Transcript
The nation's favorite car buying site, Dundeele Motors, is home to the largest range of new and premium used cars from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. That's why you'll find Spirit Volvo on Dundeele. Visit the Spirit Volvo showroom on Dundeele to find your next car. Dundeele Motors, for confident car buying and deals to feel great about from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. Visit dundeale.ie today. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altiger Show. And so how did you get into this? Like, what were you my guess is at some point, you were trying to get good at something, maybe even a leap at something. Maybe it didn't quite work out for you. Like, what what were you trying to go for? If you were prepared and you encounter something that doesn't match up, now that's a learning opportunity. Just give me the thumbs up whenever when we're rolling. Okay. We're rolling right now. Good. So I'm just gonna start it, and we can Yeah. Great. Just wonderful conversation. Yeah. I really enjoy that. Good. So, everybody, I'm excited. Anders Ericsson, one of my personal heroes, is in the studio for the podcast. Anders, you have this book coming out today, Peak, Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you so much. I'm really enjoying it. You know, actually, and as I was saying to you earlier, for some reason, I thought we were gonna do this via Skype, and then you walked in here. And I'm like, yes. I get to meet the man. We're gonna do this podcast. It's so much better when it's not Skype. So I'm thank you for coming up here. Well, it's it's really wonderful seeing you and talking to you like this. Well, you know, and I I remember I I I don't know if everybody knows exactly who you are, although they've read about you, I'm sure many times. I mean, you've been popularized in several, I wanna call them I don't I I don't say this in a negative way, but kind of pop science books. Like, for instance, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, talks about the what he calls the 10000 hour rule, and we'll have an opportunity to to talk about that and maybe correct a little bit of it. But this idea that with 10000 hours of practice and, again, we'll elaborate on that word. With 10000 hours of practice, essentially, anybody, talent or no talent, and we'll discuss that too, anybody can become an expert or maybe the best in the world at what they do. And you've done a ton of research to suggest and you you've you've researched world class performers in many fields to discover exactly what it takes to become, let's say, a world class performer. And it's funny. One of the studies you referred to actually, 25 years ago, I was in. So, or you referred to one of the researchers, Fernand Gobet, because I'm a chess master. Oh, really? When he was at Carnegie Mellon he's, of course, the Swiss champion or whatever. When he was at Carnegie Mellon pursuing his graduate degrees, I was in his study that originally showed about chunks, you know, between difference between grandmasters, chess masters, and novices, and so on. So it's fascinating to participate. To hear. Wow. Yeah. So so let's talk about it. What is what Malcolm Gladwell called the 10000 hour rule as opposed to what really might be the role? Maybe I'm gonna take it a step back. What's what do people refer to when they say talent? Well, I I think different people use that word, differently. I I personally think of talent as innate talent, something that people are sort of born with without having to attain it through any kind of training and effort. And, I guess what I've been finding here, looking for kind of innate talent, and and and I I sort of feel it's a little bit destructive, in college students. They go out and look for what they're talented at, whereas I think, you know, they would be much better off actually deciding on what they would wanna become and then actually try to, get there by, you know, the kind of training that we've found to be effective for other people who've been very successful. So that's fascinating because a lot a big question people in their twenties have, is how do I find my talent? How do I find my passion? What would you suggest if someone was going to say, okay. I'm in my twenties. I've got the energy. I've got the time. I've got the abilities. What should I pursue to become a world class or an expert class performer at? How would you kind of guide them to sort of find their area? You mentioned one guy, Dan I forgot his last name, but Dan who who, decides just out of the blue, he's 30 years old, 31 years old, he's gonna, out of the blue, put in his 10000 hours on golf, and he's never even played golf before and to be he wants to be a professional golf player, and he's he's well along the the way. But how would someone find something to be, to pursue? Well, what I'm fascinated by, and and I I think that some of these people have been sort of, convinced here by some of our research that this idea here that as an adult, you're pretty much fixed. There's limit on what you can do. It's just not accurate. And and I think in the book, we talk about this work on memory training. And and I think what is key about the memory training is that the way you get better is not just by doing more of the same. So it turns out that mathematicians and other people who work with numbers all day long, they only have ability here to remember sort of up to about 20 digits. And what we were able to show here with this college student that we more or less just encountered accidentally, because he was able and willing to actually be part of the training, you know, with 2 to 400 hours of training, he was able to reproduce, lists of over 80 digits. And that was the was that the world record at the time? That was, the, world record at the time. Exactly. So that's amazing. So, basically, with 200 hours using and and he had to kind of figure out what the training techniques were. You sort of talked it through after each session. He had to figure out what the best training techniques were himself on his own, but but he had the what you call deliberate practice to kind of, and I and I'll you could define it differently from me. I'm just go working off the book. He had basically you giving him feedback. He had his own, results. He could see the immediate feedback. Can he did he remember the list or not? You guys would discuss how to better train and what he was doing, what was going on in his brain. And so you were able to kind of he he stayed healthy. So you were able to kind of work through the principles of deliberate practice as opposed to just him randomly practicing, you know, list of numbers, and that's how he kept improving. Just to make a distinction, I I think we kinda would like to think of that more as purposeful practice where we gave him a particular goal, and then we also arranged a training situation where he could actually do the same thing over and over and get immediate feedback so he could make adjustments. So deliberate practice, we try to save for when you actually have a teacher that has taught other individuals, like a music teacher, who then actually supervises the training and actually builds a skill based on accumulated knowledge in the domain. So that's kind of where we would argue deliberate practice. Now, obviously, it's kind of deliberate practice is purposeful practice under the guidance of a teacher that can actually sequence the kind of training that, he knows from past experience, is gonna be effective to improve your performance. So it's funny because so okay. So, really, what's more and you kind of underline this quite a bit. What's more important than, talent and, quote, unquote, 10000 hours of work is this notion of deliberate practice. Like, every time you're trying to improve at something, use deliberate practice. So maybe define that a little bit more, and and I wanna back off then and kind of discuss a little bit more about talent and the 10000 hours and the notion of prodigies with guys like Mozart and so on. So what is deliberate practice? So I if I wanna get better at learning a language, what's what's deliberate practice in that? Well, we would argue deliberate practice would be seeking out a teacher who has Never mind. Had experience, and then basically that teacher would kind of assess where you're at. So some people have some prior knowledge of the language. So the key question is, what would be the appropriate kind of training that you would engage in in order to kind of lay out the fundamentals that would allow you then to build and then gradually acquire your performance by engaging in training grammar, acquiring new vocabulary, and all sorts of things. And in particular, I guess we're interested in your ability to use the language so you would be able to talk to other people and use the language rather than which is a norm here, I guess, in the school system is that you get these written tests as opposed to, you're really being tested in your ability to speak the language. So it's doing versus kind of sitting and learning and being tested and so on. So you have to actually go out there, you you get the the you you you start doing, and the mentor or teacher who already has a lot of experience is able to kind of say, no. Don't do it this way. Do it this way. And then you and then you repeat. Right. And and and and I think a very nice example here, related to, talent. I had a friend who claimed that he couldn't learn languages, and then he fell in love with a Mexican woman who didn't speak hardly any English. And he actually, within 6 months, was able to, acquire, you know, maybe maybe not total proficiency, but a remarkable improvement of his ability not to speak, Spanish. And and I think what's interesting is that when you have a motivating factor like that, you're gonna be basically now willing to do the hard things that are required to master the language. And and if you contrast that with a student who's maybe studying a language that they don't even think that they're gonna be using, that obviously is not the ideal situation to motivate them to do the hard things that will actually improve their language performance. So so the and a motivating factor is different than motivation. You kinda have to find that sort of, gold at the end of a rainbow. You have to have sort of at least envision that it's there, to sort of get through the the the journey through the rainbow. Right. And and and that I think, personally, I find that finding that kind of motivating kind of source that that keeps flowing and keeps you actually getting back from your efforts. So you can now see the deliberate practice as an instrument by which you actually now reach a higher level, but that is ultimately not the reward in itself. It's your ability now to do things, like, for example, if you're a musician, be able to play in front of an audience and actually feel how that audience is moved by your music. Or, maybe, musicians would actually take time and actually play around. So they're actually creating the music that they can hear themselves and enjoy the process of actually exploring music. Those are the kind of driving forces that I see as being the key here to people who, reach exceptional levels. So so, again, it's the, number 1, finding a teacher, having a motivating factor, doing rather than just sitting back and learning, which I kind of underlines sort of I don't wanna say the failure of the educational system because that almost sounds political, but it sort of goes against the modern educational system where it's all about let's memorize facts as opposed to doing something. You know, it's funny. Like, when I when I read a book let's say I read your book, and then I'm talk I always think the way to really retain the information from a book is if I go and tell someone, I just read this great book. Here's the 5 things I've learned that's gonna help improve myself. So that's what I do with a book like yours, and, I think that's the way I remember things later. This is what I by actually saying it out loud to somebody and trying to convince them this is how to learn, I'm able to better remember the book as opposed to just trying to remember it without any doing anything else. Right. And and and I think that that's kind of the key that I see in all sorts of experts, Their ability of actually mentally sort of think about things, to reason, and be able to now kinda work with it as opposed to this idea here of just absorbing a lot of knowledge. And and I guess the extreme case is just memorizing where you may be able to actually reproduce a book without actually even have understood the main ideas. But I would argue that the real expert, they're extracting the main ideas exactly like you were talking about, and that make those ideas their own by relating it now to everything else that they know. And and sometimes maybe even finding, you know, things that you know that seems to be in conflict with your generalization, and then I guess that leads to more thinking and and discussion. I think another big factor of a deliberate practice, if if and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I get from the book is building almost, you don't quite refer to this way. You you refer to what's called mental representations, but I wanna say, building a language out of whatever concepts you're trying to learn. So for instance, let's say I'm trying to as a basic example, that's the most direct, Let's say I'm trying to learn how to memorize a string of letters. If they were just random letters, I might have a hard time remembering 50 letters in a row. But if I turn those letters into a sentence, like, you know, quote, unquote, here's what I'm going to learn from this book today, unquote, now I can remember 50 letters in a row because it became a sentence that it's easier to remember. And you the example with the guy who was, remembering these strings of numbers, he would build them into 3 or 4 number chunks, or chess is another example. The grandmasters had in their memory, each position, like the king is castled or the king is under attack or the bishop is fianchettoed, they would build chunks, mental representations of bigger parts of the position as opposed to just remembering where all the pieces were, which is which they actually couldn't even do better than a novice if they if they divide it up that way. Right. And and and I think there are just many different words, and I think language is just one way that actually shows that you've been able to sort of internalize it so you can actually express what it is that you're seeing, and and you can reason about it. And and and I guess some people think that language is is a key factor here for, you know, when you reason with yourself. One could also think about images as a way here of actually seeing patterns and being able to see how various things kind of link up to other things. And I think with the test board, you know, thinking about how different kind of relationships between test pieces now creates weaknesses and strengths. And so you memorize you memorize those weaknesses the list of weaknesses and strengths as opposed to all 64 squares on the board, and then you're able to reconstruct the position as they were able to do in those these famous studies. Right. And how so so, again, how so it's one thing to say, okay. I'm gonna build mental representations, but what's the process of doing that now? And I guess you do that with an instructor. You do it over time. You you you apply yourself somehow. But what's what can kind of, kick start this a little a little more? Well, I I think if we take chess, for example, I think one thing that, you know, and and you're more of an expert than I am, but, as you get better in chess, you're actually being able to sort of plan moves at a deeper level. So that actually that kind of planning is happening in your head. It's not like you're allowed to move the pieces to see what happens when various, moves are being made. And and I think that kind of captures my idea of a representation as something that you can manipulate, and and I guess we know that if you're a really good chess player, you don't really need a board. You can basically have it all in your head, and you can still sort of think through options, which I guess to me, you know, illustrates this internalization. And the question is, how do you get to that point? I believe that a planning and playing chess and actually seeing here and having some kind of feedback mechanism that tells you, did you see all the relevant things? And and and we found that playing through, games against masters, almost simulating you're playing against, you know, the what used to be the world's best players, then you can actually try to predict what the move is gonna be. And now you can then compare your thinking with the move that was actually being made, and now that gives you some degree of feedback here whether you actually were aware of all the relevant features that the world class player obviously was aware of. Do you think in some cases where you like like, again, we'll take chess as an example, or you could even take language if you have, like, a good language program. But, like, here let's say if I go through games of masters and I sit and think, well, what would the master play next? And then you you you look at the next page and you see what the master played next. Do you think that removes as as much of a need for a teacher, like, you can kind of virtually create a teacher for yourself that way? I think that's a very effective way of of learning. I think if you work with a teacher, the teacher would know all sorts of related, maybe, positions that had similar kinds of issues. So instead of working through the games the way you encountered them, the teacher would be able to kinda actually help you get 5 other similar kinds of situations that you could then basically be working on and sort of get the chance here, especially if you miss something. You would then be able to get another opportunity to kind of identify it and then consolidate the changes that you need to do in your thinking to be able to, next time you encounter a similar situation, be aware of of those aspects that you maybe initially did not pay attention to. Well, a great example is you talk about, the Polgar sisters. And and I promise we'll get to an area other than chess in a second, but, like, the the so Laszlo Polgar wanted to basically test out his theories, which are similar to yours in some respects. And he basically said, I'm gonna have a bunch of kids, and I'm gonna make them world class at whatever I want them to be world class at. And he was debating between tennis and chess. He decided on chess. And from what I and they all became world cla*s. 2 of them became, you know, world champion level. It was unbelievable, really. Three sisters in a row became the best female chess players ever. And from what I understand, he did give them, they had instructors among the best players in Hungary, but he did also give them thousands and thousands of chess problems, all like, one after the other, they would be related to each other. Like, let's say, a 1,000 bishop takes knight to problems and a 1,000, you know, rook and 2 pawns problems and and so on. And he would basically kind of clump these problems together so that we became used to over and over practicing the same thing in the similar situations. Yeah. I I actually was fortunate enough to meet Lasse Poggart. He's spending, the winners in Miami Wow. These years. And and and and he was telling me about he kinda had a library of of chess games that he actually had indexed these chess positions just for the purpose here that you were mentioning that he would be able to pull out similar kinds of positions and actually present them as a more effective way of teaching his daughters, you know, what the right move would be? How do you think he knew that that was the right way to teach? So, again, repetition on similar positions. And I wanna say it's like almost like the Bruce Lee quote, and I I believe you mentioned it. The Bruce Lee quote, I'd rather, I'd I'd rather fight the man who's practiced 10,000 kicks than the man who's practiced 1 kick 10000 times. So showing that repetition on the same thing is almost more valuable for for learning a skill. And and and I believe that it has to do with the depth. So if you actually are working on kind of a particular problem, you will actually now refine the way you're thinking about that problem. If you basically encounter new problems of different kinds, then it's much harder to get that sort of feedback cycle where you can attune yourself, so next time when you encounter a similar situation, you're prepared for it. Yeah. And so so now okay. Let's say, there's something a a field that's not as measurable. Like, let's say I wanna be better at sales or better at negotiating or better dealing with people. What do you think what are some ideas I can I can do to start, you know, building performance? Right. And and and I think sales is an interesting one. So it's semi measurable. Right. You know, so so if you basically look at the amount of money that a salesperson is bringing into the company once you deduct all their expenses, you know, that would be sort of an objective measure that a lot of companies, like to use to measure sort of how good a salesperson is. And if they can sustain that over years, it really means that they're not abusing the customers. They're basically being able to, you know, work with them for longer periods. Now what I found is that that the people who've been working with sales, what they point out is, again, you finding somebody who has proven themselves as successful, and now actually studying what that person is doing. And maybe even that person eventually will become, you know, a sales leader where where they actually are promoted from being a salesperson. So now they're actually working with individual sales individuals, you know, to improve their outcomes because everyone is obviously motivated here to increase the amount of income, to the company. And one of the things that I found most interesting was, talking to them about how much work they would spend before they actually meet a customer. So there's a lot of information that you can actually, you know, extract. So before you actually meet the person, if you have a good idea here, 1, what are they allowed to decide? And secondly, what are their needs? And if you can infer now, what would be the arguments that potentially would be very effective against any other competing, sales men that would have contacted them? And and that kind of extra work of of actually sort of trying to be prepared for the situation strikes me as as a very generalizable thing. And and if you were prepared and you encounter something that doesn't match up, now that's a learning opportunity. So now you try to figure out what was it that basically was wrong here with my expectation here about how the interaction with the, basically, the potential customer would be. And so so putting together an educational program on sales, it's almost like they could come up, build a library of, like, a 1000 different sales situations, and some of them similar, some of them not so similar, and run kind of the sales trainees through each situation and, correct them and and modify them and have them try again on a similar situation and so on. Right. And and if you could reconstruct actual events, I think that would be even more motivating to somebody to know, okay, so here you have the preparation situation, and what is it that you're planning to do, and then we actually have documentation about what happened in the sales event. So it's almost like now they know that one person actually had this opportunity, and they did this, and basically, here is the outcome that resulted from that. But it I agree totally with this idea here of creating a library, and and maybe sometimes you can videotape, maybe other tape, at times you can reconstruct it with actors. So so, basically, individuals would have that kind of realistic, experience. And and then I think knowing that this actually happened just makes it much less an issue here about, you know, did the teacher really know what's right? Well, here we have 10 cases that you can kind of experience, so you can kinda see what happened in those. So let me ask you this. Like, obviously, and this is you've you've talked about this quite a bit in the book that maybe the it's not necessarily 10000 hours as as Malcolm Gladwell put it. But, like, in this case of the sales, let's say someone did put together the ideal sales training program or language training program or whatever. How many hours of work? Like, let's say I'm horrible at sales. I'm at baseline 0. How many hours of work do you think I can I would have to do this deliberate practice with, an instructor who's really put together this library of situations, and I do repetition, and I build these mental models of different situations? How many hours of work do you think I need to do to be go from a 0 to a 10? Well, I I love to be able to answer that question. Given that we don't have these libraries, and and we don't really have kind of a sales education that basically meets these criteria, I think it's gonna be hard to to give you any numbers. Is it different in every industry? Well, I I would argue that maybe some of the best evidence that we have is from medicine where you can actually now start with where people are actually now incorporating sort of deliberate practice in the training. And and one example that we talk about in the book is, so here's kind of the the setup. You're performing a surgery with the supervising surgeons. So basically, if you make any mistakes, he will be able to stop you or correct them so the patient won't be harmed. But you videotape basically that surgery, and ideally, it would be performed now by somebody who's training to become a surgeon. And then that videotape is then being analyzed, so you can actually pinpoint what are the things that actually could be improved. And then the, basically, the surgical trainee is working in a simulator where they can actually repeatedly now, you know, master these kinds of techniques. And when they're ready, they go back and do another surgery here with the supervising surgeon. So now you have that feedback cycle where you have teachers who can analyze the videotapes and and show very clearly to the trainee what the problem is, and then design training with a simulator that would actually, you know, allow them enough repetitions so they can actually, perform that. And, you know, it's very interesting what you say in the book about the medical practice. Let's say I'm a doctor and I don't do this. I just simply do lots of surgeries, and I have 30 years of experience. You kinda point out that when somebody, let's say a doctor, gets into kind of, I don't wanna say a rut or a routine, but they kind of just keep doing the same thing over and over without necessarily getting the feedback loop, that their performance will actually decline over time as opposed to what norm normally people would think that they would get better with practice. Right. And and and I think if you think about drivers, most people wouldn't think of 50 year olds as being substantially better than 30 year olds, just because they have 20 more years of driving experience. And if anything, I think sometimes you actually automate it so you're not actually paying attention to the driving situations. And there's some really interesting research showing that most accidents happen in particular situations where basically, pedestrian is walking out. You can't see them behind, say, a truck or something like that. But by basically now training individuals, so they actually retain now the sensitivity to potential dangers. You can actually see a correlation now with reduced accident rates. So there's a lot of situations where the typical situation is so typical that you can actually deal with it successfully, you know, 95% of the time. The problem is that there's a 5% of the time where there's something that looks like a normal case, but it's not. And there, you actually see that a highly experienced individual who's going on automatic pilot is gonna be less well prepared to deal and sort of anticipate those potential problems. So when it comes to expert performers, that's almost defined by somebody who has a very good record. What I find is that they prepare. It's almost, you know, like they're trying now to do their utmost. So by monitoring, not, you know, basically doing a okay performance, they can actually find ways here to keep themselves motivated and keep, you know, improving and anticipating problems and other things. And that, I think, is really the kind of expert performer that I would like for us to promote. Let's stop to take a quick break. We'll be right back. You're probably familiar with the classic book, The Inner Game of Tennis, where the author talks about the importance of visualization. So you're about to make a serve. You visualize it in heavy detail first. How important is that for kind of expert performance or learning expert performance? Well, I I think it's key when you're engaging in any kind of sport that you actually have a plan for what's gonna happen. And I think when it comes to people working at a driving range in golf, and just try to hit it, you know, one ball after the other, and just try to hit it harder and harder, that's not going that's not what, expert golfers do. They would actually decide what it is that they want this particular ball to do. And then, basically, you will actually monitor now whether they have enough control over that ball to make that ball do the same the thing that they intended. And they keep varying that, so that actually develops now the ability to control. So it's not just sort of one thing where you just hit it as hard as you can and then see what happens. You're actually deliberately trying out to maybe have spin on it or or you're using an unusual club or whatever. But as long as you have an image about what you expect, then you can actually learn from it. Because if the ball is not doing what you intended it to do, that would then start this feedback loop where you would try to refine and, you know, attain more control over what you're doing. So I see the importance of kind of repetition and to get the control over what you're doing. Is there a danger that I can fall into the easy? So I can control what I'm doing if the if my goal is easy. So if I wanna hit the golf ball 50 yards, yeah, at some point, I'll be able to do that every single time, you know, 50 yards at one spot. But when do I start kind of challenging myself to do more, like 60 yards, 70 yards, a 150 yards, and so on? Well, there I would argue that maybe a golf coach would be the better judge here for a particular player, but But is that important though, the idea itself to kind of make sure? Definitely, you know, you should actually train to do things that you can't do. So so basically, if you're an ice skater and you're trying out to do a more complex jump, if you train the easy jumps, what is the likelihood that you're gonna be able to do the quadruple or whatever? It's essentially 0. So the way you actually get to do the quadruple is actually to kind of try to do a triple under more and more complex situations where you actually, you know, manipulate various elements, so you get to a point here where you have enough airtime that you can actually complete one more rotation. Mhmm. But and you may actually have to strengthen your legs in order to be be able to get that lift. But it's sort of this gradual process, and and I think you can see here how a teacher would be able to help you do corrections here and work on mastering these sub pieces until you're actually ready to even try the complete, quadruple. So there's a real important role for mentorship or teachers or somebody who's achieved expert or world class performance who who is now able to kind of assess, alright. You're ready to kind of jump a little bit higher. You you need a little bit more, leg muscle work. You need all these little things to add up, and and we'll start to be able to do, like, the quadruple, whatever. Right. And and and there is an interesting study that actually looked at ice skaters and found this difference between, the elite skaters and the sub elite skaters. And they found that the sub elite skaters spent more time doing things that they already had mastered. So in some sense, that makes you feel better. Right? If you're training, you can do everything, But it also, you know, doesn't allow you now to improve like the elite skaters who are constantly trying to do things they couldn't do. So it's all That was the main difference? Was it That was one one of the biggest differences. The elite was or were always aiming to do what they couldn't do, whereas the expert were mastering the the same thing over and over. And they did master it, but they weren't doing what they couldn't do. Right. You know, and and it's not obviously black and white, but but but there was a gradation difference. And I think, basically, that willingness to fail, is is sort of at the heart because failing if you're trying to do something you can't do, you're gonna have to start out failing. But the the joy that you will get when you eventually, you know, are able to master it, I think that is the kind of thing that I would point to, if you wanted to motivate people to really do the hard work. And I think the the myth of talent is often what reduces the motivation. Because if someone is trying let's say someone loves ice skating, and they start off basically good at it and they want to improve, but then they start failing over and over again at that quadruple, they might throw up their hands and say, I can't do this. I don't have enough talent. And what you're saying is you can do this with the right teaching and, you know, assuming you're not, you know, physically unfit that you can't do this. You can do this with the right training, the right amount of time, the right amount of reputation, the right amount of practice, because the the the talent aspect, there's no such thing as I can't really. Right. And and I think what I find dangerous is this idea that somebody, and maybe it's not a a a coach or or trainer or but somebody's telling you that you can't do it. How would you know? It's almost like if if you think that they know more than you do, what can you do but accept that? But I think that But society might do it too. Society has the myth of talent, the myth of the prodigy. That's definitely true when and and and there's a lot of cases here where and I think, Lasselo Polgar was actually, telling me about all the resistance that he encountered in Hungary when he was trying to do his training with his daughters. You know, they thought that he was almost a little, you know, abnormal, and and this idea that he would be able to kinda train all three of his daughters, you know, seemed weird. When when he had it wasn't clearly wasn't genetics, like, he was not a chess player. They just kinda came out of nowhere and became the 3 best women in the world. Exactly. You know, and and that's pretty compelling in retrospect. But I can see that while they were trying to, make, progress here and get resources, to get help here with the training, that was a sort of a difficult situation. And and what I find interesting is the evidence that people cannot attain an exceptional performance, that's really weak. You know? So if you accept here height, you know, with being tall as the center in basketball, obviously, is an advantage, and being, you know, short, when you're a gymnast is is is sort of gonna be an advantage. But beyond that, we don't really know of any individual genes that are necessary for somebody to succeed. So let's take, you had a lot of great examples about violinists that have been studied. And the world class violin and you looked at violinists that were all in the same school and then, sort of analyze which ones were gonna end up being teachers, which ones were gonna end up being kind of second class performers, and which ones were gonna be world class performers. And there was one definite distinction between all three categories, which is the world class performers had about, on average, 74 100 hours of practice by the time they got to school. And the teachers, while still excellent or, you know, the the future teachers, while still excellent, had about 38100 hours of practice before entering the school. So it does seem like there is this while it might not be talent, kind of driving them into this point of adulthood, how much hour how many hours of time they put in as a child did seem to be a a distinguishing factor. Yeah. And and and I think that was kind of really surprising and interesting to a lot of people. And by the way, that seems like where the 10000 hour myth comes from. Right. And and and, basically, we had some data on them when they were age 20, where the the kind of the elite group out of the 3, actually, on the average had 10000 hours, of of of training, and and I think, that that was kind of misinterpreted to say that everyone in that elite group actually had over 10000 hours, which is slightly different. But but I think the key that I was trying to kind of emphasize was this idea that regardless of your talent level, it's really even the most talented, if that even exists, are gonna have to spend, you know, like 10000 hours. I mean, that's if you look at it, that's a big chunk of time, and especially we know that they're investing maybe 4 or 5 hours a day, and that can't be, you know, basically time when you're daydreaming. This is the time where you need the most energy in order to really kind of search for your, outer limits of your performance to be able to keep improving. Well, let's look at a couple of examples where the word prodigy or talent is is thrown around. And you mentioned some of them in your book. But, like, Mozart, for instance, is considered the most talented prodigy in music history. That I've seen that sentence about him, and you dispute that. Well, I I think most people don't recognize that Mozart's father was actually a pioneer in training, especially children, and that he was a a famous musician, and he was composing, but at the time when Mozart was actually born and and started in training, he actually stopped composing. And we know that he actually designed training activities for Mozart, and his older sister. So we know that there was a lot of early training that went into Mozart's performance, and and if you're really looking kind of for prodigious performance, we try to come up with a measure, because music today is ranked in terms of the number of years of study that you need to have in order to perform a piece. And we related now, basically, the public performances of pieces and the age of the child, so we get kinda like a quotient. And what we found was that Mozart was above average. He was over, you know, a100. But there was a tremendous number of more recent prodigies that were more prodigious than he was. And, actually, the most prodigious performance that we found was a Suzuki, trained musician that was not considered to be a prodigy. Because in Suzuki, basically, the training kind of assumes that this is like learning a language. It's something that anyone can do if they're given the right kind of training, where the mother is actually using the same methods for teaching language as they're teaching now the music, playing. Yeah. It's interesting because you also relate, the development of perfect pitch to language acquisition. So you even mentioned how certain people from who speak certain tonal more tonal languages are better able to develop perfect pitch than, let's say, not atonal languages. So that that was very interesting, kinda how you were how you were raised affects this ability that many people associate with either talent or no talent. Right. And and I think the finding now is that you need to get training between ages 35 to for any child to be able to acquire perfect pitch. And there's some recent, work by a Japanese researcher that show that all the children that he trained were able to, basically attain it. But what about me? Can I get perfect pitch now? Like, I'm 48 years old. Can I can I do it? I have no perfect pitch right now. Right. And and and I think the develop the developmental window between 35 really constrains adults from from getting it. So, obviously, you're older than 5, and and there is some adults who try to get it, and they can improve their performance, but it doesn't seem to be the same. And they've now done research where they've scanned brains. And it seems that if you actually get that training early on, your brain will actually develop in a slightly different way. So it's a little bit like turnout in ballet and stuff like that, where it's really critical that you get the training during a particular phase of your development of your body and brain. And if you don't get that training, it doesn't seem like you're now able to reverse that. But there's so much other things that you can do that the number of things that we know are really developmentally constrained is relatively limited, so it shouldn't worry you, because surgery. Becoming a better surgery probably isn't related to what age I was when I when I learned it. Basically, there's no evidence that I know of, that suggests that. And so let's say so right now, like, a lot of chess player like, or I don't know if you've ever studied this is not mentioned in your book, but have you ever looked at, like, a case like Magnus Carlsen, who's the best chess player in the world? He he was probably the best chess player in the world at a very young age, maybe 12 or 13 years old. Was he a prodigy or of some sort? He started training really young, but many kids started training very young. Well, I I think Magnus Carlsen is a really interesting example, and and I think there is a book kinda coming out that will actually talk about his, early development. And now all that I think that we know is that he actually had a very organized kind of chess environment, so he would at least, you know, have the best possible training. Now, whether in fact, other individuals would be able to develop similar abilities with the same kind of training conditions, you know, that's hard to know. But I think the finding that I would emphasize is that there's a lot of things that you can learn about how to become a better chess player that you can actually learn from the training that Magnus Carlsen was involved in. So, like, having the the instructor, I know he had a very famous grand master as an instructor, probably putting in time every day, having presumably a motivating factor, which is, like, winning and feeling good about that and kind of praise on that. I I guess those were his part of his deliberate thoughts. And and and one of the interesting question is, you know, when he was introduced to chess, was that similar to how other chess players were introduced? Because I think a lot of chess players, they kinda start playing chess, and at some point, they get good enough, and then maybe they are being trained by, skilled, chess players. In music, if you actually start out learning how to play an instrument by yourself, what most music teachers would tell you is you've created a lot of or acquired a lot of bad habits that are actually gonna take longer to get out of you than it would have been to learn it correctly from the first time. And I think that's why, you know, classically music trained individuals and also ballet dancers, The importance is to actually start out with the correct fundamentals because now you can actually have things to build on in order to attain the highest levels. So I don't know. Could it be that maybe Magnus Carlsen started out with the right kind of fundamentals for thinking about chess that then made actually his, success, possible? So so let's say I want to suddenly get I I pick a field, whether it's language or chess or golf or sales. And, again, I just wanna kinda take it from the top. I wanna get better at something. I wanna even be world class at it. What should I do? What's the first step? I would say finding a teacher that have some experience of training individuals like yourself of the same age and the same background, that's what I would recommend. And I guess we're I'm now trying to match up individuals who are interested in starting to acquire skills with teachers who have had some experience of training an individuals. It's a great business idea, kinda like a dating site. Well, you know, I would love to basically learn from these, because I think this is actually a relatively new idea, and and it's almost like people didn't even hold it as possible that they could actually reach very high. So even if they started at an old age, they had a very modest goals for what they actually would be able to achieve. So so I think, you know, this provides, hopefully, an opportunity here to get motivated people, and then we can actually learn. Are there any limits? But before people try to do it, we're never gonna know what is possible. And so so okay. Finding the teacher, having a motivating factor, like, why do I wanna, you know, be a professional golf player, you know, having some sort of motivating factor that, you know, drives me through the pain. And then what's what's the next step that I can do as opposed to the teacher? Well, you know, I think by developing these representations and actually when you're training, you know, rather than trying to make any shortcuts here and and actually reduce it, you know, really stretching yourself. And I think, that would be sort of the the key idea, and I would love to learn here about, you know, individuals who are trying and if there really are any limiting factors. Because I've been now spending almost, like, 30 years talking to individuals who only reach the sub elite level, and ask them, you know, what was it that was really holding you back? And what I find interesting is that they thought that they could get better. The reason why they stopped was that they thought that there were other people who were ahead of them that they didn't really understand how they would be able to reach. Well, I guess, like, in the case of the violinists, the people who had reached the age of 20 with only 3000 hours, they were still in the top 1 tenth of 1 percent of performers, but they realized, oh my god. I'm not gonna be able to put in the other 4 to 6000 hours so quickly as my competitors. You know, and and that is, I guess, a challenge in a competitive society. So if you have basically, the very best to actually now learn more and put in more time practicing, they're not just gonna stop for 5 years to allow the less competitive ones to catch up. So, basically, what you really need if you're in the lower group is somehow find a way that you can be gaining more in practice than the ones who are at the elite level. So if they keep working and trying to perfect their skill, they're actually gonna be ahead of you, and it's hard to see how you would be able to catch up with them. Let let me offer one suggestion there. So, yes, they might not be, they might never get as good as the classically trained and classically performing violinists who go out into orchestras and who continue doing deliberate practice. But let's combine 2 fields. Let's take a violinist and put them in a rock and roll band and maybe kind of give them an electronic violin, then, bam, they might be. Everybody else might have done 500 hours of practice in that and combining 2 areas, and they suddenly have 35 100 hours under them. And that might combining areas to create new areas might be a lucrative way for a top performer, but not a lead performer, to to be successful. And and I think that fits nicely in what we were talking about, the motivation. So if you would enjoy now making music with another group, that, I guess, should be the the key goal, to basically be winning international competitions or winning gold medals at the Olympics. I mean, even if a 100,000,000 people were training the same sport, you know, using all the effective, there would still only be one gold medal. So so basically, I think connecting up here with this idea that you wanna actually produce something that has emotional significance for you, you know, your work you wanna play something with friends and actually produce music that after doing that, you actually feel better by yourself, and and now you're motivated, perhaps, to go and work on certain things that would actually allow you to do an even better job when you get together next time. Yeah. So part of it might be, again, figuring to keep that motivating factor going, finding other areas you can combine, and so on to create new areas where you're already in, given to be an expert or you have a huge starting point. Right. Head start. And and and in some ways, I mean, you're really trying to produce music experience. And and I think, you know, there may be more creative ways, especially now with the technical developments, where you actually will be able to find a niche for producing musical experiences that other people haven't found. It it it seems like we we have this natural instinct to put our because we're humans and primates, we put ourselves in a hierarchy, whatever we do. So let's say I'm interested in chess. There's a chess ranking system from 1 to a 1000000, and I wanna always figure figure out where I am in that hierarchy because I wanna be either the alpha and not the omega and and so on. But if I can change humans have the ability to change the hierarchy they're in. And if you could kind of change the hierarchy you're in where the practice and that you've put in is either puts you higher to being the alpha or whether it's it becomes easier to become the alpha because it's a new area completely, I think that should be a reasonable goal for for achieving confidence in something. Right. And and and I I see that parents, you know, really enjoy spending time with their kids. So if you actually decided to take up chess to be able to play with your, son or daughter, that would basically now allow for something that could develop over years and provide this precious relationship. And it could be music making, it could be some, you know, physical sport. But I think that kind of interaction between a parent and a child, especially when they're young, provides the child and also the parent with something quite unique that I think is is really valuable and that having a teacher that can help the parent. Now avoiding, basically, putting the child into learning situations where they are gonna be keep failing because you don't, That's part of the teacher's job is guide the student, you know, up to the next level. And so how did you get into this? Like, what were you my guess is at some point, you were trying to get good at something, maybe even elite at something, and maybe it didn't quite work out for you. Like, what what were you trying to go for? Well, you know, I I think I was always interested in trying to understand what people that I admire, what they were thinking. So I had a phase in high school when I was reading a lot of biographies and basically trying to understand the trajectory of people who were successful. And I think I kinda realized that if I were to try to be successful in any one domain, that would almost preclude me from now basically becoming as good as I could be and actually researching, the general process here of being excellent. So what biographies were you reading? Well, you know, I read about, you know, Michelangelo and and all the sort of Pasteur and all the sort of the famous, kind of artists and and scientists. And I just thought it was just striking, you know, this kind of process that wasn't given as much emphasis on what they had to do in order to achieve their, you know, eventually most recognized work. Well, it's interesting because you you mentioned Picasso in the book how and we know him all from his, let's say, Cuba state where he's really kind of going out of the box. But the reality is he was also, before that, just learning the basics was one of the best painters of his time of the basics of painting and traditional styles of painting. And I think also another important thing is to to learn, to to master, and become elite at the basics before sort of developing your own or maybe that gives you the ability to develop your own point of view and so on. Yeah. I I I totally agree, and I and I think that creativity, knowing what other people have already done, if you wanna do something new, it's gonna be really helpful to master all the things that people have previously done, because then you're gonna know when you're actually doing something that goes outside of what has already, been, done. And I think the kind of techniques that you will learn will also then help you once you know what you wanna do differently to do it, with, the technical skill that will actually compel people and and really make them see here what you've achieved. I mean, another great example in art is Andy Warhol. Like, people people know him again from almost from his factory where he didn't even work on many of his own art pieces that sold for tens of 1,000,000. But, he was like a in the fifties, he was like a master illustrator. He was the best illustrator in the advertising industry. Like, he knew how to draw. And even though that wasn't what he became famous for later, like he knew the basics. Right. And and and I think that helps maybe some students realize the benefits of actually learning the fundamentals as a way of actually being able now to reach that level where you will be able to see how you can make a contribution that's different from what people have previously done. And what what other so, obviously, your book, Peak, is really important for understanding, these components of deliberate practice. You break down, the ideas of what talent is. You talk about the 10000 hour rule. And, by the way, the problem I've always had with the concept of the 10000 hour rule is, let's say, I suddenly transport it back to the 1800. So with current with 21st century chess training techniques, within a year or 2, I could be at the level of the world champion level in the 1800 in chess. Obviously, that can't happen now. But it's interesting, like, because it is it really because training techniques in every field evolve as well to sort of shortcut, let's say, a prior century's 10000 hours. So so, presumably, whatever it takes to become world class now, a 100 years from now to get world class now might take only a 1000 hours. Right. And and and that's the reason why I think it's important to talk about absolute levels of performance. And and one way that you could potentially test that in chess is to see whether people actually can pick the right move for a wide range of chess positions. So that would be basically objective without actually taking into account what the current level of chess is. And if we take sports, you know, if you ran the marathon with the times that you could get a gold medal in the beginning of the Olympic games, you know, that would almost just get you into be competing in the Boston, marathon. So so basically, there's this change in the level of performance that people can do. So to really understand, you know, this question here about what people can do, you need to sort of look at historically what people were able to do, and now you can see that, you know, relatively normal average people are able now to reach the qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. But they're obviously, in order to win the Boston Marathon, you're talking about something that is really not, you know, something that was even conceivable, you know, a 120 years ago. So what's what's and this is kind of a little more meta, but what's the benefits of being elite? What if I'm happy to just qualify? Like, a 100 years ago, I would have been the world champion. Now I just barely qualify for the Boston Marathon. But it yeah. So there's it's the same performance, but one would have made me elite in a 100 years ago. Now I'm like, okay. I could get into the Boston Marathon, which is still great. It shows I have an incredible confidence, but that's it. So what's the benefit psychologically of being the best in the world as opposed to simply good and something that I understand the subtleties of and have mastered to an extent, but not achieve world class? Well, I think that's a, you know, very good question, and it gets back to this idea of what is it that would be motivating to you? And I believe that that may be different, you know, when you're 7 years old, and when you're 12 years old, and when you're 15, and when you're 18, and I guess if we're talking about marathon running, maybe you will peak in your late twenties. So there's this trajectory, and I'm not sure that the motivation that actually would motivate you as a, you know, child to basically train endurance events is gonna be similar to whatever it is if you're, you know, good enough so you will actually be given resources to keep training at the more elite levels. So so I think by really concentrating on the journey where, you know, basically making sure that individuals are gaining something really important, like, for example, go out running with your parent or something, and being able now to sort of learn the value here of deciding on one thing that you're gonna train, and then actually see how you, by basically concentrated training, maybe you only need to do half an hour a day initially, but you can actually get that self control of you being able to influence, what you ultimately will be able to do. So it seems like well-being or happiness or whatever you wanna call it might come from this state of improvement as a and and it turns out ability also comes from a state of improvement. Otherwise, you as like in the medical practice, like, you could decline if you're not constantly trying to improve. So this state of improvement might be what contributes the most to happiness as opposed to, yes. I'm number 1 or whatever. Right. You know, and it's Like, it would be interesting if you had measured well-being somehow in the 3 categories of violinist that you had identified. Right. Although, I find it a little hard, you know, to understand what is it that people would how do you actually get well-being? So we actually try to, you know, look at the kind of behavior. And if you're willing now to invest in training that actually, will ultimately allow you to reach even higher levels, then, basically, the satisfaction here of being able to maybe help patients, that is actually the thing that's going to drive you and also maybe make you feel good that you know that you actually did something beyond maybe what a normal, doctor would be able to do. And, so so tell me, other than your book, Peak, which I recommend everybody read, because I think now this is gonna be the the bible of how to achieve peak performance, What other books would you recommend in the field that people could read? Well, I think it probably will depend on what are the activity that they might be the most interested, because I think there are some good books that are focused primarily on sports. There are other books that are looking more at economics and managerial sides. But I think if if somebody read our book and decided now that they were interested in a particular domain, then I think it would be easier for me to kind of guide them. And and hopefully, we would find that some people would be able to sort of take on that challenge of trying to reach, you know, basically the highest level of performance. And if they run into any limits, I would love to learn about them. Excellent. Well, Anders Ericsson, author of peak, Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Great book. Thank you so much for coming up to my podcast, and I I really appreciate it. It was nice meeting you. This was just a delight. Thank you very, very much. Thank you, Anders. For more from James, check out the James Altiger Show on the choose yourself network at jamesaltiger.com, and get yourself on the free insider's list today. Hey. I have a lot more to tell you about this podcast, and you can find all my show notes and links and resources on my website on jamesaltucher.com. Sometimes I write about what I learned. Sometimes I write about ideas I got from the interview. Sometimes I have a backstory about how this interview even happened. I think you'll really like it. You'll also find lists of all the books we mentioned, other influential thinkers that are related to this guest, and more. Just go to jamesalticher.com.
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