What makes an expert?
With the Open in Muirfield about to begin, no doubt it will create the usual ripple of golfers hitting the driving ranges and courses in the attempts of tweaking their game. Most people probably wonder how much effort it takes to become a professional golfer, or even just a scratch player at that.
Is it genetics or 'innate' talent? Does it derive from general intelligence? Does practice play a role? Well a vital aspect that marks a real expert is that of deliberate practice (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). This practice is usually goal directed, requires real cognitive effort and is highly structured. Further, it also requires motivation, continual self-evaluation, and retention of control (Rossano, 2003). Sounds like a bundle of fun...
Experts are not better problem solvers in general, but simply in their own domain. Their knowledge is more extensive and they are better organised. Their performances are more fluent, accurate and automatic than those performances of a novice. Williams (2001) remarked that experts in sports do not have faster reaction times or superior visual abilities, but instead appear to have all round better strategies to the sport they are involved in. For example, in sports like tennis, an expert player does not tend to look at the ball but instead uses cues to anticipate movement (Bradford, 2000).
Skill acquisition for experts involves a conversion of knowledge from the declarative (the acquisition of relevant factual knowledge) into the procedural. This results in automaticity for the expert which frees up working memory. Novices tend to focus too much on positive feedback (''good job''), because hearing they're doing well helps them stay committed. However, experts tend to focus on negative feedback (''You’re doing that incorrectly'') because they're interested in progress. Automaticity is also supported by Smith and Chamberlin's research in 1992. They showed that a cognitively demanding task interfered a lot with a novice footballer but not with the experts greater automaticity of skill.
Moran (2005) delineated the five main differences that separate an expert from a novice;
1)Experts have more domain specific knowledge.
2)Experts spend more time in the initial stages of a problem.
3)Experts have a better representation of meaningful patterns.
4)Experts have better memory for their domain.
5)Experts automatic processes allow for greater speed and efficiency.
Another often quoted idea a lot of people may buy into is the 'Ten year rule'. First identified by the psychologist John Hayes in 1989 and soon endorsed by other psychologists, the rule states that a person must persevere with learning and practising a craft or discipline for about 10 years before he or she can make a breakthrough.
Hayes studied the role of the preparation stage in creative production. He examined career development in several fields requiring creative thinking such as musical composition, painting, and poetry. He found that even the most 'talented' individuals required many years of preparation before they reached master-level performance in their work.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discussed that people who rose above the rest and achieved incredible success in their respective endeavours all have one thing in common: they spent at least 10,000 hours learning and internalizing and perfecting their crafts (approximately 10 years) of deliberate practice. This translates as slightly more than three hours of practice daily for ten years (Salmela, 1998). The 10,000-hour theory was originally formulated by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State University (1993). But deliberate practice is a specifically defined term. It involves goal setting, responsive feedback, and endless drills to improve skills with an eye on mastery. It is not ''just showing up'' and beating a few ball down a fairway. And, plain and simple, it’s not fun.
Does talent (nature) + 10,000 hours of work (nurture) = Success? Or what about just 10,000 hours of work equalling success? Both methods don't really guarantee anything. If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster! So the idea of the 10,000-hour rule sounds a little ridiculous. It does an injustice to those who are naturally gifted. But it also does a tremendous disservice to the naturally ungifted. It also raises hopes to an unrealistic level. All the hard work in the world won’t overcome a brain-based deficit or the fact that the best wood in your golf bag has, and always will be, your pencil.
Many people don’t like the 10k rule because they think it encourages early specialisation which encourages drop out later. If I decided to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in golf, it may get me to being ''really good'' but not ''golfing genius''. But talking about how "you either got it or don't" is a good way to dissuade people from trying, or at least only trying a little and giving up, having come to the conclusion that they don't have the innate talent.
The bottom line is, I think people know that true geniuses are few and far between and that the bell curve means that most of us are going to be "average" at most things. But that doesn't mean that without some hard work you cannot get to "satisfyingly above average". And frankly there's nothing wrong with that!
The Dalai Lama once remarked, ''No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training, we can change; we can transform ourselves'' (1998). Ok, he may have been talking about Buddhism but it holds the same weight in all walks of life.
Support for the 10-year rule may be found in the expertise (or eminence) hypothesis presented by Piirto (2004), that ''every field and domain of knowledge in which creativity can be demonstrated has novice levels, apprenticeship levels, expert levels, and special jargons''.
According to Chase and Simon (1973b), no one can become an international chess master without devoting themselves to at least one decade of intensive practice to develop ''chess playing excellence''.
The 10-year rule is also bolstered by the work of Csikszentmihalyi (1996), specifically regarding the 'incubation' phase of creativity. He argues that it is impossible ''for a person who has not mastered a domain or been involved in a field'' to take full advantage of the incubation phase. He implies that a certain amount of the patterns, knowledge and rules of a field like physics must be 'internalized' before deeper incubation can occur or creative, scientific breakthroughs be made. In other words, a discoverer must be familiar with a discipline for deeper creative solutions to emerge. But hey, I'm familiar with golf! Where the hell is my moment of clarity?
''Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill'' (Shinichi Suzuki, inventor of the international Suzuki method of music education).
It’s obvious that 10,000 hours or any amount of BAD practice will get you nowhere. The crux to understanding the value of the 10,000 hour research is this: During 10,000 hours of ORDINARY practice you will probably achieve enough DEEP PRACTICE to reach mastery. 10,000 is just a typical number of hours it takes to get enough HIGH QUALITY practice. If you were to work at high quality, deep practice continually, the number would probably be a lot less, maybe as low as 1000 hours.
Here's an example of one person who is putting the 10k theory to the test.
It's a pretty interesting journey this man is taking. 10,000 hours of practice (6 hours a day, 6 days a week for 6 years) starting from the hole backwards, working his way to become a "professional" golfer.
Obviously to all of us this is an absolute dream, as he mentions many times on his site, but just the experiment part of it is pretty impressive too.
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| ''Just taaaaap it in'' |
Dan McLaughlin, a 30-year-old professional photographer from Oregon, decided to put the theory to the test, and committed himself to 10,000 hours of mastering golf — to the point of hoping to become a PGA golf champ. McLaughlin, who never picked up a golf club in his life, calls his endeavour ''The Dan Plan.''
Check it out here
Noteworthy to mention is that he never says 'I think I'll be a PGA tour pro after 10,000 hours'. Dan remarked, ''I want to test the 10,000 theory and see where it takes me. I chose golf because I had zero experience, so it seemed like the perfect test.''
The delusion that 10,000 hours of practice is the only thing that is different between us and those teeing up at Muirfield or anywhere, bothers a lot of people. Many people may do something for 10,000 hours, such as driving a car over the course of a lifetime, but never get anywhere near expert level, such as Formula One. Most will probably plateau and some may even
get worse.
So, again, how long would it take to reach the 10,000-hour threshold? If you were to spend an average of 40 hours a week working on a chosen pursuit, that's at least 2,000 hours a year. So it would take about five years to become 'a leader in the field'. For those that start their pursuit as children have a head start and an advantage - plenty of time to get those 10,000 hours in. So McLaughlin’s experiment could be instructive, and hopeful for many, as he started his pursuit a little later in life. I for one will be interested in seeing how he progresses.
What have you done today that has taken you one step closer to your goal? Is it really a goal or is it just a dream?
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''Practice makes the master'' ~ Patrick Rotfuss, The Name of the Wind
