(1) Seek to understand material that is enduring, at the heart of a discipline, or needs uncoverage. (2) Ask questions that go to the core ideas of a discipline, recur naturally through one’s learning and in the history of a field, raise other questions. (3) Ask questions that pose dilemmas or challenge conventional “truths.” (4) Remember that we learn through a zigzag sequence of trial, error, reflection, and adjustment. We cannot fully understand an idea until we retrace, relive, or recapitulate some of its history.
How to “Practice Perfect” | Insights from Lemov, Woolway, and Yezzi
(1) Start with one or two things to focus on doing right (2) Name the drill and use “back-pocket activities” during common time-wasters (3) Make corrections quickly and shorten the feedback loop (4) Be warm, be direct, get past nice, and make errors a normal part of practice
InsightfulSteps: Author of Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov, along with Erica Woolway of Uncommon Schools and Katie Yezzi of Troy Prep Elementary School provide 42 “how-to” rules to improve our approach to and the quality of practice.
Note: This article is deliberately unbalanced and lacks the richness in information, examples, and inspiration that their book Practice Perfect offers. Our goal is not to summarize each of the 42 rules. The authors have already done a brilliant job creating a “field guide.”
What follows is a naive and humble attempt to take in what the authors suggest and figure out how to apply them. Do you want to know a recurring thought that gnaws at me? We can read and be open to excellent research and advice. But we might never change because the knowledge doesn’t get applied in our everyday lives. I’m so rooted in my habits and despite the best of intentions, the change in behavior is where the impact is.
Better outcomes, commitment, and accountability go hand-in-hand. Pairing techniques with Charles Duhigg’s advice in The Power of Habits may be worthwhile too. While I’m attempting to be as specific in possible in spelling out how the brilliant practices and knowledge in Practice Perfect are applicable in my life, we’ll capture the benefits to their fullest extent if we act on them.
In any case, this is a book that we’ll want to revisit often.
Let’s begin with a theme I appreciate and tend to forget. First, most of us want to be resilient and to raise resilient kids. All the books and common sense tell us that adversity and mistakes are opportunities for us to build on our character. This seems to imply that our practice sessions should be designed so that we continually fail. Well, not so fast. The objectives of practice is to “encode success” (Rule #1) and to focus on getting things right. It’s not the time to romanticize failure. We need to work for mastery before adding complexity. As they say, “failure builds character better than it builds skills.” It’s important to make that distinction.
How to Practice
Remember that focusing on “successful execution instead of mere activity completion” can lead to more effective practice sessions. Small and seemingly mundane aspects matter. Start with one or two things to focus on doing right. Repeat fundamental skills until they become automatic (part of muscle memory). Use drills with variations first before introducing new ones.
Can we identify actionable steps for improvement? Can we isolate or practice the skill in its simplest form? Can we give the skill a specific, clear name and use it consistently? Can we try a videotape and reflection approach? Can we be efficient and use “back-pocket activities” during common time-wasters like transitions in/between activities? Can we cut back on discussion and use the “name the drill” for more efficiency?
- Try “Ball, Bounce, and Hit” for kids to internalize the sequence and rhythm of “watch the ball,” “let is bounce”, and then “hit.” The kids rushed in and to swing at the ball before it even bounced. I’m hoping that that the simple expression “ball, bounce, and hit” can be a repetitive mantra over time.
- To isolate the skill, start with the racket back and feet planted. The goal is very simple. Watch the ball, wait for it to bounce, and then swing.
- While one of the kids is working with me, can the other try a different activity, like bouncing the ball, balancing a ball on the racket, or watching a tennis video?
We’ll revisit the next few sections and (hopefully) build them out with time.
Using Modeling
Can we insist the kids imitate the model exactly? Can we model complex skills? Can we try to play a game of “copy cat” to model small skills?
Feedback
How can we make corrections quickly and shorten the feedback loop?
Feedback is important because “a simple and small change, implemented right away, can be more effective than a complex rewiring of a skill.”
Culture of Practice
“How does your space build a culture of practice and send the message that practice is one of the most important things you do?”
Wooden’s A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
(1) Gain peace of mind by doing everything within your power, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to bring forth your full potential. (2) Focus your energies and attention on preparation. You can control acts of preparation; you can’t control others’ opinions (praise or criticism). (3) We all have the opportunity to make the most of what we have, whatever our situation. Make an attempt to improve fully and be your best in existing conditions.
Brooks’ The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
(1) Provide kids with stable, predictable rhythms. Combine warmth and discipline. Secure emotional bonds. (2) Remember learning is not always linear. Use reach and reciprocity. Small habits and good behavior are self-reinforcing. (3) Context is crucial. (4) Value the unconscious side of brain in solving complex or ambiguous problems. Respect the feedback mechanisms: brain recognizes mistakes as it makes them. (5) Engage in internal debates; we progress through a series of errors, correcting partial failures.
Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst
(1) While arbitrary boundaries and categorical thinking can be helpful, don’t forget they are arbitrary. (2) Context is everything: our genes and actions have different effects in different environments. Remember our brain evolved to be shaped minimally by genes and maximally by experience. (3) For Me-vs-Us moral dilemmas (resist selfishness), rely on rapid intuitions (honed by evolutionary selection for cooperation). (4) For Us-vs-Them moral dilemmas, avoid intuitions and instead please think, reason, and question (strategically practice empathy, perspective-taking, etc). We are subliminally manipulated as to who counts as an Us or Them. (5) Making morality automatic (doing the harder, better thing; avoiding temptation) is more effective than employing willpower.
Benefit from the trial-and-error of antifragility | Insights from Taleb
(1) Stop trying to systematically remove uncertainty and randomness from things. You give up benefits that arise from the "trial and error of antifragility." (2) Ignore small dangers and embrace small stressors. Protect from extreme harm. (3) Adopt a barbell approach. Play it safe in some areas (with potentially large, irreversible damage) while taking many small risks in others (with potential upside). (4) Make things more robust to defects and forecast errors. Stay robust to others’ opinions. (5) Respect the wisdom of the elders and unwritten age-tested heuristics (intuitive, experience-based type of knowledge). Anything that hasn’t stood the test of time may be fragile.
InsightfulSteps: Context and nuance matter. Are there benefits to removing uncertainty and instilling order in our lives and our children’s lives? Of course. Routines and habits help provide some structure, discipline, and predictability. Research studies also encourage us to take actions to protect our children from stress. Recall Paul Tough’s findings that being attentive to infants’ cues and responding sensitively during emotional distress correlates to more independence and self-reliance in their later years.
And yet, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb warns us, relying on a practice of removing small, partial stressors and other forms of randomness (excluding those with the potential to lead to consequential harm) can be dangerous. It doesn’t help that stamping out uncertainty gives us an illusion, a false sense, that we are acting prudently and responsibiy. So, here we explore Taleb’s insights as to why we should think twice before trying to make matters as predictable as possible.
What are potential costs to eliminating the “trial and error of antifragility”?
You deprive yourself and your children opportunities to practice handling ambiguity.
You give up a source of info (small, partial stressors) that lowers your odds of future mistakes. This info is necessary for adapting, learning, evolving.
You also reduce your exposure to the potential of gifts and positive surprises of anti-fragility.
And let’s not forget that you ignore that deep part of your soul that likes a certain measure of randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty.
What can we do to encourage benefits of antifragility?
Ignore small dangers and small stressors while protecting yourself from extreme harm.
Play it safe in some areas (with potentially large, irreversible damage) while taking a lot of small risks in others (with potential upside) – a barbell approach.
Make things more robust to defects and forecast errors. Stay robust to others’ opinions.
Respect the wisdom of the elders and unwritten age-tested heuristics (intuitive, experience-based type of knowledge). Anything that hasn’t stood the test of time may be fragile.
Puett and Gross-Loh’s The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life
(1) Practice “rituals,” or moments we break from rote roles and patterns. This re-creates healthier connections, improves relationships, and lets us develop nuanced sides of ourselves that we can take into other situations. (Confucius) (2) Cultivate the heart-mind to guide us in an capricious world. Approach unpredictable situations with the broadest perspective. Refine your emotions and hone our instincts so they become intuitive. (Mencius) (3) Making distinctions of any sort goes against the way. The Way is a state in which everything is interrelated with no distinctions. (Lao Tzu) (4) Recognize that any loyalty to nature (in our selves or the world) is limiting. It prevents us from creating and negating our responsibility to the world around us. (Xunzi)
Gretchin Rubin’s The Happiness Project
(1) Application matters. Do you have a way to put knowledge into practice? (2) Remember the power of stories. Individual stories can influence more than universal principles or study results (3) If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. Try the mantra [I enjoy the fun of failure].