This is true for learning and practicing muscles.
Even in life. I like a saying that people should insist on doing things that can only be reached on tiptoe.
After reading this article about Fan, let's look back at my words.
With the popularity of the bestseller Alien, the slogan "Practice for 10,000 hours makes a genius" has now become a household name. Perhaps there are still many people who believe that those who are not born in the world must have innate mysterious ability, but scientists have reached a * * * knowledge through a lot of investigation and research, that is, all top experts are trained. Moreover, with the progress of science in recent years, people may have a unified theory about how to become a genius for the first time.
The good news is that there is no mysterious innate quality except that some sports have special requirements for natural height and body shape, which means that everyone can become a top player. As early as more than 20 years ago, Benjamin Bloom, an educator at the University of Chicago, conducted an in-depth investigation of 120 elites in various fields, from music to mathematics, and found that there was nothing special about their childhood. The research of later generations proves that even IQ has nothing to do with whether a person can reach the expert level in many fields.
A Hungarian psychologist has always believed that anyone can be trained as a master in any field with proper methods. In order to prove this, he chose a project that women are not good at traditionally, that is chess. As a result, he and his wife trained their three daughters into world chess masters, that is, the famous three Polgar sisters. This experiment even proves that even if you don't like it, you can be trained as a master in this field, because one of the three sisters doesn't like playing chess very much.
The bad news is that it takes a long time to become a master. It takes ten 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, the training time required for world-class level is fifteen to twenty-five years. But the most important thing is not the time of practice, but the method of practice.
How is genius tempered? China's traditional thinking emphasizes a word "bitter", practicing three or nine times in winter and three days in summer, and even pricked the stock. With the improvement of modern living conditions, people begin to emphasize the word "love", saying that interest is the best teacher and emphasizing entertaining. The parents of "Harvard Girls" have written books to introduce their children how to play all the way to famous schools.
Many inspirational stories and popular success stories seem to emphasize "epiphany" most, thinking that a person is unsuccessful because he has not figured it out, and he has not realized his true self! It seems that once a person realizes his true self, he will simply become a genius in his field. A salesman may think that his true self is actually a novelist, and a doctor may think that his true self is actually a painter-the only problem is that they have never written a novel or painted a picture-but they think that they are only one step away from their true self, and once they try, generate will be a genius.
All these personal experiences and inspirational stories about success are unscientific. Suppose a successful person has done a hundred things, including taking part in a speech contest, dressing with personality, listening to English songs, and his favorite color is green, and so on. He will be very proud to write all these 100 events into his autobiography, and may even add the influence of his girlfriend. However, there may be only four things that really decide. The problem is that neither he nor the readers know which four things are.
Scientists don't believe in inspirational stories, only believe in investigation and research. In the past two or three decades, psychologists have systematically investigated the training methods of all walks of life, from novices and general experts to world-class experts, including athletes, musicians, chess players, doctors, mathematicians and people with super memory. , trying to find out * * *. Their research is even detailed enough to accurately record every little thing that all students in a conservatory do every day, how much time they spend doing everything, their parents and family environment, and compare what makes those musical geniuses stand out.
Now this work has matured. In 2006, a book with more than 900 pages, Cambridge Expert and Expert Performance Manual, was published. This is a landmark academic work on how to make a genius, which directly led to the emergence of a series of bestsellers, including Gladwell's Alien, Jeff Corwin's Talent Overrated and Daniel coyle's The Code of Talent. Scientists not only proved that experts are trained, but also summarized a set of unified training methods by investigating the essence of the best training methods in various fields, which is called "deliberate practice".
Over the years, training methods have been continuously improved. For example, if an ordinary student can reach the level of six years with ordinary training methods and another student can reach the level of three years with new training methods, then we can say that the "effective index" of this new training method is 200%. Statistics show that Mozart's effective index in training at that time was 130%. The genius of the twentieth century may not be as famous as Mozart, but its training level can reach 300% to 500%! Bacon, a philosopher in the 13th century, once thought that it was impossible for anyone to master mathematics in less than 30 years, but now students have learned a lot of mathematics in their teens and their teaching methods have improved. In fact, we are doing better in all fields today than in the past, the world record of sports is constantly being broken, and the skills of artists are unimaginable in the past.
Another manifestation of the importance of training methods is the emergence of "genius", such as Russian women's tennis and Korean women's hockey, not to mention China's absolute advantage in table tennis. Furthermore, even if your country is not good at this event traditionally, as long as a coach has mastered scientific training methods, he can bring out a generation of peerless masters, such as China figure skating coach Yao Bin. People often think that more than one billion people in China can't find 1 1 football talent-if talent is born, then more than one billion people will produce many talents, but talent is practiced, and China lacks an effective practice environment, and its population is no more than that of small European countries.
Deliberate practice
The concept of "deliberate practice" was first put forward by K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at the University of Florida. The core assumption of this practice method is that the expert level is gradually practiced, and the key to effective progress is to find a series of small tasks for students to complete in order. These small tasks must be beyond the trainees' ability, but they can learn and master them. Completing this kind of exercise requires the trainer's high concentration, which is completely different from those routine or recreational exercises. The theory of "deliberate practice" has been widely accepted at present, and we can summarize its characteristics.
1. Practice only in the "study area"
Scientists have investigated the training of figure skaters, and found that in the same practice time, ordinary athletes prefer to practice the movements they have mastered, while top athletes practice more difficult jumps. Ordinary amateurs play golf purely to enjoy the process of playing golf, while professional athletes concentrate on practicing all kinds of extremely uncomfortable postures and play poorly. The real practice is not to complete the amount of exercise, the essence of practice is to continue to do what you can't do well.
Psychologists divide people's knowledge and skills into three circular areas: the innermost layer is the "comfort zone", which is the various skills we have mastered skillfully; The outermost layer is the "panic zone", which is a skill that we can't learn for the time being, and the middle is the "learning zone". Only by practicing in the study area can one make progress. Effective practical tasks must be carried out accurately in the trainee's "learning area" with strong pertinence. Many times, this requires a good teacher or coach to find out where he needs to improve most from the perspective of a bystander.
It is very strong to practice only in the study area. In general, dozens of people in school classrooms learn knowledge at the same pace, which is not targeted. The same content, for some students, is a comfort zone, and there is no need to practice at all, but for some students, it is a panic zone. Science teaching must teach students in accordance with their aptitude, study in small classes and even teach them one by one. The real master training is not so much a teacher teaching students as a master taking apprentices.
Once you have learned a thing, you should not continue to spend time on it, you should immediately move on to the next difficulty. Training in this way for a long time is bound to get twice the result with half the effort. A study in 2004 showed that there is no direct relationship between college students' academic performance and the total time they spend studying, but the key is the learning method.
2. Repeat training a lot.
Never attend the meeting. The secret is repetition. There is a shyness clinic in California to help those who are afraid to talk to the opposite sex overcome shyness. Psychologists in this clinic don't believe in psychological suggestion therapy or childhood memories, they believe in practice. They think that what makes people shy is not the thing itself, but our view of it. How to treat the fear of women? The practice is to design all kinds of difficult occasions, from group conversation in the room to chatting with strange beautiful women directly on the street, and arrange patients to chat with 130 women in a course of treatment.
This method of repeating unusual and difficult events is the essence of MBA courses. In business school, a student may face 20 real business cases every week. Students first study how to make their own decisions, propose solutions, and finally the teacher gives actual results and comments. The best way to learn business decision-making is not to observe the boss making decisions twice a month, but to make simulated decisions 20 times a week. In the simulated war in the military academy, the pilots simulated all kinds of rare air dangers on the computer, including Churchill's practice of talking to the mirror, all of which were repeated training.
In physical education and music training, more emphasis is placed on "block" practice. First of all, you should go through the whole movement or the whole song and see how the experts do it. Then break it down into many small pieces and learn and master them one by one. This kind of training must be slow. Only by slowing down can we perceive the internal structure of skills and notice our mistakes. In the best violin school in America, there is even a requirement to prohibit students from playing a piece of music coherently. It is stipulated that others can hear what you are playing, which means that you have not practiced correctly. Professional sports training is often aimed at technical movements, not the competition itself. A high-level American football player spends only 65,438+0% of his time on team games, and the rest is related basic training.
On the other hand, without this kind of repeated training in advance, a person will often be at a loss when facing unusual events. Statistics show that doctors who have worked for many years are not as good at diagnosing rare diseases by reading X-rays as medical college students who have just graduated-because they rarely encounter such cases, and what they have learned in medical college has long been forgotten. In fact, the best way is to let doctors focus on training with old X-rays regularly, instead of expecting to meet them at work.
3. Continue to get effective feedback.
What is the greatest use of teachers and coaches in preaching, teaching and solving doubts? Perhaps for the average person, the biggest role of a primary school teacher is to stimulate his interest in learning, teach him something, and have the role of preaching and teaching to solve doubts. Real masters have strong self-learning ability. For them, the most important role of teachers and coaches is to provide immediate feedback.
Whether an action is done well or not is best pointed out by a coach at any time, and I must always know the result of the exercise. Practice without seeing the result is equal to no practice: if you just deal with things, you won't get better, and you no longer care about good or bad. To some extent, deliberate practice is an error-centered practice. A man of practice must be extremely sensitive to mistakes. Once he finds out that he is wrong, he will feel very uncomfortable and practice until he corrects it.
From the training point of view, what is a really good coach like? John wooden is the most legendary college basketball coach in the United States. He once led the UCLA team to win the NCAA championship in 12 10. In order to get the secret of Wooden's coaching, two psychologists have been observing his training class and even recorded every instruction he gave to the players. Results Statistics show that among the 2326 recorded instructions, 6.9% are favorable, 6.6% are dissatisfied, and 75% are pure information, that is, what to do and how to do it. His most commonly used method is syllogism: demonstrate a correct action, demonstrate a wrong action, and then demonstrate a correct action.
Contrary to layman's imagination, the best coaches never give any passionate speeches, even lectures, and the speech time never exceeds 20 seconds. They only give students very specific immediate feedback. All the training is planned in advance, even including teaching athletes how to tie their shoes. They seem to have a strange ability to know what students are thinking, and even when they meet for the first time, they can point out what students need most in technology. They absolutely teach students in accordance with their aptitude and continue to provide targeted and targeted guidance.
The highest level of feedback is to guide yourself. When a master works, he will observe himself from the perspective of a bystander. He has very specific small goals every day, is extremely sensitive to his own mistakes, and constantly seeks improvement.
4. Highly concentrated.
There is no concept of "entertainment" in deliberate practice. A famous violinist once said that you can practice your fingers all day; But if you are practicing your brain, it is good to practice for two hours every day. The master practices at most 1 to 1.5 hours at a time, with a maximum of 4 to 5 hours a day. No one can stand it any longer. The average female fan may think that a star like Beckham is cute. What they may not know is that few players can complete Beckham's training intensity because it is too bitter.
Scientists investigated a conservatory of music. They divided all the violin students here into three groups: good (mainly to be music teachers in the future), better and best (to be performers in the future). The students in these three groups are the same in many aspects, such as practicing from the age of 8, and even now the total time of music-related activities (class, study and practice) is the same every week, which is 565,438+0 hours.
The researchers found that all students understand the truth: it is not the music class that really determines your level, but the practice itself:
The best two groups of students have an average of 24 hours of individual practice per week, while the third group has only 9 hours.
They all think that practicing alone is the most difficult and least fun activity.
-The best two groups of students practice alone in the late morning and early afternoon, when they are still awake; The third group practiced alone in the late afternoon, when they were already very sleepy.
-The best two groups not only practice more, but also sleep more. They also take more naps.
So what is the difference between the first two groups? It is the total time for students to practice history. At the age of 18, the best group learned to practice 74 10 hours on average, the second group was 530 1 hour, and the third group was 3420 hours. The people in the second group are working as hard as the best group now, but it's too late. It can be seen that if you want to become a world-class master, you must invest in training as soon as possible, which is why talented musicians have been practicing hard since they were very young.
Learning principle of human brain
Modern neuroscience and cognitive science believe that almost no skills are born. Even simple actions such as recognizing simple objects and grabbing things are the result of acquired learning. When a person is born, it is impossible to foresee what skills he will need in the future. It is impossible for genes to program all skills in advance by genetic methods, which will waste the storage space of the brain. The best way is not to presuppose any skills, but to provide an ability to learn various skills. This is the cleverness of the human brain. The practice of genes is to preset some basic reactions and feelings to stimuli, for example, we will be hungry when we see delicious food. These basic reactions require less nerve mobilization. But for higher-level skills, such as playing music, you need to coordinate and mobilize a lot of nerves, so you must learn it the day after tomorrow.
Any human skill is a combination of a series of electrical pulse signals transmitted by nerve fibers in the brain. Anatomy shows that people with different skills have different neural structures in their brains. For example, the area of taxi drivers' brain that recognizes directions is particularly developed. In other words, unlike computers, people's mastery of skills is realized at the hardware level of the brain.
Recently, a group of scientists believe that myelin is the key to skill training. Its function is to wrap these nerve fibers like rubber to prevent the leakage of electric pulses and make the signal stronger, faster and more accurate. No matter what we practice, we are practicing myelin sheath in the brain, just like turning a messy pile of wires into cables. It was not until 2000 that new technology allowed scientists to directly observe the myelin sheath in the living brain, and it was not until 2006 that the function of myelin sheath was first explained in academic journals. Scientists believe that myelin sheath is the superhighway of the brain, which can improve the signal transmission speed, reduce the delay time by 30 times, increase the speed by 3,000 times, and even control the speed, and slow down if you want.
There are a lot of "free" myelin sheaths in the human brain. They observed the signal emission and combination of nerve fibers in the brain. The more nerve fibers are used, it will bypass this section of the line, making the signal in the line transmit faster and forming a highway. This is why practice is so important.
The myelin sheath theory can explain many things. For example, why do children often make mistakes? Their nervous system is there, they know right or wrong, but it takes time to build a high-speed network of myelin. Why is it difficult to change habits once they are formed? Because the so-called "habit" actually "grows" in the brain in the form of a combination of nerve fibers, once the myelin sheath wraps the nerve, it will not spread automatically-the only way to change the habit is to form a new habit. Why do young people learn things quickly? Because although myelin sheath grows all his life, young people grow fastest. The most radical theory holds that the most significant difference between humans and monkeys is not the number of brain neurons, but that humans have 20% more myelin sheath than monkeys! Anatomy shows that Einstein has an average number of neurons in his brain, but he has more cells that can produce myelin sheath.
Who wants to practice for ten thousand hours?
After reading the biography of pianist Lang Lang, many people may think, should children really receive such hard training? In fact, the top athletes are all children of poor families. If you don't practice these 10 thousand hours, you won't be an expert, but the problem is that you may not succeed if you practice these 10 thousand hours.
This is the role of interest. If there is any success factor that scientists can't explain with acquired training, it is interest. Some children seem to be naturally interested in a certain field. Being interested does not necessarily mean that he can do it well. Even if he is not interested, he can do it as long as he is willing to practice. The biggest function of interest is to make people willing to practice hard in this field.
In any case, deliberate practice is a scientific method, which is worth applying to our daily work. Obviously, most of the things we usually do are not in line with the characteristics of deliberate practice, which may be the reason why most people fail to become world-class masters. Genius comes from deliberate practice.