Comments on: Practice Failing Until The Day You Can Fly. Lessons Learned From The Wright Brothers. http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2009/06/02/practice-failing-until-the-day-you-can-fly/ Writing, Self-Publishing, Print-on-Demand, Internet Sales and Marketing...for your book Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:44:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Mary Nelson http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2009/06/02/practice-failing-until-the-day-you-can-fly/comment-page-1/#comment-1074 Mary Nelson Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:06:03 +0000 http://www.thecreativepenn.com/?p=1968#comment-1074 We under-represent the amount of practice it takes to achieve mastery, especially when we're trying to teach mature adults. In the workplace, due to so-called cost control, most training ends up becoming a short event, which I've often called "spray and pray", in which a so-called expert spews forth and recipients are passive listeners. We pray that some of what is taught sticks. That is definitely NOT the way to achieve mastery whatsoever, even though it's the model that has been used in many collegiate environments. The real work takes place outside the classroom, if at all, when the individual applies the knowledge and practices those skills that were presented. I work in the field of workforce education and training, and I don't know where Gladwell got his 5,000 hour number. According to Dan Coyle, in his terrific book entitled The Talent Code, the number of hours it takes to master something is 10,000. Whatever the number, however, it's clear that mastery involves very specific types of deep learning, in which feedback and constant, small corrections are key to enhanced performance over numerous repetitions. You know what the old saw about how someone gets to Carnegie Hall... Turns out it's true for pretty much anything you want to be good at, including writing. We under-represent the amount of practice it takes to achieve mastery, especially when we’re trying to teach mature adults. In the workplace, due to so-called cost control, most training ends up becoming a short event, which I’ve often called “spray and pray”, in which a so-called expert spews forth and recipients are passive listeners. We pray that some of what is taught sticks. That is definitely NOT the way to achieve mastery whatsoever, even though it’s the model that has been used in many collegiate environments. The real work takes place outside the classroom, if at all, when the individual applies the knowledge and practices those skills that were presented.

I work in the field of workforce education and training, and I don’t know where Gladwell got his 5,000 hour number. According to Dan Coyle, in his terrific book entitled The Talent Code, the number of hours it takes to master something is 10,000.

Whatever the number, however, it’s clear that mastery involves very specific types of deep learning, in which feedback and constant, small corrections are key to enhanced performance over numerous repetitions. You know what the old saw about how someone gets to Carnegie Hall… Turns out it’s true for pretty much anything you want to be good at, including writing.

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