【文章推荐】 阮一峰的网络日志-科技爱好者周刊#264-言论-刻意练习终极指南

文章来源

1:The Ultimate Deliberate Practice Guide: How to Be the Best (fs.blog)

2.https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/K_KXGiTSi2IIHusZ6JzFzQ

机翻译文[有道]

The Ultimate Deliberate Practice Guide: How to Be the Best

终极刻意练习指南:如何做到最好

Everything You Need to Know to Improve Your Performance at Anything—For Beginners and Experts

为了提高你在任何方面的表现，你需要知道的一切——对于初学者和专家

Deliberate practice is the best technique for achieving expert performance in every field—including writing, teaching, sports, programming, music, medicine, therapy, chess, and business. But there’s much more to deliberate practice than 10,000 hours. Read this to learn how to accelerate your learning, overcome the “OK” plateau, turn experience into expertise, and enhance your focus.

有意练习是在每个领域取得专业表现的最佳技术，包括写作、教学、体育、编程、音乐、医学、治疗、国际象棋和商业。但练习的时间远不止一万个小时。阅读这篇文章，学习如何加速你的学习，克服“OK”平台，将经验转化为专业知识，增强你的专注力。

What is deliberate practice?

什么是刻意练习?

“Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves.” —Robert Greene, Mastery

Deliberate practice is what turns amateurs into professionals. Across every field, deliberate practice is what creates top performers and what they use to stay at the top of their game. It’s absolutely essential for expert performance.

As a general concept, “practice” means preparing. It’s the act of repeatedly performing certain activities with the intention of improving a specific associated skill. We rehearse what to do in low-pressure situations so we’ll be better when we use a skill in situations where something is actually at stake, such as in a competition or in the workplace. Although this definition may seem obvious, it’s crucial to distinguish between doing something and practicing it, because they’re not always synonymous.

The key distinction between doing and practicing is that we’re only practicing something when we do it in a way that makes us better at it—or at least with that intention.

Deliberate practice means practicing with a clear awareness of the specific components of a skill we’re aiming to improve and exactly how to improve them. Unlike regular practice, in which we work on a skill by repeating it again and again until it becomes almost mindless, deliberate practice is a laser-focused activity. It requires us to pay unwavering attention to what we’re doing at any given moment and whether it’s an improvement or not.

“参与到创造过程中，我们感觉比以往任何时候都更有活力，因为我们正在创造一些东西，而不仅仅是消费，是我们创造的小现实的主人。在做这项工作时，我们实际上是在创造我们自己。——罗伯特·格林，大师

有意的练习是业余爱好者成为专业人士的关键。在每一个领域，有意识的练习都是创造顶尖人才的源泉，也是他们保持在行业顶尖的手段。这对于专家的表现是绝对必要的。

作为一个一般概念，“练习”意味着准备。这是一种重复执行某些活动的行为，目的是提高一种特定的相关技能。我们会在压力小的情况下练习该怎么做，这样当我们在危急的情况下使用技能时，比如在竞争或工作场所时，我们就会做得更好。虽然这个定义看起来很明显，但重要的是要区分做某事和实践它，因为它们并不总是同义词。

“做”和“练习”之间的关键区别在于，只有当我们以一种能让我们做得更好的方式去做一件事时，或者至少是出于那个目的时，我们才是在练习。

刻意练习意味着在练习时，要清楚地意识到我们要提高的技能的具体组成部分，以及确切地知道如何提高它们。与常规练习不同的是，我们通过一遍又一遍地重复来学习一项技能，直到它变得几乎无意识，刻意练习是一种专注的活动。它要求我们在任何时候都毫不动摇地关注我们正在做的事情，不管这是不是一种进步。

Geoff Colvin summarizes deliberate practice as such in Talent Is Overrated:

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.

The extraordinary power of deliberate practice is that it aims at constant progress. Practitioners are not content with repeating a skill at the same level. They have metrics for measuring their performance. And they aspire to see those metrics get continuously better.

While engaging in deliberate practice, we are always looking for errors or areas of weakness. Once we identify one, we establish a plan for improving it. If one approach doesn’t work, we keep trying new ones until something does.

Using deliberate practice, we can overcome many limitations that we might view as fixed. We can go further than we might even think possible when we begin. Deliberate practice creates new physical and mental capabilities—it doesn’t just leverage existing ones.

The more we engage in deliberate practice, the greater our capabilities become. Our minds and bodies are far more malleable than we usually realize.

Deliberate practice is a universal technique, and you can employ it for whatever you’re trying to be the best (or just get a little bit better) at. It’s easiest to apply to competitive fields with clear measurements and standards, including music, dance, football/soccer, cricket, hockey, basketball, golf, horse riding, swimming, and chess.

But deliberate practice is also invaluable for improving performance in fields such as teaching, nursing, surgery, therapy, programming, trading, and investing. It can even accelerate your progress in widely applicable skills such as writing, decision-making, leadership, studying, and spoken communication.

The key in any area is to identify objective standards for performance, study top performers, and then design practice activities reflecting what they do. Recent decades have seen dramatic leaps in what people are capable of doing in many fields. The explanation for this is that we’re getting better at understanding and applying the principles of deliberate practice. As a field advances, people can learn from the best of what those who came before them figured out. The result is that now average high-schoolers achieve athletic feats and children advance to levels of musical prowess that would have seemed unthinkable a century earlier. And there’s little evidence to suggest we’ve reached the limits of our physical or mental abilities in any area whatsoever.

Many of us spend a lot of time each week practicing different skills in our lives and work. But we don’t automatically get better just because we repeat the same actions and behaviors, even if we spend hours per day doing it. Research suggests that in areas such as medicine, people with many years of experience are often no better than novices—and may even be worse.

杰夫·科尔文总结道，在天赋被高估的情况下，刻意的练习:

刻意练习的特点有几个因素，每一个都值得研究。这是一种专门为提高成绩而设计的活动，通常在老师的帮助下进行;它可以重复很多次;对结果的反馈是持续可用的;无论是纯粹的智力活动，如国际象棋或与商业相关的活动，还是繁重的体力活动，如体育运动，都对心理要求很高;这并不有趣。

刻意练习的非凡力量在于它旨在不断进步。从业者不满足于在同一水平上重复一项技能。他们有衡量自己表现的指标。他们渴望看到这些指标不断改善。

在刻意练习时，我们总是在寻找错误或弱点。一旦我们确定了一个，我们就建立一个计划来改进它。如果一种方法不起作用，我们会不断尝试新的方法，直到有一种方法起作用。

通过刻意练习，我们可以克服许多我们认为是固定不变的限制。我们可以走得比我们开始时想象的更远。有意识的练习创造新的身体和心理能力——它不仅仅是利用现有的能力。

我们有意识地练习得越多，我们的能力就变得越强。我们的思想和身体远比我们通常意识到的更具可塑性。

刻意练习是一种普遍的技巧，你可以用它来做任何你想做到最好(或只是做得更好一点)的事情。它最容易应用于有明确测量和标准的竞技领域，包括音乐、舞蹈、足球、板球、曲棍球、篮球、高尔夫、骑马、游泳和国际象棋。

但在教学、护理、手术、治疗、编程、交易和投资等领域，有意识的练习对于提高业绩也是无价的。它甚至可以加速你广泛应用技能的进步，如写作、决策、领导、学习和口语沟通。

任何领域的关键都是确定客观的绩效标准，研究最优秀的员工，然后设计反映他们所做的工作的实践活动。近几十年来，人们在许多领域的能力都有了巨大的飞跃。对此的解释是，我们越来越善于理解和应用刻意练习的原则。随着一个领域的发展，人们可以从前人的研究中学习到最好的东西。结果是，现在的普通高中生取得了体育成就，孩子们也达到了一个世纪以前似乎无法想象的音乐能力水平。几乎没有证据表明，我们在任何领域的身体或心理能力都达到了极限。

我们中的许多人每周都花很多时间在生活和工作中练习不同的技能。但我们不会因为重复同样的动作和行为就自动变得更好，即使我们每天花几个小时这样做。研究表明，在医学等领域，有多年经验的人往往并不比新手好，甚至可能更差。

If we want to improve a skill, we need to know what exactly has to change and what might get us there. Otherwise, we plateau.

Some people will tell you it’s only possible for anyone to improve at anything through deliberate practice, and any other sort of practice is a waste of time. This is an exaggeration. In reality, regular practice works for reinforcing and maintaining skills. It can also help us improve skills, particularly in the early stages of learning something. However, deliberate practice is the only way to:

1. Reach expert-level performance and enjoy competitive success
2. Overcome plateaus in our skill level
3. Improve at a skill much faster than through regular practice

If you’re just doing something for fun and don’t care about constantly improving at it, you don’t need deliberate practice. For example, maybe you like to go for a walk around a local park in the afternoons to clear your head. Although you’re practicing that walk each time you go, you probably don’t care about increasing your walking speed day by day. It’s enough that the repetitions further ingrain the habit and help maintain a certain level of physical fitness. Not everything in life is a competition! But if you want to keep getting better at something as fast as possible or reach an expert level, deliberate practice is vital.

Another important point to note is that deliberate practice isn’t just a catchy name we came up with out of thin air. The term is largely attributed to Karl Anders Ericsson, one of the most influential figures of all time in the field of performance psychology. It’s something many scientists have studied for decades. Everything we say here is supported by substantial academic research, particularly Ericsson’s work.

We’ll also debunk the numerous myths swirling around deliberate practice as a concept and reveal some of its significant limitations. So if you’re looking for quick hacks for overnight success, you might want to look elsewhere. If you want a realistic roadmap for improving your performance, read on.

如果我们想要提高一项技能，我们需要知道到底什么需要改变，什么可能会让我们达到目标。否则，我们就停滞不前。

有些人会告诉你，任何人只有通过有意识的练习才能在任何方面提高，任何其他形式的练习都是浪费时间。这是一种夸张。实际上，定期练习有助于加强和保持技能。它还可以帮助我们提高技能，特别是在学习的早期阶段。然而，刻意练习是唯一的方法:

达到专家级的表现，享受竞争的成功
克服我们技能水平的瓶颈
在一项技能上的提高比通过常规练习要快得多
如果你只是为了好玩而做某件事，不关心不断提高它，你就不需要刻意练习。例如，也许你喜欢在下午去当地的公园散步，以清理你的头脑。虽然你每次去都在练习走路，但你可能并不关心每天提高你的走路速度。这样的重复足以进一步加深习惯并帮助保持一定水平的身体健康。生活中并非一切都是竞争!但如果你想在某方面尽可能快地做得更好或达到专家水平，刻意练习是至关重要的。

另一个需要注意的重要一点是，刻意练习不仅仅是我们凭空想出的一个朗朗上口的名字。这个词在很大程度上要归功于卡尔·安德斯·爱立信，他是绩效心理学领域有史以来最具影响力的人物之一。这是许多科学家研究了几十年的东西。我们在这里所说的一切都得到了大量学术研究的支持，尤其是爱立信的工作。

我们还将揭穿围绕有意练习这一概念的众多神话，并揭示它的一些重大局限性。因此，如果你想寻找一夜成名的快捷技巧，你可能要去别处看看。如果你想要一个切实可行的路线图来提高你的表现，请继续阅读。

The elements of deliberate practice

“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” —Jack London

In this section, we’ll break down the fundamental elements of deliberate practice and exactly how to incorporate them into your practice sessions. As Ericsson wrote in Peak, “No matter what the field, the most effective approach to improving performance is to follow a single set of principles.” We’ll explain why each component is crucial and how they apply to different fields, and we’ll cover multiple ways to implement them depending on your goals.

刻意练习的要素
“生活并不总是握着好牌，但有时，把糟糕的牌打好。”——杰克·伦敦

在本节中，我们将分解有意练习的基本要素，以及如何将它们整合到你的练习中。正如Ericsson在Peak中所写的那样:“无论在哪个领域，提高性能最有效的方法都是遵循一套原则。”我们将解释为什么每个组件是至关重要的，以及它们如何应用于不同的领域，并将根据您的目标介绍实现它们的多种方法。

Deliberate practice is structured and methodical

“Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.” —Erica Jong

As humans, we’re wired to want to do the easiest thing at all times in order to conserve energy. Put more simply, it’s in our nature to be lazy. When we practice something a lot, we develop habits that become almost effortless to enact. While that’s beneficial in many areas of our lives (and helps us survive), it’s something we have to overcome in order to engage in deliberate practice. We can’t expect constant improvement if we keep repeating the elements of a skill we already know how to do with ease. That’s only enough if we’re just having fun or want to reinforce our habits.

Deliberate practice is structured to improve specific elements of a skill through defined techniques. Practitioners focus above all on what they can’t do. They seek out areas of weaknesses impacting their overall performance, then target those. At every stage, they set tailored, measurable goals in order to gauge whether their practice is effective at moving them forwards. Numbers are a deliberate practitioner’s best friend.

If you want to reach an expert level of performance, you need to begin practice sessions with a plan in mind. You need to know what you’re working on, why, and how you intend to improve it. You also need a way to tell if your improvement efforts aren’t working and if you need to try a new tactic. Once you reach your goal for that particular component of the skill, it’s time to identify a new area of weakness to work on next.

Having lots of little, realistic goals with a game plan for achieving them makes deliberate practice motivating. There’s a sense of ongoing movement, yet the next step is always a realistic stretch. Day by day, the gains from deliberate practice may feel modest. But when we look back over a longer period of time, small bits of progress compound into gigantic leaps.

How to implement this: Take the skill you’re aiming to improve and break it down into the smallest possible component parts. Make a plan for working through them in a logical order, beginning with the fundamentals, then building upon them. Decide which parts you’d like to master over the next month. Put your practice sessions in your calendar, then plan precisely which parts of the skill you’re going to work on during each session.

Don’t expect your plan to be perfect. You’ll likely need to keep modifying it as you discover new elements or unexpected weaknesses. The most important thing is to always go into practice with a plan for what you’re working on and how. Knowing what you’re doing next is the best way to stay on track and avoid aimless time-wasting. That means seeking to keep figuring out what separates you from the next level of performance so you can concentrate on that.

刻意练习是有组织和有方法的
“每个人都有天赋。真正难得的是跟随它走向黑暗的勇气。——艾丽卡·钟

作为人类，我们总是想要做最简单的事情来节省能量。简单地说，懒惰是我们的天性。当我们大量练习某件事时，我们就会养成几乎毫不费力就能实施的习惯。虽然这在我们生活的许多方面都是有益的(并帮助我们生存)，但为了进行有意的练习，我们必须克服它。如果我们不断重复一项我们已经知道如何轻松完成的技能，那么我们就不能期待不断的改进。只有当我们只是在找乐子或者想要强化我们的习惯时，这才足够。

刻意练习是为了通过明确的技巧来提高技能的特定元素。实践者首先关注他们不能做的事情。他们寻找影响他们整体表现的弱点，然后瞄准这些弱点。在每个阶段，他们都设定了定制的、可衡量的目标，以衡量他们的实践是否有效地推动他们前进。数字是深思熟虑的从业者最好的朋友。

如果你想达到一个专家水平的表现，你需要在开始练习时心中有一个计划。你需要知道你正在做什么，为什么，以及你打算如何改进它。你还需要一种方法来判断你的改进努力是否不起作用，是否需要尝试新的策略。一旦你达到了某个特定技能的目标，就该确定一个新的弱点来进行下一步工作了。

有很多小的，现实的目标和实现它们的游戏计划，使有意识的练习激励。有一种持续运动的感觉，但下一步总是现实的延伸。日复一日，刻意练习的收获可能会让人觉得微不足道。但当我们回顾一段更长的时间，微小的进步会复合成巨大的飞跃。

如何实现:将你想要提高的技能分解成尽可能小的组成部分。制定一个计划，按照逻辑顺序完成这些任务，从基础开始，然后在基础上进一步发展。决定下个月你想掌握哪些部分。把你的练习时间写在日历上，然后精确地计划每一次练习中你要练习的技能部分。

不要期望你的计划是完美的。当您发现新的元素或意想不到的弱点时，您可能需要不断修改它。最重要的是，你要始终带着计划去实践你正在做的事情和如何做。知道你下一步要做什么是保持正轨和避免无目的浪费时间的最好方法。这意味着你要不断弄清楚是什么将你与下一个水平的表现区分开来，这样你就可以专注于此。

Deliberate practice is challenging and uncomfortable

“One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.” —Albert Einstein (attributed)

Imagine the world from the perspective of a baby learning to walk for the first time. It’s not usually an easy process. They need to develop a lot of new skills and capabilities. They need to build enough muscular strength to stand upright without support. And they need to learn how to coordinate their limbs well enough to move around. Along the way, a baby needs to develop numerous sub-skills, such as how to grip supports to pull themselves up. It likely takes thousands of attempts to master walking—as well as numerous, falls, collisions, and other mishaps. We might not remember the process as adults, but a baby learning to walk needs to spend many hours challenging themselves and moving incrementally out of their comfort zone.

If we want to use deliberate practice, we could do with learning a thing or two from babies. Deliberate practice isn’t necessarily fun while we’re doing it. In fact, most of the time it’s a process of repeated frustration and failure. We have to fall down a dozen times for every step we take. That’s the whole point.

Seeing as deliberate practice requires us to keep targeting our weakest areas, it means spending time doing stuff we’re not good at. In the moment, that can feel pretty miserable. But the quickest route to improvement involves stepping outside of our comfort zones.

The reason why people who have spent decades doing something are not necessarily better than newbies is that they’re liable to get complacent and stop pushing themselves. We need to keep attempting to do things that feel out of reach at the moment.

In his studies of elite violinists, Ericsson asked them to rate different practice activities by how enjoyable they were and how much they contributed to improving performance. Invariably, there was an inverse correlation between the usefulness of an activity and its enjoyability. As Ericsson puts it in Peak:

The reason that most people don’t possess these extraordinary physical capabilities isn’t because they don’t have the capacity for them, but rather because they’re satisfied to live in the comfortable rut of homeostasis and never do the work that is required to get out of it. They live in the world of “good enough.” The same thing is true for all the mental activities we engage in.

Elsewhere in the book, he writes “This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.” The interesting part is the more time you spend deliberately practicing, the more comfortable you’ll become with being uncomfortable.

Daniel Coyle writes in The Little Book of Talent:

There is a place, right on the edge of your ability, where you learn best and fastest. It’s called the sweet spot.…The underlying pattern is the same: Seek out ways to stretch yourself. Play on the edges of your competence. As Albert Einstein said, “One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.”

The key word is ‘barely.’

刻意练习很有挑战性，也很不舒服
“一个人必须培养一种本能，知道自己尽最大努力也只能达到的目标。——阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦

从婴儿第一次学走路的角度来想象这个世界。这通常不是一个容易的过程。他们需要发展许多新的技能和能力。他们需要有足够的肌肉力量在没有支撑的情况下站立。它们需要学会如何协调四肢来四处移动。在这个过程中，婴儿需要发展许多次级技能，比如如何抓住支架把自己拉起来。掌握走路可能需要成千上万次尝试，以及无数次跌倒、碰撞和其他意外。作为成年人，我们可能不记得这个过程，但一个婴儿学习走路需要花很多时间挑战自己，逐渐走出他们的舒适区。

如果我们想要刻意练习，我们可以从婴儿那里学一两件事。当我们刻意练习时，并不一定是有趣的。事实上，大多数时候，这是一个反复受挫和失败的过程。我们每走一步都要跌倒十几次。这就是重点。

有意识的练习要求我们不断瞄准自己最薄弱的领域，这意味着我们要花时间做自己不擅长的事情。现在，这感觉很痛苦。但改善的最快途径是走出我们的舒适区。

那些花了几十年时间做一件事的人不一定比新手更好的原因是，他们容易变得自满，不再强迫自己。我们需要不断尝试做一些目前感觉遥不可及的事情。

在他对优秀小提琴家的研究中，埃里克森要求他们根据练习活动的愉快程度和对提高演奏的贡献程度来评价不同的练习活动。一成不变的是，一项活动的有用性和它的愉悦性之间呈负相关。正如爱立信在巅峰时期所说:

大多数人没有这些非凡的身体能力的原因不是因为他们没有这种能力，而是因为他们满足于生活在舒适的稳态中，从不做需要做的工作来摆脱它。他们生活在“足够好”的世界里。同样的道理也适用于我们从事的所有心理活动。

在书的其他地方，他写道:“这是任何形式的实践的基本真理:如果你从不推动自己走出舒适区，你就永远不会进步。”有趣的是，你刻意练习的时间越多，你就越能适应这种不舒服。

丹尼尔·科伊尔在《天赋小书》中写道:

有一个地方，就在你能力的边缘，在那里你学得最好、最快。这被称为最佳点。基本模式是一样的:想办法伸展自己。发挥你的能力。正如阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦所说，“一个人必须培养一种本能，去追求自己即使尽最大努力也只能达到的目标。”

关键字是“勉强”。

A quick way to assess if you’re doing deliberate practice or just regular rote practice is to ask yourself if you ever feel bored or zone out during practice sessions. If the answer is yes, you’re probably not practicing deliberately.

Deliberate practice isn’t boring. Frustrating, yes. Maddening, yes. Annoying, even. But never boring. As soon as practicing a skill gets comfortable, it’s time to up the stakes. Challenging yourself is about more than trying to work harder—it means doing new things.

Pushing ourselves just beyond the limits of our abilities is uncomfortable, yet it’s how we do our best—and indeed, it can be the source of some of our greatest moments of satisfaction. According to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we often experience happiness as a result of entering a “flow” state, which occurs when we intensely focus on an activity that is challenging yet achievable. During moments of flow, we become so immersed in the activity that we lose any sense of time or of ourselves.

Noel Tichy, professor at the University of Michigan business school and the former chief of General Electric’s famous management development center at Crotonville, puts the concept of practice into three zones: the comfort zone, the learning zone, and the panic zone.

Most of the time when we’re practicing, we’re really doing activities in our comfort zone. This doesn’t help us improve because we can already do these activities easily. On the other hand, operating in the panic zone leaves us paralyzed, as the activities are too difficult and we don’t know where to start. The only way to make progress is to operate in the learning zone, which are those activities that are just out of our reach.

Repetition inside the comfort zone does not equal deliberate practice. Deliberate practice requires that you operate in the learning zone and you repeat the activity a lot with feedback.

How to implement this: Each time you practice a component of a skill, aim to make it 10% harder than the level you find comfortable.

Once per month, have a practice session where you set yourself an incredibly ambitious stretch goal—not impossible, just well above your current level. Challenge yourself to see how close you can get to it. You might surprise yourself and find you perform far better than expected.

A common deliberate practice mistake is to plan a long practice session, then adjust the intensity of your practice to allow you to engage in a skill for the whole time. It’s far more effective to engage in “sprints.” Practice with the most intense focus you can manage for short periods of time, then take breaks. Seeing as you learn most when you stretch yourself beyond your current capabilities, shorter, more challenging practice periods are the way to go.

一个快速评估你是在刻意练习还是常规的死记硬背的方法是问自己在练习过程中是否感到无聊或走神。如果答案是肯定的，那么你可能不是在故意练习。

刻意练习并不无聊。令人沮丧的,是的。发狂,是的。甚至讨厌,。但从不无聊。一旦练习一项技能变得舒适，就该加大赌注了。挑战自己不仅仅是努力工作，还意味着尝试新事物。

迫使自己超越能力的极限是不舒服的，但这就是我们做到最好的方式——事实上，这可能是我们一些最伟大的满足时刻的来源。根据心理学家Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi的说法，当我们高度专注于具有挑战性但可以实现的活动时，我们通常会进入“心流”状态，从而体验到快乐。在心流状态下，我们会如此沉浸于活动中，以至于我们失去了时间感和自我意识。

密歇根大学商学院(University of Michigan business school)教授、通用电气著名的克罗顿维尔管理发展中心(Crotonville)前主任诺埃尔•蒂奇(Noel Tichy)将实践概念分为三个区域:舒适区、学习区和恐慌区。

大多数时候，我们练习的时候，都是在自己的舒适区进行活动。这并不能帮助我们改进，因为我们已经可以轻松地完成这些活动。另一方面，在恐慌区操作会让我们陷入瘫痪，因为活动太难了，我们不知道从哪里开始。取得进步的唯一方法是在学习区操作，也就是那些超出我们能力范围的活动。

在舒适区内的重复不等于刻意练习。刻意练习要求你在学习区中操作，并不断重复活动并获得反馈。

如何执行:每次你练习一种技能的组成部分时，你的目标是让它比你觉得舒服的关卡更难10%。

每个月进行一次练习，为自己设定一个令人难以置信的雄心勃勃的拉伸目标——不是不可能，只是远高于你目前的水平。挑战一下自己，看看你能离目标多近。你可能会惊讶地发现自己的表现比预期的要好得多。

一个常见的故意练习错误是计划一个长时间的练习，然后调整你的练习强度，让你在整个过程中都从事一项技能。参与“冲刺”要有效得多。在短时间内集中精力练习，然后休息。当你超越自己目前的能力时，你学到的最多，更短、更有挑战性的练习时间是你应该走的路。

Deliberate practice requires rest and recovery time

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” —Homer, The Odyssey

Seeing as deliberate practice is so challenging, it’s impossible to do it all day long. Across fields, top practitioners rarely spend more than around three to five hours per day on deliberate practice, at the high end. They may work for more hours than that per day, but few can sustain the mental energy to engage in deliberate practice for eight hours a day. Additional hours often result in diminishing negative returns, meaning more practice makes performance worse because it results in burnout. Geoff Colvin writes:

The work is so great that it seems no one can sustain it for very long. A finding that is remarkably consistent across disciplines is that four or five hours a day seems to be the upper limit of deliberate practice, and this is frequently accomplished in sessions lasting no more than an hour to ninety minutes.

Ericsson’s studies of elite violinists found they often took afternoon naps and slept an average of eight hours per night, considerably more than the average person. They were highly aware of the importance of sleep.

Even fitting in a single hour per day of deliberate practice is ample time to make substantial improvements, especially when we’re consistent with committing to it over the long haul. Continuous investments in success compound. In the long run, commitment pays off.

Not only do most deliberate practitioners not spend all day at it, they also devote a lot of time to recuperation and recovery. They sleep as much as their bodies need. They nap if necessary. They take frequent, refreshing breaks. Most of us understand that rest is necessary after physical activity. But we can underestimate its importance after mental activity, too. Deliberate practice needs to be sustainable for the long term. How long a person keeps at a skill is often far more important than how many hours a day they spend on it.

When you’re practicing deliberately, truly practice. When you’re recuperating, truly relax. No one can spend every waking hour on deliberate practice.

Sleep is a vital part of deliberate practice. Being asleep doesn’t mean you’re not still improving your skill. We consolidate memories at night, moving them from short-term to long-term memory. And we can’t exactly benefit from deliberate practice sessions if we don’t remember what we learn each time. Not only that, but sleep deprivation also results in a plethora of negative cognitive effects that impact performance. If we skimp on sleep, we’re likely to forget far more of what we learn during deliberate practice sessions, rendering them less useful.

When you’re not engaging in deliberate practice, your brain is still at work. During deliberate practice, we’re in focused mode. When we let our minds wander freely while at rest, we’re in diffuse mode. Although that time feels less productive, it’s when we form connections and mull over problems. Both modes of thinking are equally valuable, but it’s the harmony between them that matters. We can’t maintain the effort of the focused mode for long. At some point, we need to relax and slip into the diffuse mode. Learning a complex skill—a language, a musical instrument, chess, a mental model—requires both modes to work together. We master the details in focused mode, then comprehend how everything fits together in diffuse mode. It’s about combining creativity with execution.

How to implement this: Make a list of activities you can engage in without too much conscious thought, letting yourself daydream while you do them. Common examples include going for a walk, washing the dishes, taking a shower, free-writing in a journal, playing with a toy like Lego, driving a familiar route, gardening, cooking, listening to music, or just gazing out the window. When you feel yourself getting tired or hitting a roadblock during deliberate practice, don’t keep pushing for too long. You want to be stretching yourself, not exhausting yourself. Instead, switch to one of those more relaxing activities for at least five minutes. You’ll likely come back to practice with new connections or at last feeling refreshed.

刻意练习需要休息和恢复时间
“有话多说的时候，也有睡觉的时候。——荷马《奥德赛》

有意识的练习是如此具有挑战性，不可能一整天都这样做。纵观各个领域，顶尖的从业者每天花在刻意练习上的时间通常很少超过三到五个小时。他们可能每天工作的时间超过这个时间，但很少有人能保持每天8小时的脑力练习。额外的工作时间通常会导致负回报递减，这意味着更多的练习会让表现更差，因为它会导致精疲力竭。Geoff Colvin写道:

这项工作太伟大了，似乎没有人能坚持很长时间。一项在各个学科中都非常一致的发现是，每天4到5小时似乎是有意练习的上限，而这通常在持续不超过1小时到90分钟的练习中实现。

爱立信对优秀小提琴家的研究发现，他们经常午睡，平均每晚睡8小时，比普通人多很多。他们高度意识到睡眠的重要性。

即使每天有一个小时的刻意练习，也足以让我们取得实质性的进步，特别是当我们长期坚持练习的时候。持续投资于成功复合。从长远来看，承诺会有回报。

大多数刻意练习的人不仅不会整天练琴，他们还会花很多时间来休养生息。他们的身体需要多少就睡多少。如果有必要，他们会打盹。他们经常休息，让自己精神焕发。我们大多数人都明白，体育活动后休息是必要的。但我们也可以低估它在心理活动之后的重要性。刻意练习需要长期持续下去。一个人在一项技能上坚持多长时间往往比他们每天在这方面花多少时间更重要。

当你有意识地练习时，真正地练习。当你在恢复的时候，真正的放松。没有人能把醒着的每一个小时都花在刻意练习上。

睡眠是刻意练习的重要组成部分。睡觉并不意味着你的技能没有提高。我们在晚上巩固记忆，把它们从短期记忆转移到长期记忆。如果我们不记得每次学习的内容，我们就不能从刻意的练习中获益。不仅如此，睡眠不足还会导致大量的负面认知影响，影响工作表现。如果我们睡眠不足，我们很可能会忘记我们在刻意练习中学到的更多东西，使它们变得不那么有用。

当你不进行刻意练习时，你的大脑仍在工作。在刻意练习时，我们处于专注模式。当我们在休息的时候让我们的思想自由地漫游时，我们处于扩散模式。虽然这段时间感觉效率较低，但这是我们建立联系和思考问题的时候。这两种思维模式都同样有价值，但它们之间的和谐才是最重要的。我们无法长期保持专注模式的效果。在某些时候，我们需要放松并进入扩散模式。学习一项复杂的技能——一门语言、一种乐器、一种国际象棋、一种思维模式——需要两种模式共同工作。我们在集中模式下掌握细节，然后在分散模式下理解一切是如何结合在一起的。它是关于创造力和执行力的结合。

如何实施:列出一个不需要太多有意识思考就能参与的活动清单，让自己在做这些事情的时候做白日梦。常见的例子包括散步、洗碗、洗澡、随意写日记、玩乐高玩具、沿着熟悉的路线开车、园艺、做饭、听音乐或只是凝视窗外。当你觉得自己累了或者在刻意练习中遇到障碍时，不要坚持太久。你想要伸展自己，而不是让自己筋疲力尽。换一种更放松的活动至少五分钟。你可能会重新开始练习，建立新的联系，或者最终感觉神清气爽。

Deliberate practice involves constant feedback and measurement

“Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works. More of it equals better performance and tons of it equals great performance.” —Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated

Practicing something without knowing whether you are getting better is pointless. Yet that is what most of us do every day without thinking.

As we saw before, deliberate practice involves continuously stretching yourself to improve on weak areas of a skill. For that to work, practitioners require constant feedback about their current level of performance so they can identify what works for making it better.

What gets measured gets managed. To engage in deliberate practice, you need a way of measuring the most instructive metrics related to your performance. Seeing how those metrics change is the sole way to know if practice is working or not. Top performers across fields tend to spend time examining their past performance with care to identify areas for improvement. For example, a tennis player might film themselves playing a match so they can go through the footage frame by frame afterward. This provides valuable feedback, because they can figure out what might have held them back during weaker moments.

In fields such as sports and chess, measuring performance tends to be straightforward. In other areas such as business, measurements are harder to take, and there may be no established markers of success. The influence of random factors may also be stronger, making it less clear whether technique changes are actually having an influence or not. When you engage in deliberate practice, it’s always important to be aware of how strongly correlated your practice and your performance are likely to be.

When measuring your performance, beware of vanity metrics. These are numbers that are easy to calculate and feel good to boost. But they don’t actually move the needle towards the real improvements in performance that help you reach your goals. For example, let’s say you’re using deliberate practice to improve the skill of email marketing, as part of the wider goal of getting more customers for your business. The number of email subscribers is a vanity metric; the number of paying customers is a useful metric. It’s completely possible to increase the former without a corresponding increase in the latter.

How to implement this: Identify the most significant metrics related to performance in your chosen skill and keep a record of them each time you practice. It’s easy to fool yourself without a clear record of how you’re doing. You might want to break the skill down into a few different parts to measure it, but make sure you’re not fixating on vanity metrics

刻意的练习包括持续的反馈和测量
“刻意练习很难。这很伤我的心。但它是有效的。更多的it等于更好的性能，大量的it等于出色的性能。——杰夫·科尔文，天赋被高估了

在不知道自己是否有所好转的情况下进行练习是毫无意义的。然而，这就是我们大多数人每天不假思索地做的事情。

正如我们之前看到的，刻意练习包括不断地拉伸自己来提高一项技能的薄弱部分。为了做到这一点，实践者需要对他们当前的表现水平进行持续的反馈，以便他们能够确定什么可以使其更好。

衡量了就管理了。为了进行有意的练习，你需要一种方法来衡量与你的表现相关的最有指导意义的指标。观察这些指标是如何变化的，是知道实践是否有效的唯一方法。各个领域的优秀员工往往会花时间仔细检查他们过去的表现，以确定需要改进的地方。例如，网球运动员可能会拍摄自己的比赛，这样他们就可以一帧一帧地浏览视频。这提供了有价值的反馈，因为他们可以弄清楚在较弱的时刻是什么阻碍了他们。

在体育和国际象棋等领域，衡量成绩往往是直截了当的。在商业等其他领域，衡量标准更难衡量，而且可能没有既定的成功标志。随机因素的影响也可能更强，使技术变化是否真的有影响变得不那么清楚。当你进行有意练习时，意识到你的练习和你的表现之间的相关性是非常重要的。

在衡量你的表现时，要小心那些虚荣心的指标。这些数字很容易计算，提起来感觉很好。但是它们并不能真正帮助你实现目标，提高你的性能。例如，假设你正在使用有意的练习来提高电子邮件营销的技巧，作为为你的业务获得更多客户的更广泛目标的一部分。电子邮件订阅者的数量是一个虚荣的指标;付费用户的数量是一个有用的指标。增加前者而不增加后者是完全可能的。

如何实现:确定与你所选择技能的表现相关的最重要的指标，并在每次练习时记录下来。如果没有清楚的记录，你很容易欺骗自己。你可能想要将技能分解为几个不同的部分来衡量它，但要确保你不是专注于虚荣的指标。

Deliberate practice is most effective with the help of a coach or some kind of teacher

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.” —H.L. Mencken (attributed)

Deliberate practice is most effective when conducted with some kind of coach who can give feedback, point out errors, suggest techniques for improvement, and provide vital motivation. Although mastering any skill requires a lot of time engaging in solitary practice, working with a coach at least some of the time is incredibly valuable. In some fields such as sports and music, it’s common for a coach to be present all of the time. But most top performers benefit from a combination of coaching and solitary practice.

When we look at the lives of people who achieved great things, we often find that those who did so at a young age or in a shorter time than expected benefited from having fantastic teachers. For example, physicist Werner Heisenberg had the epiphany that led to the formulation of matrix mechanics a mere five years after commencing serious study of physics. But he no doubt benefited from the mentorship of Niels Bohr and Max Born, two of the foremost physicists at the time.

Even people at the most elite levels of performance across fields can benefit from specialist coaching. Engaging in something and teaching that thing are separate skills in themselves. The best practitioners are not always the best teachers because teaching is a skill in itself.

Ericsson explained that “the best way to get past any barrier is to come at it from a different direction, which is one reason it is useful to work with a teacher or coach.” We often make the same mistakes again and again because we simply don’t realize what we’re doing. Our performance falls into ruts and we can’t figure out why we’re running into the same problem yet again.

A coach can see your performance from the outside, without the influence of overconfidence and other biases. They can identify your blind spots. They can help you interpret key metrics and feedback.

Ericsson went on to say that “even the most motivated and intelligent student will advance more quickly under the tutelage of someone who knows the best order in which to learn things, who understands and can demonstrate the proper way to perform various skills, who can provide useful feedback, and who can devise practice activities designed to overcome particular weaknesses.” An experienced coach will have worked with many people on the same skill so they’ll be able to advise on the best ways to structure practice. They’ll know when you’re just repeating what you find easy, and they’ll be able to push you to the next level.

有意识的练习在教练或某种老师的帮助下是最有效的
“最好的老师不是知道得最多的人，而是最有能力把知识简化为显而易见的和奇妙的简单组合的人。”“-H.L。门肯(原因)

有意的练习在有教练的情况下是最有效的，教练可以提供反馈，指出错误，建议改进技巧，并提供重要的动力。虽然掌握任何技能都需要大量的时间单独练习，但至少有一些时间与教练一起工作是非常宝贵的。在一些领域，如体育和音乐，教练经常出现在现场。但是大多数最优秀的人从教练和单独练习的结合中受益。

当我们回顾那些取得伟大成就的人的生活时，我们经常会发现，那些在很小的时候或在比预期更短的时间内就取得成就的人，受益于有出色的老师。例如，物理学家维尔纳·海森堡(Werner Heisenberg)在开始认真研究物理学仅仅五年之后，就顿悟并提出了矩阵力学。但毫无疑问，他得益于当时两位最重要的物理学家尼尔斯·玻尔(Niels Bohr)和马克斯·波恩(Max Born)的指导。

即使是在各个领域表现最优秀的人，也可以从专家指导中受益。从事某件事和教授这件事本身是两种不同的技能。最好的实践者并不总是最好的老师，因为教学本身就是一种技能。

埃里克森解释说:“跨越任何障碍的最好方法是从不同的方向来面对它，这就是为什么和老师或教练一起工作很有用。”我们经常一次又一次地犯同样的错误，因为我们根本没有意识到我们在做什么。我们的表现陷入了陈规，我们不知道为什么我们再次遇到同样的问题。

教练可以从外部看到你的表现，而不受过度自信和其他偏见的影响。他们可以识别你的盲点。它们可以帮助您解释关键指标和反馈。

Ericsson继续说道:“即使是最积极、最聪明的学生，在这样的人的指导下也会进步得更快，这些人知道学习事物的最佳顺序，他们理解并能够展示执行各种技能的正确方法，他们可以提供有用的反馈，他们可以设计练习活动来克服特定的弱点。”一个有经验的教练会和很多人在同样的技能上合作，所以他们能够建议最好的方法来组织练习。他们会知道你只是在重复你觉得简单的东西，然后他们就能把你推向下一个层次。

Teachers or coaches see what you miss and make you aware of where you’re falling short. Geoff Colvin writes:

In some fields, especially intellectual ones such as the arts, sciences, and business, people may eventually become skilled enough to design their own practice. But anyone who thinks they’ve outgrown the benefits of a teacher’s help should at least question that view. There’s a reason why the world’s best golfers still go to teachers.

But what if you don’t have access to a coach? What if you don’t have the means to hire one or one isn’t available for your particular skill? In that case, it’s still possible to apply the same principles that make a coach useful by yourself. Top performers across fields build the skill of metacognition, essentially making it possible for them to coach themselves. Colvin explains:

The best performers observe themselves closely. They are in effect able to step outside themselves, monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it’s going. Researchers call this metacognition—knowledge about your own knowledge, thinking about your own thinking. Top performers do this much more systematically than others do; it’s an established part of their routine.

…A critical part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused those errors. Average performers believe their errors were caused by factors outside their control: my opponent got lucky; the task was too hard; I just don’t have the natural ability for this. Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors. Note that this is not just a difference of personality or attitude. Recall that the best performers have set highly specific, technique-based goals and strategies for themselves; they have thought through exactly how they intend to achieve what they want. So when something doesn’t work, they can relate the failure to specific elements of their performance that may have misfired.

How to implement this: Don’t expect the same teacher to suit you forever. We usually need different teachers as our skill level progresses because we outgrow them. One attribute of a good teacher is that they know when to tell a student to move on. As we reach expert levels of performance, we need teachers who are themselves experts. If they’re always a step ahead, we can learn from their mistakes instead of making our own.

You get the best results from working with a coach if you show yourself to be receptive to constructive criticism, even if it’s uncomfortable to hear. If you respond badly, you disincentivize them from telling you what’s most useful to know. Top performers know the goal is to get better, not just to hear you’re already great.

老师或教练看到你错过了什么，让你意识到你的不足之处。Geoff Colvin写道:

在某些领域，特别是智力领域，如艺术、科学和商业，人们最终可能会熟练到足以设计自己的实践。但是，任何认为自己已经无法享受老师帮助的人至少应该质疑这种观点。世界上最好的高尔夫球手仍然选择教师是有原因的。

但如果你找不到教练怎么办?如果你没有办法雇佣一个或者一个不适合你的特殊技能的人怎么办?在这种情况下，仍然可以应用同样的原则，使教练自己有用。跨领域的顶尖人才建立了元认知技能，本质上使他们能够指导自己。科尔文解释道:

表现最好的人会仔细观察自己。实际上，他们能够走出自己的内心，监控自己头脑中正在发生的事情，并询问进展如何。研究人员称之为元认知——对自己的知识的认识，对自己的思维的思考。最优秀的员工在这方面比其他人更系统;这是他们的例行公事。

自我评估的一个关键部分是确定是什么导致了这些错误。一般的表现者认为他们的错误是由他们控制之外的因素造成的:我的对手是幸运的;任务太难了;我只是天生没有这个能力。相比之下，最优秀的员工认为他们应该为自己的错误负责。请注意，这不仅仅是个性或态度的不同。回想一下，表现最好的人为自己设定了非常具体的、基于技术的目标和策略;他们已经仔细考虑过他们打算如何实现他们想要的。因此，当某些事情不起作用时，他们可以将失败与他们可能失败的具体表现元素联系起来。

如何实现:不要期望同一个老师永远适合你。随着我们技能水平的提高，我们通常需要不同的老师，因为我们已经不需要他们了。好老师的一个特点是他们知道什么时候告诉学生继续前进。当我们达到专家水平时，我们需要自己就是专家的教师。如果他们总是领先一步，我们就可以从他们的错误中学习，而不是自己犯错误。

如果你能接受建设性的批评，即使听起来不舒服，你也能从与教练的合作中得到最好的结果。如果你反应不好，你就没有动力让他们告诉你什么是最有用的。优秀的员工知道自己的目标是变得更好，而不仅仅是听到自己已经很好了。

Deliberate practice requires intrinsic motivation

Persisting with deliberate practice despite its innate difficulty and discomfort requires a lot of motivation. But that motivation needs to be intrinsic, meaning that it comes from inside us because we find an activity enjoyable for its own sake. This is in contrast to extrinsic motivation, where we participate in an activity to gain an external reward or avoid a negative consequence. Yet another reason why rest is important for deliberate practice is because it helps sustain motivation.

Although deliberate practice can lead to external rewards for using a skill (such as winning a competition or getting a promotion), this should not be the sole reason for practicing it. Extrinsic motivation is unlikely to be enough to get us through the long period of struggle necessary to master a skill. Becoming proficient at anything means spending time failing repeatedly at it, during which there are few external rewards. But if we enjoy getting better for its own sake, we have more of a chance of persevering until our practice starts paying off. We can navigate obstacles because we want to see where the road might take us—the obstacles aren’t roadblocks.

If you want to use deliberate practice to master a skill, you need to be willing to keep practicing it no matter what. Although brute force and rewarding yourself can be effective in the short run, it won’t work forever. If you’re planning to engage in deliberate practice to reach expert-level performance, make sure it’s a prospect you feel excited about even if it won’t always be fun.

Extrinsic motivation isn’t always ineffective, however. People who engage in consistent, sustainable deliberate practice tend to be adept at knowing when and how they need to employ external incentives. It’s important to reward yourself when you make progress in your practice and reflect on how far you’ve come, not just how far is left to go.

The need for intrinsic motivation is one reason why children who are pushed to develop a skill from a young age by their parents don’t always end up reaching a high level of performance and often quit as soon as they can.

How to implement this: Make a list of the reasons you want to work on a skill and the benefits getting better at it might bring. Before you begin a deep practice session, reread the list to remind you of why you’re bringing your full focus to something difficult. You could also list some of the benefits you’ve experienced from it in the past or include quotes from top performers in your field you find inspiring. It might feel cheesy, but it can provide a powerful boost during particularly difficult practice moments. Try to focus on intrinsic reasons and benefits, such as feeling fulfilled.

Keep a “motivation diary” for one week (or longer if possible.) Try setting an alarm to go off every fifteen minutes during each practice session. When the alarm sounds, score your motivation level out of ten (or whichever scale you prefer.) At the end of the week, review your notes to look for any patterns. For example, you might find that you begin to feel demotivated once you’ve been practicing for more than an hour, or that you feel more motivated in the morning, or some other pattern. This information could be enlightening for planning future deliberate practice sessions, even if it may disrupt your focus at the time. Another method is to simply take notes each day, documenting your current level of motivation to work on your chosen skill. Pay attention to any recurring influences. For example, you might feel more motivated to improve your skill after speaking with a more proficient friend, but less motivated after a bad night’s sleep.

One potent option for sustaining motivation is to find someone who can be a reliable cheerleader for you. In an Ask Me Anything session for Farnam Street members, Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning explained that having a cofounder is vital for entrepreneurs because partnering with someone else helps sustain motivation. It’s rare that both founders feel demotivated on the same day. So if one is struggling, the other can provide the encouragement needed to stay resilient. Having someone to provide extrinsic motivation when you need it can help you persevere at deliberate practice. Your cheerleader doesn’t necessarily need to be working on the same skill themselves. They just need to understand your reasons and be willing to remind you of them when you start to doubt whether the hard work is worthwhile.

刻意练习需要内在动力
坚持有意识的练习，尽管它有先天的困难和不适，需要很大的动力。但这种动机必须是内在的，也就是说，它来自我们的内心，因为我们发现一项活动本身就是令人愉快的。这与外在动机相反，外在动机是指我们参与一项活动以获得外部奖励或避免负面后果。休息对刻意练习很重要的另一个原因是它有助于保持动力。

尽管刻意练习可以为使用技能带来外部奖励(例如赢得比赛或获得晋升)，但这不应该是练习技能的唯一原因。外在的动机不太可能让我们通过长期的奋斗来掌握一项技能。精通任何事情意味着要花时间反复失败，在此过程中几乎没有外部奖励。但是，如果我们享受变得更好本身，我们就有更多的机会坚持下去，直到我们的练习开始得到回报。我们可以跨越障碍，因为我们想知道道路会把我们带到哪里——障碍不是路障。

如果你想通过刻意练习来掌握一项技能，你需要无论如何都愿意坚持练习。虽然暴力和奖励自己可以在短期内有效，但它不会永远有效。如果你计划进行有意的练习以达到专家级别的表现，确保这是一个让你感到兴奋的前景，即使它并不总是有趣的。

然而，外在激励并不总是无效的。坚持不懈、可持续的刻意练习的人往往善于知道何时以及如何使用外部激励。当你在实践中取得进步时，奖励自己是很重要的，反思你已经走了多远，而不仅仅是还要走多远。

对内在动力的需要是为什么从小被父母要求发展一项技能的孩子最终不能达到高水平的原因之一，他们往往会尽快放弃。

如何实现:列出你想要学习一项技能的原因，以及熟练掌握这项技能可能带来的好处。在你开始深度练习之前，重新阅读这张清单，提醒自己为什么要把全部注意力放在困难的事情上。你也可以列出你过去从中获得的一些好处，或者引用你所在领域中最优秀的人的话，让你感到鼓舞。它可能感觉很俗气，但在特别困难的练习时刻，它可以提供强大的推动力。试着关注内在的原因和好处，比如感到满足。

坚持写“动力日记”一周(如果可能的话更长)。试着设置一个闹钟，在每次练习时每15分钟闹一次。当闹钟响起时，给你的积极性打分，满分为10分(或任何你喜欢的等级)。在周末，回顾你的笔记，寻找其中的模式。例如，你可能会发现，当你练习超过一个小时后，你开始感到没有动力，或者你在早上感觉更有动力，或者其他模式。这些信息可能对规划未来的有意练习有启发作用，即使它可能会扰乱你当时的注意力。另一种方法是每天简单地做笔记，记录下你当前从事所选技能的动机水平。注意任何反复出现的影响。例如，在和一个更熟练的朋友交谈后，你可能会更有动力提高你的技能，但在一夜没睡好后，你就没有动力了。

保持动力的一个有效选择是找一个可以为你加油的人。在为法纳姆街(Farnam Street)会员举办的“Ask Me Anything”活动中，特斯拉联合创始人马克•塔彭宁(Marc Tarpenning)解释说，对企业家来说，有一位联合创始人至关重要，因为与他人合作有助于保持动力。两个创始人在同一天都感到灰心丧气是很罕见的。因此，如果一个人在挣扎，另一个人可以提供保持弹性所需的鼓励。当你需要的时候，有人提供外在的动机可以帮助你坚持有意识的练习。你的啦啦队长自己并不需要学习同样的技巧。他们只需要理解你的原因，并愿意在你开始怀疑努力工作是否值得时提醒你。

Deliberate practice takes time and can be a lifelong process

Although deliberate practice tends to result in much faster progress than normal practice, truly mastering a skill is a lifelong process. Reaching the top of a field can take years or even decades, depending on its competitiveness. As the bar for success in many areas keeps rising, more deliberate practice is required to stand out.

When we applaud the top people in any field, we often fail to appreciate that their success almost always came after many years of deliberate practice, which Robert Greene refers to in Mastery as “a largely self-directed apprenticeship that lasts some five to ten years [and] receives little attention because it does not contain stories of great achievement or discovery.” They may have ultimately benefited from a lucky break, but their extensive preparation meant they were ready for it. Great achievements tend to come later in life or even near the ends of careers. Those who succeeded young started very young.

Throughout Ericsson’s decades of research, he searched high and low for an example of a true prodigy: someone born with an innate, remarkable talent. He never found a single proven example. Instead, he discovered that people labeled as prodigies invariably put in enormous amounts of deliberate practice—they just often obscured it on purpose or started at a young age.

Although innate differences count when beginning to learn something (and people who begin with advantages may be more likely to persist), in the long run, deliberate practice always wins out.

David Shenk writes in The Genius in All of Us: “Short-term intensity cannot replace long-term commitment. Many crucial changes take place over long periods of time. Physiologically, it’s impossible to become great overnight.”

According to psychologist John Hayes, creative genius tends to come after ten years of studying relevant knowledge and developing skills. Hayes referred to this as the “ten years of silence.” In a study of seventy-six composers with sufficient biographical data available listed in The Lives of the Great Composers, Hayes found they almost always created their first notable works (defined as being those for which at least five different recordings were available at the time) at least ten years after commencing a serious study of music. Just three of the five hundred works Hayes included in his sample were composed after less than a decade of preparation—and those were produced in years eight or nine. In additional studies, Hayes found similar patterns for painters and poets.

Later research reinforces Hayes’ findings, and any casual survey of the lives of people widely considered to be geniuses tends to show a similar pattern. Making a breakthrough takes time. When it seems like someone was an overnight success, there’s almost always a long period of silent deliberate practice preceding it. Innate talents are just a starting point. If we want to master a skill, we need to commit to working on it for a lengthy period of time, likely with few rewards. While there are no assurances that with struggle comes reward, without it the odds are lower.

Not only do world-class performers spend a long time getting good at their core skill, those in creative fields tend to produce an enormous quantity of work before gaining recognition. For every piece of work we’re familiar with, there are likely dozens or even hundreds of others few people remember or ever saw.

For example, British prime minister Winston Churchill was known for his masterful public speaking. One of his best-known speeches “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” given in June 1940, displayed the extent of his command of oration and helped build morale at the time. But it’s hard to overstate how prolific Churchill was as a speaker, giving an estimated 3,000 speeches during his political career. For every speech—an average of one per week between 1900 and 1955—he used deliberate practice to prepare. He engaged in focused rehearsals in front of a mirror, taking notes as he went to inform modifications. Churchill also left nothing to chance, planning his pauses and movements in advance. As well as devising his own techniques for added impact, he memorized the works of some of history’s most inspiring orators.

Although he doubtless began with a degree of innate talent (his father, Randolph Churchill, was also an admired orator), Churchill clearly used extensive deliberate practice to build upon it. While this impressive resume and history solidified his place on the throne of oratorical excellence, it’s important to note that he wasn’t a “born speaker”—in fact, he made many mistakes. And he learned from them. If you want to produce a masterpiece, you need to accept that you’ll make a lot of less remarkable work first.

刻意的练习需要时间，可能是一个终生的过程
尽管刻意练习比常规练习的进步要快得多，但真正掌握一项技能是一个终生的过程。根据竞争力的不同，达到一个领域的顶峰可能需要几年甚至几十年的时间。随着许多领域成功的门槛不断提高，需要更多的深思熟虑的练习才能脱颖而出。

当我们为任何领域的顶尖人物喝彩时，我们往往没有意识到，他们的成功几乎总是在多年的刻意练习之后才取得的，罗伯特·格林(Robert Greene)在《精通》(Mastery)一书中称其为“一种持续5到10年的主要自我指导的学徒过程，但很少受到关注，因为它没有包含伟大的成就或发现的故事。”他们可能最终受益于一次幸运的突破，但他们的广泛准备意味着他们已经做好了准备。伟大的成就往往出现在生命的后期，甚至接近职业生涯的末期。那些年轻时成功的人很早就开始了。

在爱立信数十年的研究中，他四处寻找一个真正的天才:一个天生具有非凡天赋的人。他从来没有找到一个可以证明的例子。相反，他发现那些被贴上天才标签的人总是会有意地进行大量的练习——他们只是经常故意忽略练习，或者在很小的时候就开始练习。

尽管在开始学习时先天的差异很重要(从优势开始学习的人可能更容易坚持)，但从长远来看，有意的练习总是会胜出。

大卫·申克在《我们所有人的天才》一书中写道:“短期的紧张不能取代长期的承诺。许多重要的变化需要很长一段时间才能发生。从生理上讲，人不可能一夜之间变得伟大。”

根据心理学家约翰·海斯的说法，创造性天才往往是在研究相关知识和培养技能十年之后产生的。海斯把这称为“十年沉默”。在一项对76位作曲家的研究中，海耶斯发现，他们几乎总是在开始认真研究音乐的10年之后才创作出他们的第一部著名作品(被定义为当时至少有5张不同的唱片)。海耶斯在他的样品中收录的500幅作品中，只有3幅是在不到10年的准备工作后创作的——而且这些作品是在第8年或第9年制作的。在其他研究中，海斯发现画家和诗人也有类似的模式。

后来的研究证实了海斯的发现，任何对被广泛认为是天才的人的生活进行的随意调查往往显示出类似的模式。取得突破需要时间。当一个人一夜成名时，在他成功之前，总是有很长一段时间的沉默练习。天赋只是一个起点。如果我们想要掌握一项技能，我们需要在很长一段时间内致力于它，可能很少有回报。虽然不能保证有奋斗就会有回报，但没有奋斗，成功的几率会更低。

世界级的表演者不仅要花很长时间来掌握他们的核心技能，那些在创意领域的人往往会在获得认可之前做出大量的工作。对于我们熟悉的每一件作品，可能还有几十件甚至几百件其他人不记得或从未见过的作品。

例如，英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔以其娴熟的公共演讲而闻名。1940年6月，他发表了一篇最著名的演讲《我们将在海滩上战斗》(We Shall Fight on the beach)，展示了他的演讲能力，并帮助鼓舞了当时的士气。但作为一个演说家，丘吉尔的演讲量怎么说都不为过。在他的政治生涯中，他大约发表了3000次演讲。在1900年至1955年期间，他平均每周发表一次演讲，每次演讲他都经过深思熟虑的准备。他在镜子前集中精力排练，一边做笔记，一边通知修改。丘吉尔也不放过任何机会，提前计划好他的停顿和行动。除了设计自己的技巧来增加影响力，他还记住了历史上一些最鼓舞人心的演说家的作品。

尽管他一开始毫无疑问有一定的天赋(他的父亲伦道夫·丘吉尔也是一位受人尊敬的演说家)，但丘吉尔显然是通过大量的刻意练习来积累天赋的。虽然这令人印象深刻的履历和历史巩固了他在卓越演讲的宝座上的地位，但值得注意的是，他并不是一个“天生的演说家”——事实上，他犯了很多错误。他就向他们学习。如果你想创作一部杰作，你需要接受一个事实，那就是你首先要创作很多不那么出色的作品。

Deliberate practice requires intense focus

“You seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention.” —Karl Anders Ericsson

The deeper we focus during deliberate practice sessions, the more we get out of them. Intense focus allows us to increase skills and break through plateaus. Developing your attention span can have a huge impact on your life. When asked about his success, Charlie Munger once said, “I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”

The authors of The Game Before the Game write, “If you can pay attention for only five minutes in practice, then take a break every five minutes. If you can pay attention for only twenty balls, don’t hit fifty. To be able to practice longer and maintain the quality of the practice, train yourself to pay attention for longer periods of time….Productive practice is about how present you can stay with your intention and is measured in the quality of the experience as opposed to the quantity of time used.”

A benefit of getting constant feedback is that it shows you what moves the needle towards improved performance and what is just running in place. Certain practice activities can feel good without having any impact. Top performers prioritize knowing what to prioritize. They always start with the most important thing because anything else is a distraction.

Intense focus is a multiplier of everything else. Keeping an eye on key metrics enables top performers to identify and systematically remove distractions from their lives. To be the best, you need to focus on both the micro and macro level. You need to pay full attention to what you’re doing in the current practice sessions, and you need to know how it fits into the bigger picture of your desired trajectory. Deliberate practice is part of the exploit phase of selecting opportunities.

As the authors of the International Handbook of Research in Professional and Practice-Based Learning write, “Practicing the right things is at the core of the theory of deliberate practice.”

How to implement this: Put the big rocks in first. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. Figure out which practice activities have the biggest influence on your performance and plan to engage in those first before you even consider activities that offer marginal gains.

刻意练习需要高度集中注意力
“如果不全身心地投入到工作中，你就很难有太大的进步。——卡尔·安德斯·爱立信

在有意的练习中，我们的注意力越集中，从中学到的就越多。高度的专注让我们能够提高技能并突破瓶颈。培养你的注意力广度对你的生活有巨大的影响。当被问及他的成功时，查理•芒格曾说:“我成功是因为我的注意力持续时间很长。”

游戏的作者在游戏开始前写道:“如果你只能在练习中集中注意力5分钟，那么每5分钟就休息一下。如果你只能注意到20个球，不要击中50个。为了能够练习更长的时间并保持练习的质量，训练自己更长的时间集中注意力....生产实践是关于你如何保持你的意图，它是通过体验的质量而不是使用的时间数量来衡量的。”

获得持续反馈的好处是，它向你展示了什么推动了性能的提高，什么只是在原地运行。某些练习活动可以在没有任何影响的情况下感觉良好。优秀的员工知道优先考虑什么。他们总是从最重要的事情开始，因为其他任何事情都会分散注意力。

高度的专注会使其他事情成倍增长。密切关注关键指标可以使优秀的执行者识别并系统地消除生活中的干扰。要成为最好的，你需要同时关注微观和宏观层面。你需要把全部注意力放在你在当前练习阶段所做的事情上，你需要知道它是如何适应你期望的轨迹的更大图景的。刻意练习是选择机会的利用阶段的一部分。

正如《专业和基于实践的学习的国际研究手册》的作者所写的那样，“练习正确的事情是有意练习理论的核心。”

如何实现:先放置大石块。你可以做任何事，但你不能做所有事。弄清楚哪些练习活动对你的表现有最大的影响，在考虑那些能带来边际收益的活动之前，先计划好参加那些活动。

Deliberate practice leverages the spacing effect

One reason why consistent deliberate practice sessions over the course of years are more effective than longer sessions for a shorter period of time relates to the spacing effect. We can’t approach learning a skill through deliberate practice in the same way we quite likely approached studying for tests in school. If we better understand how our minds work, we can use them in the optimal way for learning. By leveraging the spacing effect, we can encode valuable knowledge related to our particular skill for life during practice sessions.

Memory mastery comes from repeated exposure to the same material. The spacing effect refers to how we are better able to recall information and concepts if we learn them in multiple sessions with increasingly large intervals between them. The most effective way to learn new information is through spaced repetition. It works for learning almost anything, and research has provided robust evidence of its efficacy for people of all ages—and even for animals.

Spaced repetition is also satisfying because it keeps us on the edge of our abilities (which, as we saw earlier, is a core element of deliberate practice.) Spaced sessions allow us to invest less total time to memorize than one single session, whereas we might get bored while going over the same material again and again in a single session. Of course, when we’re bored we pay less and less attention. The authors of Focused Determination put it this way:

There is also minimal variation in the way the material is presented to the brain when it is repeatedly visited over a short time. This tends to decrease our learning. In contrast, when repetition learning takes place over a longer period, it is more likely that the materials are presented differently. We have to retrieve the previously learned information from memory and hence reinforce it. All of this leads us to become more interested in the content and therefore more receptive to learning it.

We simply cannot practice something once and expect it to stick.

By engaging in deliberate practice on a regular basis, even if each practice session is short, we leverage the power of the spacing effect. Once we learn something through spaced repetition, it actually sticks with us. After a certain point, we may only need to revisit it every few years to keep our knowledge fresh. Even if we seem to forget something between repetitions, it later proves easier to relearn.

How to implement this: Forget about cramming. Each time you’re learning a new component of a skill, make a schedule for when you’ll review it. Typical systems involve going over information after an hour, then a day, then every other day, then weekly, then fortnightly, then monthly, then every six months, then yearly. Guess correctly and the information moves to the next level and is reviewed less often. Guess incorrectly and it moves down a level and is reviewed more often.

刻意的练习利用了间隔效应
多年来持续的刻意练习比短期的长时间练习更有效的一个原因与间隔效应有关。我们不能通过刻意的练习来学习一项技能，就像我们在学校为考试而学习一样。如果我们能更好地理解我们的大脑是如何工作的，我们就能以最佳的方式使用它们来学习。通过利用间隔效应，我们可以在练习过程中编码与我们的特定技能相关的宝贵知识。

记忆的掌握来自于反复接触相同的材料。间隔效应指的是，如果我们在多个会话中学习信息和概念，并且间隔越来越大，我们就能更好地回忆起这些信息和概念。学习新信息最有效的方法是通过间隔重复。它几乎适用于学习任何东西，研究已经提供了强有力的证据，证明它对所有年龄的人，甚至对动物都有效。

间隔重复也令人满意，因为它让我们处于能力的边缘(正如我们之前看到的，这是有意练习的核心元素)。比起一次记忆，间隔的记忆让我们能够投入更少的时间去记忆，而当我们在一次记忆中反复阅读相同的材料时，我们便会感到无聊。当然，当我们感到无聊时，我们的注意力会越来越少。专注的决心的作者是这样说的:

当材料在短时间内被重复访问时，呈现给大脑的方式也有最小的变化。这往往会减少我们的学习。相反，当重复学习的时间较长时，材料的呈现方式就很可能不一样。我们必须从记忆中检索之前学到的信息，从而加强它。所有这些都会让我们对内容更感兴趣，因此更乐于学习。

我们不能只练习一次就指望它能坚持下去。

通过定期进行有意的练习，即使每次练习时间很短，我们也能利用间隔效应的力量。一旦我们通过间隔重复学习了一些东西，它就会一直跟着我们。在某一点之后，我们可能只需要每隔几年重新访问它，以保持我们的知识新鲜。即使在重复的过程中我们似乎忘记了一些东西，但后来证明重新学习更容易。

如何实现:忘记死记硬背。每当你学习一项技能的一个新组成部分时，为你复习它的时间制定一个时间表。典型的系统包括一小时后检查信息，然后是一天，然后是隔天，然后是每周，两周，每月，六个月，每年。猜对了，信息就会进入下一个层次，就不会经常被回顾。如果猜错了，它就会下降一个级别，被检查的次数就会更多。

The history of deliberate practice

刻意练习的历史

Karl Anders Ericsson: The expert on expertise

“Learning isn’t a way of reaching one’s potential but rather a way of developing it.” —Karl Anders Ericsson, Peak

The concept of deliberate practice is attributed to Florida State University psychologist Karl Anders Ericsson, who along with his collaborators performed pioneering research in the field of expert performance. Ericsson spent decades seeking to answer the question of what it takes to become really good at something difficult. His research often focused on medicine, music, and sports.

Ericsson’s interest in expert performance kicked off in the late 1970s, when he began working with psychologist Bill Chase at Carnegie Mellon University to study short-term memory. Together, they began a series of experiments to see how many random digits it’s possible to memorize after hearing them once. Ericsson and Chase used an undergrad named Steve Faloon as their guinea pig. For a few hours each week, they read out numbers and Faloon repeated as many as he could recall.

Although the experiment might sound dull, they uncovered something intriguing. In a 1982 paper entitled “Exceptional Memory,” Ericsson and Chase summarized their findings. Previously, researchers believed the average person could hold just seven random digits in their short-term memory. Yet with careful practice, Faloon began to remember more and more numbers. At his peak and after 200 hours of practice, he could recall 82 digits. To assess if this was a fluke, Ericsson tried the same with a friend, Dario Donatelli. Five years later, Donatelli could recall 113 digits. Both he and Faloon went far beyond what seemed to be an immovable ceiling on human performance and blew past existing world records.

The experience of seeing two people who started off with ordinary memories enhance their capabilities in such a drastic way inspired Ericsson to further study the effects of practice on skills. Could it be that extraordinary abilities came from extraordinary practice, not just innate ability?

Through his studies of expert performers in a range of fields, Ericsson concluded they practiced their skills in a fundamentally different way than amateur practitioners. Ericsson described this kind of practice as “deliberate” due to its methodicial, hyper-conscious nature. He argued that experts become experts largely as a result of the way they practice. They may benefit from innate advantages, but their talents themselves are not innate.

Ericsson also believed that the standards in many additional fields could be improved far beyond their current level if practitioners employed the principles of deliberate practice. Indeed, many fields have seen remarkable increases in their standards for high performance over time. Today, high-schoolers manage athletic feats that were once Olympic level and children play music once considered world-class. This is possible because of better training and knowledge of what it takes to be the best. The more we improve how we train, the more we expand our range of possible performance.

In 2016, Ericsson published Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, a popular science book condensing his learnings from thirty years of research. He also co-edited the 2006 Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

“学习不是一种挖掘潜能的方式，而是一种开发潜能的方式。——karl Anders Ericsson, Peak

故意练习的概念是由佛罗里达州立大学的心理学家卡尔·安德斯·埃里克森提出的，他和他的合作者在专家表现领域进行了开创性的研究。爱立信花了几十年的时间来寻找一个问题的答案:怎样才能真正擅长做一件困难的事情。他的研究经常集中在医学、音乐和体育方面。

埃里克森对专家表现的兴趣始于20世纪70年代末，当时他开始与卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)的心理学家比尔·蔡斯(Bill Chase)合作，研究短期记忆。他们一起开始了一系列的实验，看看在听到一个数字后，能记住多少个随机数字。爱立信和蔡斯用一个叫史蒂夫·法隆的大学生作为实验对象。每周有几个小时，他们读出数字，法隆尽可能地重复他能回忆起的数字。

尽管这个实验可能听起来很无聊，但他们发现了一些有趣的东西。在1982年一篇名为“特殊记忆”的论文中，爱立信和蔡斯总结了他们的发现。以前，研究人员认为，普通人的短期记忆只能记住7个随机数字。然而，经过仔细的练习，法龙开始记住越来越多的数字。在他的巅峰时期，经过200个小时的练习，他可以回忆起82个数字。为了判断这是否是偶然，埃里克森对他的朋友达里奥·多纳泰利(Dario Donatelli)做了同样的尝试。五年后，多纳泰利能回忆起113个数字。他和Faloon都远远超越了人类表演中似乎不可移动的天花板，打破了现有的世界纪录。

看到两个起初记忆平平的人的能力以如此剧烈的方式得到提高，这一经历激发了Ericsson进一步研究练习对技能的影响。非凡的能力是否来自非凡的实践，而不仅仅是天生的能力?

通过对各个领域的专业表演者的研究，埃里克森得出结论，他们以一种与业余表演者完全不同的方式练习技能。爱立信将这种实践描述为“有意的”，因为它具有有条不紊、超意识的本质。他认为，专家之所以成为专家，很大程度上是由于他们的实践方式。他们可能受益于天生的优势，但他们的天赋本身并不是天生的。

爱立信还相信，如果从业者采用深思熟虑的实践原则，许多其他领域的标准可以大大提高，远远超过目前的水平。事实上，随着时间的推移，许多领域的高性能标准都有了显著的提高。如今，高中学生的运动成绩一度达到奥林匹克级别，孩子们演奏的音乐一度被认为是世界级的。这是可能的，因为有更好的培训和如何成为最好的知识。我们训练的方式越完善，我们可能表现的范围就越广。

2016年，埃里克森出版了《Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise》，这本科普书浓缩了他30年研究的心得。他还共同编辑了2006年剑桥手册的专业知识和专家表现。

Malcolm Gladwell: The 10,000 hour rule

The widespread awareness of Ericsson’s work outside the scientific community is in part a result of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, Outliers: The Story of Success. In the book, Gladwell attributed unusual success in different fields to a mixture of lucky factors (such as when or where a person was born) and around 10,000 hours of practice. He based this figure on research, including Ericsson’s, that suggested top performers tended to have put in about that amount of time before reaching peak performance.

Gladwell showed how the success of Bill Gates, the Beatles, and other outstanding performers is not so much to do with what they are like but rather where they come from. “The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves,” Gladwell writes. “But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”

The so-called “10,000 hours rule” caught on. It’s a catchy idea, and many people took it to mean that anyone can master anything if they just put the time in. Ericsson himself disputed Gladwell’s representations of his research, which led to the widespread belief that the time someone spends practicing predicts their success, without emphasizing the quality of their practice.

Although the backlash against Gladwell’s calculation has arguably been exaggerated, it’s important to stress that research into deliberate practice emphasizes quality of practice, not quantity. It’s all too possible to spend 10,000 hours engaging in a skill without serious improvements. For example, most of us spend hours per day typing, yet we don’t see continuous improvements in speed and quality because we’re not using deliberate practice.

The useful takeaway from the “10,000 hours rule” is simply that it takes a lot of work to become the best. There’s no magic number of practice sessions, and everyone’s path will look different. Just because successful people in a given field have spent around 10,000 hours practicing their key skill, that doesn’t mean every person who practices that skill for 10,000 hours will become successful.

马尔科姆·格拉德威尔:1万小时规则
爱立信的研究成果在科学界之外得到广泛关注，部分原因是马尔科姆·格拉德威尔(Malcolm Gladwell) 2008年出版的《异类:成功的故事》(Outliers: The Story of Success)。在书中，格拉德威尔将不同领域的不寻常成功归因于幸运因素(例如一个人出生的时间或地点)和大约10,000小时的练习。他的这一数据是基于包括爱立信在内的研究得出的。爱立信的研究表明，优秀的员工往往在达到最佳表现之前投入了大约这么多时间。

格拉德威尔向我们展示了比尔·盖茨、披头士和其他杰出演员的成功与他们的性格无关，而在于他们来自哪里。“站在国王面前的人可能看起来像是他们自己做的，”格拉德威尔写道。“但事实上，他们总是隐藏的优势、非凡的机会和文化遗产的受益者，这些让他们能够努力学习和工作，以其他人无法做到的方式了解这个世界。”

所谓的“一万个小时规则”开始流行起来。这是一个朗朗上口的想法，许多人认为这意味着只要投入时间，任何人都可以掌握任何东西。爱立信自己也对格拉德威尔对其研究的陈述提出了质疑。格拉德威尔的研究导致人们普遍认为，练习的时间可以预测他们的成功，而不是强调他们练习的质量。

尽管对格拉德威尔计算的强烈反对被夸大了，但有必要强调的是，对刻意练习的研究强调的是练习的质量，而不是数量。花费1万小时学习一项技能却得不到实质性的改进，这是很可能的。例如，我们大多数人每天花几个小时打字，但我们并没有看到速度和质量的持续提高，因为我们没有刻意练习。

“一万个小时法则”的有用结论是，要成为最好的人，需要付出大量的努力。没有多少次练习，每个人的道路看起来都不一样。仅仅因为某个领域的成功人士花了大约1万个小时练习他们的关键技能，并不意味着每个花了1万个小时练习这项技能的人都会成功。

The limitations and downsides of deliberate practice

Part of us wants to believe expert performance is something innate and magical so we can recuse ourselves from hard work. The other part of us wants to believe that it’s something earned through blood, sweat, and tears—that we too could achieve amazing performance, if only we could devote ourselves to something.

Deliberate practice, in reality, is far more complex and nuanced than many people would have you believe. It’s not a panacea, and it won’t solve all of your work- and art-related problems. Let’s take a look at some of the limitations of deliberate practice.

First of all, deliberate practice is a necessary but insufficient part of becoming a world-class performer. You can’t rise to the top without it. But it’s not enough on its own to be the absolute best in any field. Once you reach higher echelons for any skill, everyone is engaging in a lot of deliberate practice.

If you’re aiming at expertise or just really good performance, deliberate practice will most likely get you there. But the higher you rise, the more luck and randomness end up mattering. However much you engage in deliberate practice, you can’t control the chance events (good or bad) that dictate a great deal of life.

When we look at the lives of top performers, they often benefited from specific backgrounds or opportunities, in addition to engaging in deliberate practice. For example, if you’re trying to become a champion chess player, it’s a big boost if your mother was a champion chess player. Not only will you have potential genetic advantages, you’ll have also likely grown up hearing about chess, been encouraged to practice it from a young age, and have someone to turn to for advice.

Seeing as it takes years of consistent deliberate practice to master a skill, people who begin early in life have an advantage over those who start later on. That doesn’t mean you can’t become exceptional at something you discover well into adulthood (just look at Julia Child or check out the book Guitar Zero). But it does mean that people who begin deliberate practice as kids are more likely to enjoy the success that makes it possible to keep committing to it. If you’re trying to master a skill while also having to work an unrelated job, care for your family, and deal with the other myriad responsibilities of adult life, you likely will have less room for it than a ten-year-old.

刻意练习的局限性和缺点
我们中的一部分人希望相信专家的表现是天生的、神奇的，这样我们就可以逃避努力工作。我们的另一部分想要相信这是通过血汗和泪水赢得的——如果我们能把自己投入到一些事情中，我们也可以取得惊人的成绩。

事实上，刻意练习远比许多人让你相信的要复杂和微妙。它不是万灵药，它不能解决你所有的工作和艺术相关的问题。让我们来看看刻意练习的一些局限性。

首先，要想成为世界级的表演者，刻意练习是必要的，但还不够。没有它，你就无法升到顶峰。但光靠它还不足以在任何领域做到绝对最好。一旦你达到某个技能的更高层次，每个人都在进行大量的刻意练习。

如果你的目标是专业知识或真正的好表现，有意识的练习很可能会让你达到目标。但你爬得越高，运气和随机性就越重要。无论你多么刻意地练习，你都无法控制支配生活很多方面的偶然事件(好的或坏的)。

当我们观察顶尖人士的生活时，他们通常受益于特定的背景或机会，除了参与有意的练习。例如，如果你想成为国际象棋冠军，如果你的母亲是国际象棋冠军，这将是一个很大的推动。你不仅有潜在的基因优势，你也可能是听着国际象棋长大的，从小就被鼓励练习，有人可以向你寻求建议。

由于掌握一项技能需要多年的持续有意识的练习，早期开始学习的人比那些较晚开始的人有优势。这并不意味着你不能在成年后发现的事情上变得与众不同(看看朱莉娅·查尔德(Julia Child)或看看《吉他零》(Guitar Zero))。但这确实意味着，从小就开始刻意练习的人更有可能享受成功，从而有可能继续坚持下去。如果你试图掌握一项技能，同时又不得不从事一份无关的工作，照顾你的家庭，处理成人生活中其他无数的责任，你可能比一个10岁的孩子有更少的空间来完成它。

People who discover they want to master a skill or are encouraged to do so by others early in life have an advantage. Once the opportunity for practice is in place, the prospects of high achievement take off. And if practice is denied or diminished, no amount of talent is going to get you there.

In addition to lucky circumstances, high performers benefit from a combination of deliberate practice and innate talents or physical advantages. However much you practice, certain physical limitations are insurmountable. For example, if you’re 165 centimeters tall, you’re unlikely to become a professional basketball player. There are some physical abilities, such as particular kinds of flexibility, that can only be developed at a young age when a person’s skeletal structure is still forming. It’s important to be realistic about your starting point and be aware of any limitations. But that doesn’t mean you can’t develop workarounds or even use them to your advantage.

Another downside of deliberate practice is that the level of focus it requires can mean practitioners miss out on other parts of life. Top performers often devote almost every waking hour to practice, recuperation from practice, and support activities. For example, a professional dancer might spend several hours a day on deliberate practice with all of the remaining hours going toward sleep, low-impact exercise, stretching, preparing nutritious food, icing his feet, and so on. There is enormous satisfaction in the flow states produced by deliberate practice, but practitioners can absolutely miss out on other sources of happiness, such as spending time with friends.

Deliberate practice is part of the exploit phase of new opportunities. Yet sometimes we can end up having too much grit. We can keep persevering with the skill we’re practicing right now, remaining overly passionate, past the point where it serves us. We can wear ourselves out or get hurt or fail to realize when it’s no longer worth practicing a skill. For example, a new technology might mean our skill is no longer valuable. If we keep on deliberate practicing due to sunk costs, we’ll be unlikely to see many long-term benefits from it. A crucial skill in life is knowing when to pivot. Focusing too much on our goals can blind us to risks.

In some fields, expertise is hard to quantify or measure, which makes it less clear how to structure practice. There may be no single target to hit or universal rule for what improves performance.

A final limitation to keep in mind is that, as Ericsson explained, “the cognitive and physical changes caused by training require upkeep. Stop training and they go away.” If someone can’t practice for a period of time, such as due to an injury or having a child, they’re likely to see the skills they developed through deliberate practice deteriorate.

那些发现自己想要掌握一项技能或在年轻时被别人鼓励这样做的人具有优势。一旦有了练习的机会，取得高成就的前景就会起飞。如果练习被拒绝或减少，再多的天赋也无法让你达到目标。

除了幸运的环境之外，高绩效者还受益于有意识的练习和天生的天赋或身体优势的结合。无论你练习多少，身体上的某些限制是无法克服的。例如，如果你身高165厘米，你不太可能成为职业篮球运动员。有一些身体能力，比如特定种类的灵活性，只能在一个人的骨骼结构还在形成的年轻时期发展。重要的是要现实地看待你的起点，并意识到任何限制。但这并不意味着你不能开发变通方法，甚至不能利用它们为你服务。

刻意练习的另一个缺点是，它所需要的专注程度可能意味着练习者会错过生活的其他部分。优秀的演奏者通常把几乎所有醒着的时间都用来练习、从练习中恢复和支持活动。例如，一个专业的舞者可能每天花几个小时刻意练习，剩下的时间用来睡觉、低强度运动、伸展、准备营养食物、给脚敷冰等等。有意识地练习可以产生巨大的心流状态，但实践者绝对会错过其他快乐的来源，例如与朋友共度时光。

刻意练习是新机会利用阶段的一部分。然而，有时我们可能会以勇气过大而结束。我们可以继续坚持我们现在正在练习的技巧，保持过度的激情，超过它对我们有用的点。我们可能会把自己弄得筋疲力尽，受伤，或者没有意识到什么时候不再值得练习一项技能。例如，一项新技术可能意味着我们的技能不再有价值。如果我们因为沉没成本而继续刻意练习，我们就不太可能从中看到很多长期的好处。生活中一个重要的技能就是知道什么时候该转向。过分关注目标会让我们对风险视而不见。

在一些领域，专业知识很难量化或衡量，这使得如何组织实践变得不那么清晰。提高性能可能没有单一的目标，也没有普遍的规律。

最后一个需要记住的限制是，正如Ericsson所解释的那样，“训练引起的认知和身体变化需要保持。停止训练，他们就会离开。”如果有人因为受伤或有孩子而不能练习一段时间，他们很可能会看到他们通过故意练习而发展起来的技能恶化。

Summary

Deliberate practice isn’t everything, but if you want to keep improving at a skill or overcome a plateau, you’ll benefit from incorporating the principles mentioned in this article. To recap:

• Deliberate practice means practicing with a clear awareness of the specific components of a skill we’re aiming to improve and exactly how to improve them.
• The more we engage in deliberate practice, the greater our capabilities become.
• Our minds and bodies are far more malleable than we usually realize.
• Deliberate practice is structured and methodical.
• Deliberate practice is challenging because it involves constantly pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
• Deliberate practice requires constant feedback and measurement of informative metrics—not vanity metrics.
• Deliberate practice works best with the help of a teacher or coach.
• Continuing deliberate practice requires a great deal of intrinsic motivation.
• Deliberate practice requires constant, intense focus.
• Deliberate practice leverages the spacing effect—meaning a consistent commitment over time is crucial.
• If you’re content with your current level of skill or just doing something for fun, you don’t necessarily need to engage in deliberate practice
• Deliberate practice is best suited to pursuits where you’re actively aiming for a high level of performance or to break beyond some kind of supposed limit.

  总结
  刻意练习并不是一切，但如果你想在一项技能上不断提高或克服瓶颈，你将从结合本文中提到的原则中受益。回顾一下:

  刻意练习意味着在练习时，要清楚地意识到我们要提高的技能的具体组成部分，以及确切地知道如何提高它们。
  我们有意识地练习得越多，我们的能力就变得越强。
  我们的思想和身体远比我们通常意识到的更具可塑性。
  刻意练习是有组织和有方法的。
  刻意练习很有挑战性，因为它需要你不断地迫使自己走出舒适区。
  刻意的练习需要不断地反馈和测量信息指标——而不是虚浮的指标。
  有意识的练习在老师或教练的帮助下效果最好。
  持续的刻意练习需要大量的内在动力。
  刻意练习需要持续、强烈的专注力。
  刻意练习可以利用间隔效应——这意味着一段时间内的一致承诺至关重要。
  如果你对自己目前的技能水平感到满意，或者只是为了好玩，你就不必刻意练习
  刻意练习最适合于你积极追求高水平表现或突破某种假定的极限的追求。

• Books about deliberate practice (further reading)

• 关于刻意练习的书籍(拓展阅读)
   

  “A world in which deliberate practice is a normal part of life would be one in which people had more volition and satisfaction.” —Karl Anders Ericsson, Peak

  If you’d like to learn more about the art and science of deliberate practice, check out any of these books:

• Talent Is Overrated, Geoff Colvin
• The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle
• The Little Book of Talent, Daniel Coyle
• Mastery, Robert Greene
• Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
• Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success, Matthew Syed
• The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck
• Teaching Genius: Dorothy Delay and the Making of a Musician, Barbara Lourie Sand
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth

  “一个有意识的练习成为生活正常部分的世界，人们会有更多的意志和满足感。——karl Anders Ericsson, Peak

  如果你想了解更多关于刻意练习的艺术和科学，看看这些书:

  天才被高估了，杰夫·科尔文
  才华密码，丹尼尔·科伊尔
  才学小书，丹尼尔·科伊尔
  《精通》，罗伯特·格林
  《异类:成功的故事》，马尔科姆·格拉德威尔著
  莫扎特、费德勒、毕加索、贝克汉姆和《成功的科学》，马修·赛义德
  《学习的艺术》，Josh Waitzkin著
  《心态:新的成功心理学》，卡罗尔·德韦克著
  教学天才:多萝西·迪莱和音乐家芭芭拉·劳里·桑的成就
  勇气:激情和毅力的力量，安吉拉·达克沃斯