Better Is The Only Way Forward

Alan Stevens

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Email/IM: alanstevens@gmail.com

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Part I

What is known about expertise?

Qualities of Expertise• Performance consistently

superior to peers• Produces concrete results• Can be replicated

Everybody works, but not everybody improves.

WHY?WHY?

The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition

Source: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

The vast majority of all users remain advanced beginners…

never acquiring a more broad-based, conceptual understanding of the task environment

Hackos & Stevens, 1997, p. 36

Where are the masters?

I’ve met a few.

Douglas Crockford

Charles Petzold

Ward Cunningham

Who else?

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge

Charles Darwin

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Illusory superiority vs.

Illusory inferiority

David Dunning and Justin Kruger

the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self

the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others

Incompetent People• Tend to overestimate their own level of skill

• Fail to recognize genuine skill in others

• Fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy

• Recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

David Dunning and Justin Kruger

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence

competent individuals may falsely assume that others have

an equivalent understanding. 

The Knowledge Effect

A tendency of individuals to assume that their own knowledge is shared by others.

“Understanding and Reducing the Knowledge Effect: Implications for Writers”-- John R. Hayes and Diana Bajzek

Part II

What does it take to become an expert?

Recipe For Greatness

1. Intensive practice

2.Devoted teachers

3. Enthusiastic support

10,000 hours to mastery

4-5-104 hours/day5 days/weekFor 10 years!

Deliberate Practice is the hardest kind of work:

1. Isolate what you don’t know

2. Identify your weaknesses

3. Work just on that

Deliberate practice must

include immediate

and constant feedback.

Experts study themselves failing.

Joshua Foer

Joshua Foer

You’ve got to push yourself past where you’re comfortable.

You have to watch yourself fail and learn from your mistakes.

That’s the way to get better at anything.

Karl Rohnke’s CSP ModelComfort Zone

Stretch Zone

Panic Zone

“If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with

your head, two hours is plenty.”

Violin Professor Leopold Auer

What if I’m talented?

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D in Mindset

The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone, the fixed mindset, creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.

Part III

If talent doesn’t insure success, what does?

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/743509

The more decisions you make the more loss you experience.

When you choose one possibility you lose another possibility by natural consequence.

James Shelley

The ability to delay gratification was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q.

Angela Lee Duckworthhttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer

The Plateau

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1364227

The Mastery Curve

The Dabbler

The Obsessive

The “Hacker”

“If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television, and you can save more money for retirement.

It’s not just about marshmallows.”

Walter Mischel,Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the marshmallow experiment

GritA passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take.

Angela Lee Duckworth

Part IV

What are we to do with this information?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/locator/538441133/

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1363645

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1234025

“These are powerful instincts...The only way to defeat them is to avoid them, and that means paying attention to something else.

We call that will power, but it’s got nothing to do with the will.”

John Jonides, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan

Thomas M. Sterner in The Practicing Mind

When we are totally focused in the present moment, and in the process of what we are doing, we are completely absorbed in the activity.

As soon as we become aware of how well we are concentrating on something, we are no longer concentrating on it.

Flow requires challenge or boredom results.

Challenge vs. Skill

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.jpg

Conditions Necessary to Achieve the Flow State

• One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals.

• One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills.

• The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback.

Chip and Dan Heath in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Self-control Is An Exhaustible Resource

It's like doing bench presses at the gym.

The first one is easy when your muscles are fresh, but with each additional repetition, your muscles get more exhausted.

• Will and discipline are far more limited and precious resources than most of us realize

• They must be called upon very selectively

• Even small acts of self-control use up this limited reservoir

• We have the capacity for very few conscious acts of self-control in a day.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Positive Energy Rituals

Conclusion

Greatness is not a function of circumstances. Greatness, as it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.

Jim Collins in Good to Great

Resources

Links to Additional ResourcesExpertise and Skilled Performance

The Making of an Expert

What It Takes to be Great

Unskilled And Unaware of It (pdf)

Developing Expertise: Herding Racehorses, Racing Sheep (video)

Don't!: The Secret of Self Control

What If the Secret to Success is Failure?

Personal Best

The Making of a Corporate Athlete (pdf)

Tony Schwartz: The Myths of the Overworked Creative (video)

Better

Anders Sorman-Nilsson

It is perhaps attitude

not aptitude

that gives us altitude

Thanks For Listening!

Slides: speakerdeck.com/alanstevens

Email/IM: alanstevens@gmail.com

Website: halanstevens.com

Twitter: @alanstevens