Tim Ferriss has made a name for himself as a guru in the world of accelerated learning. Some of his “accelerations” are about hacking the system and taking short cuts by finding loopholes in the rules and doing things in unconventional ways, but his success is also due to the fact that he knows how to learn.
This month I’m featuring the Bottom-line on Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code,” at the Bottom-line Bookclub and it’s all about how to learn. Daniel visited the top talent hotbeds in variety of different fields (music, art, education, sport) around the world and researched what they were all doing that enabled them to accelerate learning and create such solid talent so consistently, and The Talent Code is the compilation of what he found and a guide to how to learn.
Core to developing talent and accelerating learning is the idea of “Deep Practice,” where you break a big task or skill down into smaller chunks, and then slowly practice each chunk, checking for errors and correcting yourself and doing it again until you get it right.
In this article, Tim Ferriss gives us his secrets to preparing for speeches and we see these elements of deep practice coming through. He chunks the speech down into smaller parts and then practices each smaller chunk until he’s mastered them, giving special attention to getting the opening and closing sections wired in verbatim. And then he puts the chunks back together and practices under time pressure. This is a pretty good example of a real-life application of deep practice!
Cath, I’ve read Tim Ferriss’s book and have applied many of his techniques.
I like this idea of “Deep Practice.” It obviously can be applied to many things in life, but it’s especially applicable to learning tai chi, something I’ve been doing for several years.
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This idea of breaking down a task and then working/practicing each part is a good one. It works for me whenever I have to give a talk.
It also works for other things, but I have to admit that I am so good at remembering to do it with other things.
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@John: I can imagine deep practice must be central to tai chi. From what I know of tai chi, the principles and values support the kind of mindset that is required to do deep practice.
@Steve: Great stuff. Now you just gotta deep practice remembering to deep practice. Damn