Better Is the Only Way Forward
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Better Is The Only Way Forward Alan Stevens
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Transcript of Better Is the Only Way Forward
Better Is The Only Way Forward
Alan Stevens
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Twitter: @alanstevens
nerdhiveindustries.com
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!
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Email/IM: [email protected]
Website: halanstevens.com
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