Reading Practice

I’m reading currently a book called ”How to read a book?” by Mortimer J Adler and Charles van Doren. I have just started it but I talked about it in the office the other day. One of my colleagues said that one way to read a book is to first read the table of contents and the read the first page of every chapter. This post is an experience report on what can I learn by using a different reading strategy. This blog post will act also as platform for my thoughts when I read my target book. It was inspired by Erik Brickarp's blog post on taking notes.

The first pages of  “How to read a book?” book states that there are two ways to learn from books: to illicit information, and to understand the book.  My goal here is to run this exercise to illicit information. I choose a book called “Being logical” by D.Q. McInerny as my target book.

Preface

I decided to read the preface to be more in tune with what is going to be written about the subject. Forewords usually try to tell the reason behind why the book is written and to inspire the reader to go on. So when I got to the end of page 1, I decided to go on.

I had read the first paragraph of the book earlier (doesn’t count as cheating) and didn’t continue because of eldritch terms and words. Having read the preface, I the realized they will be explained. The book says it will concentrate to leave as little room for assumptions as possible thus trying to be explicit rather than implicit. Also it is not a text book for a class but a practical guide. This made me interested even more.

The preface addresses the structure of the book. It seems to be in five parts; each part building on the previous one. I’m interested if the parts contain what they were supposed to contain. The first part is told to be preparatory, the second one to lay the foundations, the third one to the meat and potatoes of thinking logically, fourth part discusses attitudes and fifth discusses fallacies. I know that I am fallacious, even more than regular people, so it is interesting to see what can I learn about myself while reading.

The table of contents

First thing that came to mind was that never before have I really read through the table of contents. This is the first time I really look into them. I usually skip the pages altogether to get cracking with the reading. Truth be told, I was quite excited to see how the table of contents was structured. It felt like a story was already told with the items on the list.

I pretty soon realized that every chapter had 8-30 sub chapters. Each chapter was about 1-5 pages long. I was starting to question my decision to read only first page from each chapter. For most of the sub chapters it would get the whole chapter done already. So I decided to read only the first *subchapter* of each chapter. They were, according to the table of content, almost always the introduction or foundation for the chapter.

Also I noticed that as for this book, it makes a great checklist for practicing critical thinking. By looking into the titles of each sub chapter, you would get a coherent guide to practice logical thinking. I could create a powerful mindmap out of those and print it on my cubicle wall. (And I will share it with you! Tadaa!)

Feel free to print this also!

Also this was a great stage to look for words and phrases you don’t understand that are essential to the understanding the content of the chapter. “Syllogistic”, “agnosticism”, “antecedent”, “equivocation”, “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc” and “expediency” were new to me. Now that I checked them, I know better.

1st Part – Preparing the Mind for the Logic

I tackled it with my usual gusto; get cracking with it and read it again if I need to. And again I needed to read it twice for me to understand the message. I think I shouldn’t as this type of reading is just to get information. Sadly I didn’t /read/ it, I skimmed it. And after the second reading, I realized that the first sub chapter was exactly about that: Paying attention. And I had to pay, for it took my time and time is money. The book encourages you to listen instead of hearing, to see instead of looking. It gives great insight to the foundation of logical behavior.

The table of contents told that topics like “Effective Communication” and “Truth” were in latter parts of the chapter. This is the problem of this kind of quick reading, I see interesting stuff and I don’t want to stop reading. But I must refrain from reading more as I was to read this thing quickly, so on to the next chapter.

2nd Part – The Basic Principle of Logic

At this point, the technique I chose was beginning to bother me. I did read it fast, but this was only a glimpse of what it could have been. The principles could have been more thoroughly read but I chose to stick to my plan. The 1st subchapter was about the first principle of logic. Before the 1st subchapter was a brief piece of text regarding logic as three separate but linked entities; as science, as art and as skill. This did raise some questions, but I think they will be answered if I read the book with thought.

The first subchapter tries to focus on practical side of things. The theory will be discussed elsewhere, but I was intrigued by the the notion of reading even more about the theory of logic. This subchapter proved some examples which clarify the link between logic and human reasoning. Again I was tempted to read on, but managed to jump to the next chapter.

3rd part – Argument: The Language of Logic

The subchapter was about founding an argument. I did have some experience in the practical side of forming an argument, as I had been practicing that with Michael Bolton on Skype, so I knew the elements to build an argument. Those were “premise” and “conclusion”. With the help of examples the book showed some good uses of supporting and supported arguments, giving me a good ground to build upon – in fact just like the preface promised.

As this on itself might have been a good starting point to a person not knowing anything about logic and was just seeking a quick 15 minutes intense session on logic, this only made me hungrier to read through the whole chapter. I noticed that, if not the writing style or the content, my eagerness to read on was huge. I had to struggle every time to quit reading further.

4th part – The Sources of Illogical Thinking

I was a bit taken aback with the concept of writing about things that made you illogical. When writing about negative stuff some might absorb the “bad habits” instead of seeing them as negative. After reading the subchapter, I felt that it only made me stronger thinker and I was trying to spot those weaknesses – you might say - and try to find ways to mitigate them.

Skepticism was the topic of the first subchapter and it was really informative. It gave insight on selective skepticism and to behavioral skepticism – and gave some concrete examples. I began to think immediately about exercises I could to using skepticism in my coaching. I may have already done that but unintentionally. Not I could be even better at forming an argument. The book made some examples about damaging skepticism but tried to enforce the power of healthy doubt – doubt as a catalyst for learning.

5th part – The Principal Forms of Illogical Thinking

This 5th part was about fallacies. They were explained to be the typical patters people do/use to act illogically and to build illogical arguments. Usually fallacies appeal to emotions so they are more powerful than sound logic. Again by recognizing the patterns I might be better at building an argument that is based on sound logic.

The lure of using a fallacious argument is high, because it might be quicker and more effective than using sound logic. Even though you’re right and have a sound logic behind the conclusion, basing that on fallacious argument is almost never a good thing – it might bite you back when you least expect it. I had read something about the fallacies so this area in particular was really tempting.
Afterword
The afterword was a good reflection through the book. They stressed the concentration when arguing so you focus on using your logic in building an argument.  I rarely read the afterword as I see no input to the meat and potatoes of the text. I did realize that the afterword did provide a fresh view to the book as a whole. It might even be effective to read the afterword /before/ starting to read the book itself as it can provide a fresh view to the book before trying to tackle the reading.

About the exercise

After having done the exercise, I feel it was a good practice. I might use it again but with a twist – I will write up questions about the first page/subchapter to a piece of paper and try to answer those questions as I read on. In that way not only will I illicit information, I will begin to understand the meaning of things.

The exercise was good fun as the text was close to my liking – it wasn’t a textbook but a guide, the topic was near to me, and it was short enough – so the exercise was a bit easy. It was good for a first experiment to this kind of reading, but I need to make this process more efficient. I might even learn more about this type of “stub skimming” (if there is no word for this type of reading, let it be that).

So right now the process goes like this:

1. Choose a book to your liking (any book will do)
2. Read the table of content
3. Read the preface
4. Read the first page of every chapter
5. Read the afterword

On every step, make notes and questions about the content
If there are fundamental questions about the content, read on and find the answer.

Thoughts

This is just one way to read. This is more like giving an indication of what the book is about. This is not used to understand to book but to have some knowledge of what there might be if you’d read on. This is a good way to tackle a book on before you read it thoroughly, because you already have questions about the content. On the time you re will systematically read it through (or parts of it) might be significantly faster and make it easier to understand.

Now I need to continue reading the book about reading a book. I think I will use this technique to give me a head start.

Motivation 3.0

After reading the Talent-book by Jeoff Colvin I had a hole in my mind that needed filling. Why does a person embark on a grueling adventure of deliberate practice? What drives you to excel? Poof! (Somehow the poofing got into my writing, but I can’t fathom why…) In came the Drive, a book by Daniel H. Pink about motivation. Mr. Colvin was quite vague about motivation (or the focus was more on what and how instead of why) so I made a decision to skip the motivation part and go deeper in a future post.

Now that I have read (and somewhat understood) the Drive I feel like I can make a contribution and share some of the secrets about “what motivates us”. The deliberate practice (of which mr. Pink also talks in his book) is fuelled by motivation: If we really want to do something, we can do it. “But why?” Hold on, I’ll share some of what I have learned. (This is not a book review but interpretation about motivation using the book as guide.)

A little history about motivation: When we were cavemen, Neanderthals or Finnish ski-jumpers, we had a drive (the book calls it Motivation 1.0). That was the need to feed, drink and f…. reproduce – the drive to survive. “Hey look! we survived!” And that motivation served us to get by, to fight cougars and wolverines, to eat nutritious food. But as humans developed the Motivation 1.0 did not serve us properly; we needed something more to motivate us. We needed upgrade to the Motivation 1.0 to motivate us to do our job. The second basic drive that motivates us is the extrinsic motivators: rewards and punishment, carrot and stick, etc. The book calls it Motivation 2.0; the upgraded way to operate and motivate us. It served us well with basic-straightforward –repetitive tasks like assembly line or the like. The system awarded us from good behavior and punished us from bad behavior. The managers of that time thought they could use incentives like bonuses to motivate people to do their bidding. And people did… when their jobs were “basic-straightforward –repetitive”. Nowadays the menial tasks have been automated and people are moving towards problem solving, innovative, creative jobs that are hard if not impossible to automate. The Motivation 2.0 doesn’t support that kind of work. In fact it may result in unwanted behavior and to diminish the wanted behavior. And how many managers and companies have seen this?

The DRIVE introduces a third drive that is called Motivation 3.0. It is the intrinsic motivation that we all have. A person that responds to intrinsic motivation may not respond well to extrinsic motivation. The book uses example from children’s play.

If a group of children are asked to paint or draw, they all draw. Kids love painting! But then half of the children are told that they can get a reward from drawing. What happens is that they all draw for a moment but the rewarded children are less likely to continue drawing after they get the reward as the children that were not awarded continue drawing like they used to. The award turns play into work. And that de-motivates us.

There are however some ways to get “carrot and stick” working to increase out motivation. The “if-then” reward may cause a moment’s burst in motivation and efficiency but they are prone to do down very quickly. “If-then” reward may lead into addiction (as in “I won’t do the same task for the same money anymore” or “I want TWO candies to take out the trash”) or suppress the wanted behavior. When used as a “now that” award it can sometimes encourage a person to create an intrinsic motivation to reach the possible award. For example an Olympic runner has a set of goals (to beat personal best, country top ten, etc.) instead of just one; the Olympic gold medal. They may try to reach that goal but they aren’t looking the medals as “If-then” but “now that” reward. The same drive, well, drives us forward in our work and personal life. We tend to seek goals that are fuelled by intrinsic motivation and steer away from extrinsic motivation (or at least most of us do). In most of us there is both kind of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic, but what makes us most tick is the inner drive to accomplish something, not what others want or tell us to be.

Daniel H. Pink has studied the field of human motivation and cites numerous studies from psychology and economics in his book. He has narrowed down the intrinsic motivation into three main elements that make the intrinsic motivation work: Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those are not elements that Motivation2.0 willingly supports or acknowledges.

Autonomy

We people have the need for autonomy, need to be free. Nobody WANTS to be… ermmm….. not-free. The managerial style that supports extrinsic motivation focuses on compliance (“Do as you are told”). Instead the intrinsic motivation focuses on engagement. With autonomy people are able to engage into their job and be more satisfied in it. The old style world says “People need to be managed” but in truth (on a number of studies show) that people need autonomy to shine. Autonomy over Tasks, Time, Technique and Team (4T) invokes the inner motivation and boosts our performance, get us into FLOW! Companies like Google, Atlassian, etc. are great examples of autonomy.

Even though autonomy motivates us it needs to be well thought of. For example autonomy should be a perk that encourages people to CHOOSE some of the things they do, CHOOSE the time they do it (at least on some level), CHOOSE the way they do it (in the frame of what is accepted or tolerated) and CHOOSE who they work with.

Atlassian shows a good example of autonomy over tasks. They hold a “FedEx day” every quarter. The “FedEx day” comes from “delivery overnight” and it basically means that people can choose ANY task they like (a problem waiting to be solved, an innovative idea) and they have one day to make it work. In the noon of the next day they all have to present their product, solution, whatever to other co-workers. This sprouted some of the most innovative things they’ve done. The problem was that they only had 24 hours in a quarter to do it. So they changed it into 20% of all working time. This “20% time” is now where innovation happens.

Where Atlassian excels at Task autonomy, companies like Best Buy, Meddius, F-secure, etc. excel at autonomy over time. “When people don’t just show up and grind through their day they’ll be more productive.” Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, says: “Nothing is more important to my success than controlling my own schedule.” Autonomy over time gives you the freedom to do things when you are on your most productive state, in the FLOW. Monitoring is again needed but trust also motivates people; trust that they will show up and do their work.

Autonomy over technique is the corner stone of craftsmen. Take art for example where new techniques are found every day. There would not be Monet’s pointillism technique if he had not the autonomy over technique he uses. If people are forced to obey the rules by which method they work, they tend to be unhappy. If exploratory testing would be forbidden in where I work it rules out so much testing done and so many techniques I use, I couldn’t do my work efficiently. The choice over HOW I do the things I do is for me the most important aspect (as you can see from “Best Practices (NOT!)”).

Autonomy over team is probably the most difficult one to achieve. Some companies have done their share in team-wise autonomy by letting the workers into the recruiting process. For example, F-secure Corp. has an additional step on in the recruitment process which includes a team interview. All candidates get a chance to meet the team and mingle a bit. Then the team says their opinion about the guy and a decision is made. Other companies (like Whole Foods) have removed their executives from the hiring process and let the team members do the hiring. Then after 30 days trial time they can decide to “keep ‘em” or “lose ‘em”.

Other form of autonomy over teams is the free time activity with the co-workers. The autonomy over team presents itself with off-time clubs and sports teams that the workers put together. After being made the social connection to people it is easier to communicate even with harder issues in the work place. After you have a choice of the people you work (or play) with the work has more meaning and is more fluent.

Even though autonomy is a hard biscuit to swallow, companies eventually move towards autonomy. Though some managers still think people are from the same mold as they came in the 1910’s we all strive towards freedom. If we weren’t there would be no companies like Google or Zappo’s. And by giving people more choice over the four T’s (Tasks, Time, Technique and Team) they just might perform better and be more creative than their counterparts that are forced to comply instead of engaging.

Mastery

Motivation 3.0 allows us to be more engaged in what we do. Instead of complying other people strict rules we seek to accomplish goals that are closer to us and thus being more close to the subject we work with. Engagement has also this weird way of encouraging towards mastery. By getting closer to the subject we find a need to better ourselves in doing the thing we do. E.g. by being allowed to program without the boss breathing to your neck, one just might find an innovative solution to a problem. Mastering our jobs motivates us to do our jobs better.

I already had a few words about getting better at what you do (in my post "Why top performers are top performers") but mastering is a motivating thing as well. There might be no need to motivate you separately to master a field as the prospect of mastery provides the motivation needed.

When people reach a flow in what they do (check out books about the Flow) they usually are more prone to searching mastery. They notice that they can achieve something they do with ease and start increasing the performance and the difficulty little by little. This is what the book calls “Goldilocking”; not doing things that are too easy (they get you bored) or things that are too hard (they get you anxious), but doing things that are “just right”. Jeoff Colvin describes this in three circles inside the other. The outer layer resulted in boredom and the center resulted in anxiety. By staying between boredom and anxiety is the optimal place for achieving mastery (and learning). But it seems that mastery is a fickle thing…

Mastery is a mindset! If you don’t think you can achieve mastery then you probably won’t get it. In the book there was a good example about intelligence and development thereof. If you think about your intelligence as fixed amount of knowledge then your intelligence might not increase from what it is currently. If you think your intelligence as a muscle that you can train it most probably grows. As I described in the performance post, there is nothing preventing you mastering the domain you want except yourself.

Mastery is PAIN! Every single athlete knows that without pain there is no result. Only by repeating the exercises, training programs, etc. can mastery be achieved. There are no shortcuts to mastering a domain only hard work. And to top it all mastery is an asymptote. One can never truly and fully master something as there is always more to learn. That is one of the most appealing things that drive us towards mastery: it is almost impossible to achieve. The fact that full mastery cannot be achieved is both frustrating and alluring and it seems that it is the process of mastering an art that drives us towards it.

Purpose

The third element of intrinsic motivation seems to be a sense of purpose. We rarely do things (and enjoy them) if we don’t know answer to the question “why”. In companies that have large engines of bureaucracy and command chains the purpose of doing something is easily lost. Doing something that “makes no sense” is a serious de-motivator to us using the Motivation 3.0. Companies seek purpose to make their product/service more appealing. Companies support developing countries and thus make a purpose for business; it’s more fun to work if you know that your work has a meaning.

In business world the purpose is something of a nicety; you can live without realizing the full purpose of what you are doing. In the TV-show Friends this guy Chandler is a data analyst who has no idea why he does he does. By realizing the fact that there was no purpose for him to do the job he lost his motivation. If you feel you don’t know why you do something, start asking “Whose purpose is it anyway and what have I got to do with it?” We need to do our work/live our lives to accomplish something and Purpose is “the something”. There are three basic pillars to support the purpose motivator: Goals, Words and Policies.

Goals work as a milestones to purpose. By setting different goals you feel you are accomplishing something even though you have some path to tread until you achieve some bigger goal. By setting both performance goals (getting an A in a math test, reaching your sales quota) and learning goals (being able to understand and apply the math, being able to fully understand the need of a customer) their overall impact on your motivation is optimal. Performance goals support the extrinsic motivation and learning goals build intrinsic motivation. The goals we set pave the way to the purpose and as we strive to reach the goals we move towards our purpose.

Words are fickle. Words can change our way of behavior. Think about vows. If you vow something (like a “I speak the whole truth, etc.”) it sets you a standard, a purpose, to strive to. When things are said out loud they are stamped into our brain as a code of conduct. When a group of Harvard graduates in 2009 saw that the economy is going downhill because of economists and business people cheated or cut corners rather than practice ethical economics, they saw that they could make a chance. They made “the MBA oath” (just like a Hippocratic Oath) to “strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.”

Words are also used to measure our behavior. Listen to your co-workers talk about your company. How many times they use the word “they” to refer to the company instead of “we”? The “we” signifies that the company is coherent and everyone thinks they are in the same ship sailing towards common goal.

Policies are also an aspect of purpose. They overlap a bit with both Goals and Words as they are a part of both. Policies refer to ethics and good manners. Wrong policies can push towards unethical behavior or even discrimination. Let’s say we have a HR policy that goes something like this: “All members of the company should treat each other with respect and kindness.” The atmosphere in the office might just be open and friendly and all conflicts are resolved with a friendly talk. Let’s say if they change the policy into: “Abusing, harassing, bullying, physically or mentally assaulting a co-worker is strictly not allowed with a penalty of a fine. Racist or sexual comments, behavior, writings…” Now that most likely sets the environment not possibly to encourage bad behavior but at least make it more controlled and closed. Policies allow people to pursue the Purpose with their own terms.

Motivation 3.0

The science has known the third, intrinsic drive for many decades and it is researched by many. The business world just hasn’t grasped the Motivation 3.0 yet. The “carrots and sticks” are for cavemen; the new trio is what motivates us today: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

See more about the Drive from http://www.danpink.com/drive.

Why top performers are top performers?

I made some suggestions in twitter about why does certain people have certain skills. Why is Mozart so skillful at composing symphonies? Or why has Bill Gates been able to build such a vast company? I got some interesting answers (“the lack of schooling”), but none of them was what I was looking for. After reading the book “Talent is overrated” (from now on referred at “the book”) by Geoff Colvin I got the answers I needed. The book was inspiration to this text and I encourage everyone to read the book even if you don’t want to be a world class “whatever” (surgeon, tester, manager). I tried to quote everything that was directly from the book


Why top performers are top performers? - They practice.

“Duh?!” you might say because you practice too. Most of us practice testing during some testing dojos or at courses. Some might even practice some during normal work. So how does practice make us top performers? Shouldn’t we all be the top of the game since we all practice to some extent? “I have tested for 20 years and I’m still not top performer. How do you explain that?”

Experience doesn’t count! Most of us work in the field we’re in and are just fine at it. We know the basic thing we need to know to get by with our daily work. The book explains that there is no difference between a new worker and experience worker unless the experienced worker has done practicing during ones career. One is not a master of a certain field with ONLY years of experience, but one needs to master the skills and it usually takes years to hone those skills. “Maybe the top performer was born with the gift. Maybe he was a testing star at birth!”

There are no gifts or talents or whatever. There is no innate talent, says the book and points our years of gene research. We create the talent with dedication and practice. “Ok, but how do you explain that great violinists come from musical families or lawyers come from lawyer families? If they have it in the family how come it’s not innate?” Family has some effect on the skills people accumulate. I will return to it later, but suffice to say now is that there are some environmental factors that help us (or hinder us) in our quest to be better. One might ask whether Michael Bolton or James Bach were testing gurus at birth. As I recall Mr. Bolton was a comedian and Bach was a software developer. Neither probably didn’t test software at the age of six (don’t know but I assume). What they did to be so prestigious was that they honed their skills and became better than most of us.

Nowadays we have higher standards and we need to be more successful than those before. The bar is higher for us to be great. Take science for instance. In the past people like Newton got the status of great physicists quite easily (for our standards) He just explained gravity. “I can explain gravity! Why aren’t I considered a great physicist?” The standard was different for people before us because they had not the access to information we have today. We need to better than those before to be considered great. “Do I need a brain the size of a mountain and memory capacity to match today’s super computers?”

Memory or intelligence has nothing to do with success. High IQ is not a perquisite for being top performer. IQ doesn’t measure critical thinking, emotions (and the ability to use them to our advantage), social skills, honesty, wisdom, etc. Even if you do have very high IQ you might not be a top performer. Look at the membership list for MENSA and count all great performers from the list, then compare it to those that are not members of MENSA. You can have high IQ and be a top performer but it is not required. Same rule applies to memory. Some geniuses (not all top performers are though) forget all kinds of things but are still considered great in their field. What the top performers have what the rest of us don’t is domain knowledge. I’ll return into that a bit later.
“Again: What makes us great?!” If we all practice and increase our knowledge, and only some of us become great, what is it with practice that excludes some of us from greatness? “Am I doing it wrong?”

Well… You probably are. The top performers practiced just like the rest of us but they did it with purpose! They practiced deliberately. And they accumulate domain knowledge in doing so. What we “regular” people see as practice is the things we do to entertain ourselves with domain related things. We might “practice bug hunting” and try a few things and say “Now I practiced the skill. I must be better at it.” You probably ain’t… In fact you just might be worse as you perhaps didn’t know what you were doing and thus did some essential thing the wrong way. You probably did some exercises that you knew you could do or played with software you had played with before.

Deliberate practice is practicing those areas that you are not good at. And doing that systematically! The thing with deliberate practice is planning what you want to achieve and knowing the road to get there. It may not be fun, but getting to the top of the game is not about fun but being the best. A deliberate practice needs to be designed to suit your needs and to hone skills that you’re not good at. Basketball players may shoot hoops in the evening as they know they can do a hoop from three point line. Pro basketball player shoots hoops from half court. If he/her hasn’t the strength he goes to gym and shoots again. And again. And again! Then he/she shoots hoops while moving, etc. In deliberate practice one moves away from comfort zone and practices skills he doesn’t yet master. You cannot learn in your comfort zone but you need to know not to push too hard or you’ll panic and there’s no learning. It is all about increasing the performance of a certain aspect of our domain.

As we all know we might not know what to practice, therefore we do what we know. So we need tutoring. The tutoring provides two things: guide and feedback. The tutor may or may not be a physical person but a goal we aspire to reach. For instance we may look at a video of a guy doing a yoyo trick and look at it closely and try to replicate the trick. Or we could have a coach that guides us during football practice. As in sports and music, we can get tutoring in testing and programming. Tutoring helps us knowing where we want to be and means to get there. We just need a person that is more qualified in some area that we seek to master and get him to coach us. Of course it’s not THAT simple, but we all know the basics of tutoring and coaching. Preferably your tutor is the current best in the field.

Just as much we need guidance we need feedback. At early stages of our lives our parents provide feedback. “That’s a beautiful drawing.” But when we start practicing deliberately we need constructive feedback. Again the source of the feedback need not be a person: you can watch yourself do the yoyo trick from a video also. You can even record yourself shooting hoops, but in the hoops case the ball going to the basket is feedback enough. Tutors provide feedback. We can do some amount of things without systematic feedback but we may learn to do things inefficiently or wrong. In testing the feedback can be bugs. The systematic and good feedback is the kind that makes us find those bugs more efficiently, easier, more, etc.

And when plan is made and feedback is given, you repeat. By repeating you can hone that skill. Masters make things they do look effortless and they may be. They have practiced that skill so much that they no longer have to put all their effort into the basic mechanics of things. They do not, however, automate themselves. The book presents an example of Tiger Woods teeing a golf ball. Someone coughs at the audience and he stops the swing in the mid-motion and starts again. The rest of us just let the swing go to the finish and hope it’s a good one. The masters are so aware of the things that they do that they don’t need to focus on what they do. They focus instead into HOW they do it. They seek flaws in their manners and techniques and practice those skills to do them better. “Where does all this practicing lead?”

The top performers are able to perceive more than the regular people. For example by looking at an X-ray picture a novice might see only the most prominent features and describe them. The top surgeon might see the little details that determine whether the person has cancer or pneumonia or a hidden heart disease. They see more with less looking. They see the subtleties and details possibly ignored or misinterpreted by the rest of us. They uncover hidden things with the same information we have to cover only visible or most prominent things. Top performers understand the significance (or insignificance) of subtleties and details. When bug hunting testers need see things they aren’t looking for. Seeing things you don’t look for and looking for things you don’t see. Deliberate practice helps you perceive more with less information.

It all sounds simple when it is said like this. The book has tons of information about the subtleties of deliberate practicing and many references into practical things. Music, sports, chess. They all have a their intersections with deliberate practicing, even some highly specialized learning techniques to practice in that area. Even business, programming and testing have their own special ways to build skills in domain.

We all still need things that motivate us to practice. The practice in itself may not be motivational so we need things to support the practicing for us to keep doing it. We need a supportive environment to practice. Mommy and daddy were sufficient enough in our childhood with their comment and encouraging, but in business world we need a different support. Some of us don’t have the possibility to have a tutor but still can use the basic methods of deliberate practicing. We can do practicing while we work. The working environment may or may not support you practicing so you need to be able to do deliberate practicing in the midst of the daily labor. “I just said before that I do practice while I work. What are you saying?”

The practicing at work can be done in three parts (and should, might I say): before work, at work, after work. This doesn’t exclude that you can’t stop to think the “after” part during the workday, but all require some thinking and time so before and after work you most likely have enough time to think these things. Before work practicing is setting goals for that day. It’s not about some high level goals like “I’m going to do my best today” but specific goals like “today I’m going to find out why my build fails the first time I commit it every time”. The goal is to produce a working build and to find out why it had failed the previous time. After goal is set you should plan how to get there and you need to be exact! Then during work the key to practicing at work is metacognition (this is also from the book) that is thinking that you think, knowledge about your knowledge. You can study yourself when you do certain activities at work and go through what you really are doing. Then spot any flaws and make corrective measures to succeed in the task. And think what you do! After the work analyze the performance. Use this analysis to increase performance the next time at work (or practice it before hand if possible).

Motivation is a tricky thing to maintain, so I'll delve into it in a separate blog post. What you need to know is that motivation may come from within or without. And it all supports the practice.

All in all: We’re not all going to be super professionals but we all can be! If we truly want to be extraordinary there is a way to be! It takes hard work and dedication, sometimes sacrifices, but a way is free for all of us to be top performers in our chosen field. Just practice deliberately and hone those skills!