. To get wooden's coaching tips, the two psychologists once observed his training sessions and even recorded every instruction he gave to the players. Results statistics show that 2326 of the 6.9% commands recorded are praise, 6.6% are dissatisfaction, and 75% are pure information, that is, what action and how to do it. His most common method is to use a three-Field Theory: demonstrate the correct action, show the wrong action again, and then demonstrate the correct action again.

Unlike a layman's imagination, the best coach never gives a passionate speech or even gives a lecture, and never speaks for more than 20 seconds. They only give real-time feedback to students. All training activities are carried out in a very detailed manner in advance, and even include teaching athletes how to tie shoelaces. They seem to have a strange ability to know what students are thinking, even when they first meet, they can point out what students need most technically. They are absolutely teaching in accordance with their aptitude and continuously provide highly targeted and specific guidance.

The highest level of feedback is to train yourself. When a professional is working, he will observe himself from the perspective of a bystander. Every day, he has very specific small goals, is extremely sensitive to his mistakes, and constantly seeks improvement.

4. high concentration.

Deliberate practice does not involve the concept of "entertaining. A famous violator once said that if you are practicing fingers, you can practice all day; but if you are practicing your mind, you can practice for two hours every day. A master can exercise for a maximum of 1 to 1.5 hours each time, and a maximum of 4 to 5 hours each day. No one can afford more. Generally, female fans may think that a star like Beckham is very cute. What they may not know is that few players can complete Beckham's training intensity, because it is too hard.

Scientists once investigated a music school. They divided all the violin students here into three groups: Good (mainly as a music teacher in the future), better, and best (as a performer in the future. The students in these three groups share the same time in many aspects, for example, they all start to practice when they are about 8 years old, and even the total music-Related Activities (class, study, and exercises) in the same week, all are 51 hours.

The researchers found that all the students understand the truth: What really determines your level is not the music lesson that the class has taken together, but the individual exercises:
-The best two groups of students have 24 hours of independent exercises per week on average, while the third group only has 9 hours.
-They all think that practicing independently is the most difficult and least fun activity.
-The two best groups of students use the exercises separately later in the morning and earlier in the afternoon. At this time, they are very awake. The third group uses the exercises separately later in the afternoon, at this time, they are very sleepy.
-The two best groups not only practice much, but also sleep much. They also take a nap.

So what factors distinguish the first two groups? It is the total time of the students' historical exercises. By the age of 18, in the best group, I learned to exercise for a total of 7410 hours on average, while the second group was 5301 hours and the third group was 3420 hours. The second group is now working as hard as the best group, but it is too late. We can see that to become a world-class Master, we must invest in training as soon as possible. That is why talented musicians have been practicing hard since they were very young.

Learning principles of the human brain

Modern neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences hold that there is almost no skill available at birth. Even the recognition of Simple objects and the capture of these simple actions are the results of the baby's learning the day after tomorrow. When a person is born, it is impossible to predict what skills he needs in the future. Genetics cannot program all skills in advance using the genetic method, which wastes the storage space of the brain. The best way is to provide only one ability to learn all kinds of skills without setting up any skills. This is the skill of the human brain. The genetic approach is to first set some basic reactions and feelings to stimulate, such as seeing delicious food and we will be hungry. These basic reactions require fewer nerves to be mobilized. However, for higher-level skills, such as playing music, it is necessary to coordinate and mobilize a lot of nerves and learn from the day after tomorrow.

Any human skill is a combination of electric pulse signals transmitted by a series of nerve fibers in the brain. Anatomy shows that people with different skills have different neural structures in their brains. For example, taxi drivers are particularly well-developed in areas of brain recognition. That is to say, unlike computers, human skill mastery is achieved at the hardware level of the brain.

Recently, a group of scientists believe that the key to skill training is to pack these nerve fibers like rubber wires, by preventing electrical pulse leakage, the signal is stronger, faster, and more accurate. No matter what we practice, we are all practicing the pith in the brain. It's like we have neatly arranged a bunch of disorganized wires into cables. It was not until the new technology in 2000 that allowed scientists to directly look at the state of the human brain, that the role of the State was discovered, and it was not until 2006 that it was first described in academic journals. Scientists believe that pifino is a highway of the brain, which increases the signal transmission speed and reduces the delay time by 30 times. The total speed is increased by 3000 times, or even the speed can be controlled.

There are a large number of "free" piroins in the human brain. They observe the signal emission and combination of brain nerve fibers. The more nerve fibers they use, the more they wrap up this line, this makes the signal transmission in the line faster and forms a highway. This is why exercise is so important.

Several things can be explained by the theory of piropines. For example, why do children often make mistakes? Their nervous systems are all there, and they know right and wrong. They just need time to build the high-speed network of the pulp-lipid. Why is it difficult to change a habit once it is developed? Because the so-called "habit" is actually "long" in the brain in the form of a combination of nerve fiber cables, once the pulp-lipid wraps the nerves, it will not be automatically dispersed-the only way to change habits is to form new habits. Why do young people learn fast? Even though all human beings are growing in their lifetime, young people are the fastest growing. The most radical theory is that the most significant difference between a human and a monkey is not the amount of brain neurons, but the amount of the human's pulp-Lipin is 20% more than that of a monkey! Anatomy showed that the number of neurons in Einstein's brain was average, but he had more cells that could generate carcinoma.

Who is willing to exercise for 10 thousand hours?

After reading the biography of the pianist Lang, many people may wonder whether the child should accept such hard work. In fact, top athletes are children of poor families. If you do not practice these 10 thousand hours, you will not be able to become a master, but the problem is that you may not be able to practice these 10 thousand hours because of the opportunity.

This is the role of interest. If there is any reason for success that scientists cannot explain by training the day after tomorrow, they are interested. Some children seem naturally interested in a certain field. Interest does not necessarily mean that he can do well, even if he is not interested, he can practice as long as he is willing to practice. The biggest role of interest is to make people willing to work hard in this field.

In any case, deliberate practice is a scientific method, which deserves our use in our daily work. Obviously, most of the things we do at ordinary times do not conform to the characteristics of deliberate exercises, which may be why most people fail to become world-class masters. The genius comes from deliberate exercises.

How to practice 10 thousand hours