Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

This book makes both these arguments. The theory behind "Peak" is that we must pursue a particular type of practice to get better at our chosen activity, and that it's possible to rival experts in specialized fields like sport, music, medicine, or chess, given the right conditions and approach. The authors back up their ideas by drawing on decades of psychological and scientific research, and by providing case studies of talented individuals, and they give readers a roadmap they can follow to get better at what they do.

The main message is uplifting – we can take charge of our own potential and achieve more than we thought we were capable of. We don't need to aspire to be geniuses but, by setting goals, getting feedback, learning from our mistakes, and following in the footsteps of experts, we can significantly improve our performance. And we can apply better techniques in business, coaching, education, and parenting, to help other people develop new skills, stay motivated, and reach expert status.

So who's this book for? "Peak" has an incredibly broad appeal. It's for anyone who wants to get better at something, or who wants to coach or train someone else to improve his or her performance. So it's relevant to leaders and managers who want to increase their team members' expertise or boost their productivity. And it's also for sportspeople, educators, coaches, and parents, who want to know how to help others reach great heights.

Author Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist, has spent decades studying the psychology of expertise and the secrets of star performers in fields including music, sport, chess, medicine, and memory, and is widely recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in this field. He's the Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University.

Co-author Robert Pool is a respected science and technology writer. "Peak" is a joint effort but it's Ericsson's story and is written in the first person.

So keep listening to learn how to practice in the right way, why learning by doing is best, and how to stay motivated as you pursue a new skill.

If you're interested in the science of expertise and performance, you may have come across Ericsson's work before. Books like Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" have popularized his research on practice and expertise, and many other writers have referred to it.

So "Peak" covers familiar territory, despite the mention of "secrets" in its subtitle. But we think there's great value in reading Ericsson's research first-hand and in its most accurate form.

"Peak" begins by describing the wrong sort of practice, explaining why that maxim "practice makes perfect" can be misleading. Typically, when we learn a new skill like playing tennis, driving or writing code, we first learn the basics from a teacher, coach, book, or website. We then practice until we reach an acceptable level and the skill becomes automatic.

We sometimes assume that doing something repeatedly means we must be getting better at it. But the authors call this "naïve practice," because repeating an action doesn't necessarily lead to improvement. In fact, a medic with 20 years of experience may be a worse doctor than someone who qualified five years ago. That's because skills that become automated tend to stagnate, and even deteriorate, without targeted efforts to improve them.

The authors say "purposeful practice" is a much better approach. Here, we define specific goals, breaking down a broad objective into the tiny steps we need to take to get there. Purposeful practice also involves feedback, and it requires getting out of your comfort zone and doing something you never thought you could do. Finally, if you hit a brick wall and can't figure out the way forward, purposeful practice involves coming at the challenge from a different angle.

Purposeful practice can be highly effective, but the best method of learning – the gold standard, according to the authors – is "deliberate practice."

Deliberate practice shares many traits with purposeful practice, but it's only for specific fields – it only applies to areas in which star performers have reached levels of expertise that far surpass those of novices. We're talking about activities like playing a musical instrument, ballet dancing, playing chess, or taking part in individual or team sports, especially sports like gymnastics, diving, or figure skating, where participants are scored individually.

Activities where there's little or no direct competition don't qualify for deliberate practice – these include hobbies like gardening, or jobs like being an electrician or a teacher. There's no objective criteria for top performance in these areas, so purposeful practice applies.

Deliberate practice develops skills that others have already perfected, which means effective training models exist. Usually, a teacher or coach who's familiar with how top performers learn is on hand at the start, to design and supervise a training program that follows in the footsteps of the masters. This leads to targeted goals, constant feedback, and adjustments in response to the feedback. In short, a cycle of focus, feedback and fix.

More experienced practitioners must learn to monitor their own progress, spot mistakes, and modify their efforts accordingly. To do this, they need to visualize the ideal way to carry out a task and strive to achieve this. They need to recognize and memorize facts, images, patterns, rules, and relationships that will help them respond quickly to new information, solve problems, and achieve their goals.

The authors call this creating mental representations or mental maps. Take master chess players as an example. They store up mental maps of the relationships between chess pieces and patterns of movement on the board. This helps them think ahead and outwit their opponents. The more expert the performer in any field, the more sophisticated his or her mental maps will be. This idea is similar to the concept of mental models that Charles Duhigg explores in "Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive." You can listen to a Book Insight podcast about that book on the Mind Tools site.

Finally, deliberate practice is true to its name – it's deliberate, requiring your full attention and concentration, and it's generally not enjoyable, since you are constantly asked to move beyond your comfort zone.

We like the way the authors set out these three types of practice, and stress it's not how much we practice that matters but, rather, how we practice – it's quality not quantity that counts.

So, how can we apply the concepts of purposeful or deliberate practice to our busy work lives? Let's take a look at the authors' suggestions, which they draw from Top Gun, the training academy for U.S. fighter pilots featured in the Tom Cruise movie.

Coaching and consultancy are fashionable. Countless individuals and training companies are queuing up to give us advice. Our businesses invite experts in to lead us through PowerPoint presentations, or sell us their training videos or manuals. We often find ourselves sitting in seminars taking notes. But there's a big difference between knowledge and skills, and we learn best by doing, just like Top Gun's pilots.

The elite fighter pilots engage in air-to-air combat against one another, pushing themselves and their aircraft to the limit. But instead of missiles and bullets, they carry cameras on board to film the action. After the dogfights, trainers grill the pilots about what they saw when they were up in the air, what went wrong, and how they could do things differently, using the films as learning material. The next day, the pilots take those lessons into account when they fly. This method has dramatically improved performance.

We can apply this approach in our business lives, to create a practice-driven mindset. We can use role-play to simulate a face-to-face sales meeting with a new client, video it, play it back, get feedback from the top salespeople in the company, modify our behavior, then do it again. We can ask expert project managers, IT consultants, or accountants to observe their thought processes and actions and write down how they perform certain tasks, so we can understand their mental maps. We can then share this information with our teams and simulate real-life business interactions.

We can make sure employees get immediate feedback on their performance, either from a mentor or from a well-designed computer program. The key is to look for opportunities to turn our normal business tasks into opportunities for practice. This kind of interactive training has proved hugely effective in the field of medicine, the authors say, and in other types of workplace too.

We like the way the authors show how their theories can be applied in much more mundane environments than the Top Gun academy or an operating theater. This makes "Peak" more applicable to our everyday lives, although we'd have liked more examples from the business world.

As you heard earlier, deliberate practice requires total concentration and it isn't fun, so how do we keep going? Surely the star performers amongst us have innate willpower, right? Wrong. The authors argue there's no genetic explanation for strong willpower and it's damaging to think there is. It gives us an excuse to give up. Instead, we need to be aware of the things that sap our motivation and those that spur us on.

One way to reduce the chance of giving up is to turn practice into a daily habit, which you do at a certain time each day. First thing in the morning works well for many people but, if you're not a morning person or your morning schedule is full, choose a time that fits with the rhythms of your body and the demands of your life.

The key is to ringfence this time. This creates a sense of duty. If you promise yourself you'll practice something every day, you'll feel bad if you don't. It's also important to limit distractions. So if you can, put your phone in the other room and turn off your email. Get enough sleep, eat well, and limit practice sessions to one hour before you take a break. If we follow these tips, we'll be better able to fight the urge to give up, the authors say.

It's also important to recognize the factors that keep our enthusiasm up. Firstly, we need a real desire to get better at something or develop a new skill, and a belief we can do it. This is intrinsic motivation – it comes from within. Praise and support from others will help increase our extrinsic motivation, which comes from outside ourselves. So hang out with people who encourage you and challenge you to go further.

You might also want to become part of a group of people who are developing the same skill or striving for the same goal. Seek out colleagues in your workplace who are looking to improve their public speaking, report writing, or IT skills. You can share goals and be accountable to one another. And make sure you celebrate every time you meet one of your targets.

There's nothing hugely original in the authors' tips on motivation, but knowing they're backed up by decades of research into expert performance and effective training methods gives them extra clout. We think they'll prompt some readers to make changes and find fresh motivation.

Ericsson's credibility is this book's primary strength. He's dedicated his working life to the psychology of practice. The book's weak point is the fact that other authors have already published many of its findings. Gladwell, for example, popularized the idea that it takes "10,000 hours" to gain expertise at something, citing Ericsson's research into the number of hours that Berlin violinists practiced their craft – although the authors of "Peak" say Gladwell misinterpreted and over-simplified the data.

The impression is that Ericsson has arrived late to the party, despite organizing the party and sending out the invitations himself. The tone of this book is also more academic, and therefore less accessible, than others in a similar vein, although the authors do a good job of keeping the readers' interest. We particularly like the research showing how the brains of London taxi drivers expand to fit in huge chunks of new information as they memorize the city's streets for a test known as "The Knowledge."

Stories like this make "Peak" very readable and we're happy to recommend the book, despite the fact there's nothing groundbreaking in it. Ericsson is a master researcher and it's valuable to hear his own interpretation of his data.

"Peak" is also an excellent motivator. It debunks the idea that natural talent and innate willpower determine success, and it's persuasive in its argument that everyone has a shot at greatness, if they do the right sort of practice.

"Peak," by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, is published by The Bodley Head, part of Penguin Random House.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.