Book Summary: Peak
By K. Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool
Peak is written by K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, covering the work that Ericsson has done through the years studying the topic of “excellence”. It brings together the key points that his research has brought out. This can be best summarised as the fact that we are incredibly adaptive and thus have a near unlimited potential for development. Whilst there is some genetic component, much of the extent of our achievement is actually reactive to what we do. There is a special feature of this movement towards excellence: deliberate practice.
The opening observations are some examples of excellence. One he uses is the example of ‘pitch perfect’, a feat of Mozart where he could identify the exact note just by hearing it. This was thought to be a gift and very rare. However, a groundbreaking study in Japan taught it to an entire group of young children. Yes, the training for it was musically intense, but the effect was fully developable by them. This transformed thinking about potential. Indeed, as we note, there has been incredible progress in human achievement through time. The qualification requirements for top level athletic activities now would have been best in the world achievement 50 years ago, if they were even thought to be possible. Thus, there has not yet been evidence of a limit of human ability in a field, with boundaries continuing to be pushed. As noted, there is some genetic contribution, although this is more likely to be relevant when there is a strong physical component of the skill that is highly fixed and relevant e.g. height for a basketball player. Perhaps more importantly, there probably are genetic traits towards some of the psychological dispositions that are needed to achieve the best, such as motivation and dedication.
The important developments of recent science have identified how similar the brain is to muscles in the training regard. Whilst we can see how muscles grow with exercise we can’t always see how the brain changes. Yet it does, as has been demonstrated by the landmark study looking at the brains of London taxi drivers. We train hard at something and there is the corresponding neurological change. This will happen with everyone to some degree, although children seem to be able to do it faster and better. Indeed, it is interesting to observe how different parts of the brain can be recruited to an increased requirement, such as in people who have lost a sense modality.
Practice
The path to excellence is all about deliberate practice. This is a special form of practice that is not just experience. Indeed, they note that there can be a misunderstanding about what practice means. Some may think that just because you are doing something you will be getting better at it. This is not actually the case, and in some cases skill may even deteriorate. What is usually seen is an initial improvement followed by a plateau of “acceptable” ability. It is this plateau (the “okay plateau” according to Josh Foer) where skill can actually start to deteriorate. Ericsson therefore outlines the key parts of what is different. He describes there being 3 levels of practice:
Naive practice
Purposeful practice
Deliberate practice
These are escalating levels of engagement with the process. Naive practice is the common engagement with a skill, where there is little active effort e.g. starting to play tennis. You learn the basics from watching and imitating others and you have some improvement until you can do it to an acceptable standard. There are often quirks or gaps that are present, but if they aren’t too bad they will probably be left. Practice is undirected and without any clear goals; it just happens.
Purposeful practice is the next step. This is a more effective form with results arising faster and more steadily. There are some clear goals in mind. As such, the person will tend to make focused adjustments of aspects of the skill to move towards this goal. This will be coupled with feedback about progress towards that goal, in some form or another. This also requires going beyond one's comfort zone so as to be able to develop new and improved abilities.
Relating back to the physiology described above the key feature of effective training is to upset the homeostasis. If we disrupt the baseline status of our bodies enough, we trigger a change that makes them adapt to this stress so they can be homeostatic under the new environmental challenge. This process is complex but involves a number of factors, including altered gene expression. The goal of training is therefore to push yourself enough to reach this domain of stress, but not too much so that injury occurs.
Mental representations
He notes that the use of mental representations is a key feature of expertise. In essence, we have fairly minimal active operating space for activities. That is, we can only run a few mental representations at any one time - essentially our working memory. Expertise involves developing very effective mental models that can contain huge amounts of information and yet be handled very easily by our working mental space. Expertise also allows the very rapid evaluation of information to be able to extract key features of information and then select what needs to be employed.
It is the quality of the mental representations that is a key part of expertise.
Deliberate practice.
Ericsson describes deliberate practice as being the pinnacle of training effectiveness. He notes that some specialist areas have been able to hone their training over decades or even centuries and have thus arrived at well established training regimes, with common features:
Well established outcomes (objective in nature) so improvement can be clearly seen
Competitive enough to incentivise
Well established history of development
Subset of skilled practitioners who serve as teachers and coaches
These specialist areas embody the concepts of deliberate practice, for instance, classical music or ballet.
Another common observation that he has made is that there are no shortcuts. The process of becoming an expert is, without exception, based on many hours of hard practice. The time spent practising can be more or less effective but even the most effective practice still involves a hefty time commitment. This amounts to thousands of hours for many skills (the 10,000 hours is a common meme here, although mistaken in some ways).
The key features that he notes of deliberate practice is that the person will:
Have a solid baseline within the field, which is a field with fairly clear markers about correctness (sport and music are therefore good examples)
There will be a trainer who will give specific activities that stretch the individual and which are towards a very well defined goal within a bigger overall picture and on which feedback can be given.
As such, not everything will be amenable to deliberate practice, medicine being a good example of this. However, it is possible to improve any practice towards the ideal of deliberate practice, and thus make it more effective. This will often look like a form of purposeful practice with a focus on aspects such as finding a suitable role-model/trainer, moving towards clear goals, getting effective feedback, and putting in the time for careful practice.
A key part in becoming excellent is doing. That is, mental representations can't be entirely mental, they have to be applied to actually doing the activity.
Tips
Find a good teacher
This is a very useful starting hint for those wanting to become experts. Teachers will know many aspects about how best to approach a subject, including an order for learning different components of the skill and practice techniques for developing. Good teachers will also be able to feedback effectively to help trainees develop.
If it is not easy or possible to get a teacher there are ways to develop yourself without. The goal is to replace as best as possible what the teacher is doing for you.
The 3 Fs are a good way to remember: Focus, feedback, fix it.
Make sure you break down the task to help identify a key area to work on, identify the areas of weakness and create a strategy of practice to improve.
Plateaus
The arrival at a plateau is a common feature of learning. The problem is often when you get competent with a task and stop the challenges that results in ongoing progress. An important way to break through this is to return to the principles of deliberate practice. Maybe one is to ensure that you are being suitably challenged. This will trigger the development process to begin again.
An example he uses is fast typing. You need to push yourself just beyond your comfort level. You may make a few extra mistakes but you will also identify areas of weakness and improve on these.
Leaders
Once people are highly proficient at a skill they can move up to different levels. Much of this will be achieved through improved tuition. Often it is at this point that there arises competition to get to the best teachers, who can be selective. These teachers will simply be better at the process of deliberate practice, that is, in identifying areas that need to develop to make the person overall better, and devising strategies to achieve this.
When people are right at the peak of a skill, it may lead them to push the boundaries of that discipline. He notes that it is essentially always those who are the peak of a discipline that push the boundaries of it, rather than those who are less skilled. This is because they have become so intimately aware of the skill and their mental representations of it are so effective.
Indeed, the process of pathfinding seems to not be that much different from the path to expertise. As such, these experts know the process for improving as they have been doing it for so long, and pushing the boundaries is simply doing more of the same. He likens it to adding rungs to a ladder - each rung is much the same as the last.
Talent
Ericsson then turns to take on the myth of talent a bit more. This is a highly influential theme in general thought- the idea that some people, perhaps most, achieve great things because of some innate gifts.
He goes on to dismantle this idea, recognising that there is some genetic contribution but that this is only really for highly physically relevant sports i.e. height and weight, and perhaps relating to a slightly better starting point. However, the key factor in all experts is that they have practised extensively and effectively. There are no examples of child prodigies where there hasn't been extensive practice and the innate traits that would be thought to impact on ability e.g. IQ for chess, seem to have limited impact after the initial period of learning. Indeed, he notes that in some cases it is when people are less naturally advantaged at the start that they recognise the need to work hard and therefore get better at the skills and traits of hard practice that leads to success.
In short, there seems to be only a limited role for natural talent in becoming an expert, unless the physical attributes for the skill are really important (height in basketball). We are so plastic that if there is a significant neurological component to the ability it is the practice that is the determining factor at the highest level of the skill.
I am personally interested in how the genetics of personality traits would fit in here, as it seems that some traits would naturally make you a better learner (more patience etc.). However, this isn’t explored and would be a fascinating area for further exploration.
Summary
The key points of Ericsson's research are that we are highly adaptable and plastic. As such, we can almost all develop very high level abilities, without clear limits that we are aware of.
Expertise is achieved through having the most effective mental representations. The best way to develop effective mental representations is through deliberate practice. This is the most effective form of practice and involves having a clear goal, identifying weaknesses, and pushing oneself to an appropriate degree in this direction, getting feedback on the progress.
There is some small genetic component, but this is only majorly relevant early on or when there is a significant physical contribution, becoming less relevant as expertise develops.