What People Get Wrong About Deliberate Practice by Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD

Deliberate practice is one of the major

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most important ideas in learning and

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instruction yet a lot of people get this

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idea wrong and specifically there are

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three mistakes that I see people making

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over and over and over again so I'm

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making this video hopefully to address

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these mistakes or these misconceptions

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mistake number one is that there is nothing

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special or magical

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about 10,000 hours the whole point of

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deliberate practice is that it's about

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the quality

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of practice

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more so than the quantity

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of practice so when Anders Erickson and

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his colleagues first

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started to explore

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what was driving expertise development

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the main question they had is like okay

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we've got a bunch of people why are some

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people experts and other people not

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experts and the explanation that they

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came up with was that even though both

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of these groups practiced a lot

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one of these groups that is the group

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that reached high levels of expertise

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had a different kind of practice than

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the other group the whole idea of

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deliberate practice is that it's it's

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about how you practice deliberate

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practice is different

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from

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“regular”

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practice right that's the main important

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point maybe I have not — so I probably

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haven't said this enough yet yet but but

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that's that's that's the main point it's

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about the quality not the quantity so

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where did the idea of ten thousand hours

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come from well

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it came as an offhand comment that

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Ericsson wrote in a paper on violin

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players saying that many of them

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estimate they had spent about 10,000

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hours practicing and then this comment

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was lifted by Malcolm Gladwell into his

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book and then that idea kind of became

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cemented in the public imagination and

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then everyone just started associating

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10,000 hours with deliberate practice

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that's not a thing the number of hours

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that it takes to become an expert at

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something depends so we already said

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that it depends on the quality of

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practice that you do

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right but then it also depends on what

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it is you're learning

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some skills are more complex than others

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some skills are easier to learn

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than others right

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it also depends on

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what your competitors are doing so if

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you're talking about becoming an expert

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say in a competitive field like chess or

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sports or something like this

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it's harder to be better than everyone

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else if everyone else is already

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ridiculously good by the same token it's

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also easier to get

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good in an absolute sense to be — to kind

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of learn quickly if there are already

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really good training programs access to

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really great coaches this kind of thing

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okay hope that

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makes sense mistake number two is that

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everybody forgets about the first step

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so if you if you've read about

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deliberate practice before or yeah if

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you're familiar with the idea

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what I want you to do now is to pause

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the video

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pause the video and

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write down these steps of deliberate

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practice now while you're pausing the

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video i'm going to read a book about

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how important it is

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to

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like this video so why don't we pause

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this video and you can click the like

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button if you know you happen to have

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a free

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moment okay

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okay

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you back you're with me cool so did you

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write down for the first step identify

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the expert skills

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if you did

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then you have my hearty congratulations

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excellent work but chances are that uh

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you didn't and it's easy to do a lot of

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people forget about the first step

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why

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well the first step seems obvious right

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isn't it obvious what makes professional

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soccer players better than say average

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soccer players isn't it obvious what

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makes mathematicians really good at math

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isn't it obvious what uh makes expert

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doctors better than average doctors well

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no it's a lot of times it's not obvious

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until you know the the expert skills

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that are really distinguishing experts

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from say non-experts then it's very hard

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or it's really impossible to create a

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deliberate training program and to

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illustrate this i'm just going to dip a

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little bit into my own field which is

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science education suppose the goal of

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physics education

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is to walk students along the road to physics

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expertise so we want them to

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think the way a physicist thinks

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right

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well if that's the goal then

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we can look and see what people do in

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actual classes and the typical physics

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class at the undergraduate level

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involves lectures and labs and in

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lectures

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the teachers will talk for a little bit

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about new concepts and new kinds of

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problems and you get to learn these you

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know procedural steps and you get to

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learn some kind of deeper ideas

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and then in the labs the labs tend to

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reinforce the concepts that's taught

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that are taught in the lecture so for

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instance students will go in and they

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will follow a recipe in the lab they'll

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follow a series of steps to reach

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a conclusion that is

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already known so for instance you might

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have students

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estimate the acceleration

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due to gravity on earth students already

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know what the right answer is and

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they don't have any real decision-making

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power as they go through these series of

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steps because the lab is supposed to be

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this kind of canonical

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walk-through of what you would do so

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that's what students are doing in their

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classes basically

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but if you look at what actual

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physicists do when they're actually

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doing physics experiments

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if we're talking experimental physics

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and we're not talking theoretical

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physics

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it looks completely different than what

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students do in the lab so for instance

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and I've written some of these steps

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down so I don't forget them actual

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physicists they have to establish the

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overall research goal right they have to

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decide what kind of data would be

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convincing to other people they have to

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determine the important variables and

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decide how to measure those variables

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let's see

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they have to explore different research

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designs potentially

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they have to decide how to analyze their

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data a lot of times they're analyzing

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their data in multiple ways and they a

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lot of times they need to iterate so

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they perform an experiment it doesn't

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quite work out the way they want it to

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and then they go back and they

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have to revisit some of these steps and

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change things none of these things

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do students do in lab so this is a case

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where

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the expert skills

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and the actual practice that students

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are getting

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are not matching so students are not

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going to develop the skills that we

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presumably

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want them to develop you have to know

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what the expert practice is to move in

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the right direction okay mistake number

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three people use the wrong metrics now

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this relates back to the first mistake

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that we talked about earlier that I

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talked about maybe you were talking at

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the same time so we already talked about

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why this 10,000 hours idea

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doesn't really work or doesn't really

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match with

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the idea of deliberate practice but the

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idea of putting in your time goes a

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little bit deeper

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than that of course it takes a lot of

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time to become an expert in anything but time is

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the wrong thing to focus on what you

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want to focus on is practice feedback

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cycles that's really the meat of

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deliberate practice you have a

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challenging practice that's really you

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know pushing you and challenging you you

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have expert feedback feedback that's

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going to help you improve and then you

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you have these further practice

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opportunities and it's really this cycle

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that is driving learning forward now

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completing those cycles

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takes time

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reorganizing your brain which is what

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learning is

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that takes time

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but focusing on the time is not going to

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get you there as much as focusing on the

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quality of your practice and ensuring

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that you are focusing on those expert

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skills so I have a question for you now

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which is was this video helpful at all

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so if you can tell me if this was

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confusing or uh just didn't make any sense because

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it was too darn abstract well you can

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you can tell me in the comments and I

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won't make any more videos like this and

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if it was helpful you can tell me that

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too so that I will make more videos

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maybe on these kind of more abstract

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ideas that's it I will

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see you next time I appreciate your patronage