Marc Yu, a 9-year-old piano prodigy from Pasadena, Calif., recently played at a benefit for victims of the earthquake in Sichuan, China. And he didn’t play “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” He played a piece that Chopin wrote for victims of the Polish-Russian war, the composer’s “Nocturne in C Minor.”
“My legs are long enough for the pedal, but still my legs aren’t straight,” Marc says. “I sometimes have to sit close to the piano or stretch my legs.” He says his left hand can reach an octave, but his right hand isn’t quite there yet.
Marc says he can only vaguely recall beginning to play the piano. He says his mother has told him over and over that he was 2. He does remember his recital debut, when he was 3. He played a G major sonatina by Beethoven.
That same year, he asked his mom if he could become a pianist. These days, he practices up to eight hours a day, depending on his schedule and his mood. “Practice makes perfect,” he says. “You don’t want a Beethoven piece to sound like something else. That’s disrespectful to the composer.”
Anders Ericsson and his colleagues have done a great deal of research in the “expert performance” movement.
When trying to explain what it is that makes someone very good at what he or she does, they focus on “deliberate practice.” This means that, your individual level of natural talent aside, expertise is accomplished primarily through the tenets of deliberate practice:
1. Focus on technique as opposed to outcome.
2. Set specific goals.
3. Get good, prompt feedback, and use it.
When most golfers go to the range to practice, they hit a bucket of balls. They may even have a method that in their mind is very structured and helpful, “10 balls with the pitching wedge, 10 with the 8-iron, all the way up through the driver and then 10 more balls with the pitching wedge.”
Sounds organized, right? That’s why most golfers are home eating Cheetos on Sunday, watching Tiger Woods on TV.
Deliberate practice, the type of practice that superstars like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are known for looks more like this . . .
“I’m going to hit 500 balls with my 9-iron at that flagstick off to the left of the range with a specific goal of 80% of the balls landing within 10 yards of the pin.”
Michael Jordan was famous for thousands of hours of extra practice; shooting and making more shots in his personal practice sessions than some of his teammates would make all month. But he didn’t just shoot around in the gym until he made the 1,000 shots. He would pick very specific things to work on and practice relentlessly.
“I’m going to shoot 1,000 three-pointers from the left corner with the specific goal of making 60%.”
Sure, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan were born with extraordinary athletic ability, but so was Michael Olowokandi and numerous other high-profile flops.
Ask yourself. How deliberate is your practice?
More reading…
Anders Ericsson’s research
Malcolm Gladwell on 10,000 hours being the minimum needed for mastery of a complex cognitive task or subject.
