Anders Ericsson, a professor in psychology and Robert Pool, a science writer have teamed up wonderfully to put together three decades of research in the science of expertise into this book. Across nine chapters they cover several facets surrounding the process of learning, focussing on debunking common myths and introducing the techniques of 'deliberate practice'.

A lot of Ericsson's work is based on his own experiments, studying extraordinary athletes, chess players, pianists, and memory mavens. The book presents several studies of such elite performers, and by getting into the heads of these performers and understanding their training techniques, the secrets to their abilities are unlocked. Ericsson breaks down the common fallacy, that such elites are bestowed by some innate abilities or special genes. He focusses heavily on conveying to readers that in fact such talents are accessible to all us, and that we all have a choice.

After describing common learning paths people take in to achieve somewhat ordinary results, he introduces us to 'deliberate practice' a technique to harness the adability of the brain to supercharge abilities in almost any skill. Deliberate practice focusses on having defined outcomes, overcoming homeostatis, maintaining motivation, and then on building mental representations. With mental representations being the key separator from good versus great performers in any discipline. Within expert performers it is the quality and quantity of their mental representations that sets them apart. Great soccer players, can often predict what will happen next, and position themselves accordingly. Chess grandmasters, are often experts at blind-folded chess.

In one analysis of the brains of London cabbies, Ericsson describes how it was discovered that certain parts of their brain in the hippocampus region had grown. However, while they had developed detailed maps and paths of obscure locations in London, it was disheartening to discover that at the same time their abilities in other cognitive areas may have deteriorated. In this way, he reveals that honing your skills in one area may detract from formerly developed skills or memories you may have possessed.

Throughout the book, Ericsson and Pool go to great strides to distill the knowledge and learnings from their studies and investigations to inspire readers to adopt 'deliberate practice'. Regardless of age or IQ we are encouraged to push the boundaries in our areas of choosing. Whithout hesistation, after completing the last chapter, I began my deliberate practice. Thank you, Ericsson and Pool!

Myths debunked:

• 10,000 hour rule
• We have unlimited RAM
• Some people are born with innate abilities

Principles of 'deliberate practice':

• First, find a good teacher this could also be a book or some other resource
• Have a concrete skill or ability you would like to improve
• Engagement, natural curiosity/interest
• Getting past plateaus
• Get lots of feedback, it could be feedback from self analysis. Write notes, or discuss your observations with others.
• Be extremely focussed on the skill when you are doing, be highly observant of your thinking and techniques you employ.
• Analyse your mistakes and deficiencies and come up with tactics to overcome them. For example, if you always confuse a pair of characters in Chinese, work hard to distinguish, perhaps come up with pneumonics to do so.
• Maintain motivation

Notable exerpts:

• When learning a new skill unused areas of the brain can be rewired to to serve the new learnings, however if you practice something enough, your brain will repurpose neurons to help with the task even if they are already have another job to do.
• Challening 'Homoeostasis'. To make real improvements we must challenge the tendency of our systems to act in a way which maintains its own stability. Which is well know in physical activities. However, it takes a significant amount of work and not always the enjoyable type of work to get out of homeostatisis.
• Connections between neurons can also be strengthen to inrease the speed of nerve signals, Ericsson purports this speed increase can by as much as 10 times.
• Musicians have more grey (or white?) matter.

Chapter Headings:

• Chapter 1: The Power of Purposeful Practice
• Chapter 2: Harnessing Adaptability
• Chapter 3: Mental Representations
• Chapter 4: The Gold Standard
• Chapter 5: Principles of Deliberate Practice on The Job
• Chapter 6: Principles of Deliberate Practice in Everyday Life
• Chapter 7: The Road to Extraordinary
• Chapter 8: But What About Natural Talent?
• Chapter 9: Where Do We Go From Here?

Excerpts

• If you don't know much about the sport, then all the details you read are essentially a bunch of unrelated facts, and remembering them is not much easier than remembering a list of random words. - For this reason try to read more constructed pieces. Periodicals over the newspaper.

Notes

• To achieve peak performance an area, you must choose an area with objective criteria for superior performance. If this is not possible sometimes in the cases of knowledge work, you can create your own criteria, even a subjective criteria could be useful.
• To judge the performance of an individual in knowledge work, the best way is to get a cross-reference from someone in the area, preferably someone with type of experience and knowledge to judge one professional as being better than another.
• A professional in their field is always prepared with contingencies for many situations.
• See page 198 for notes on language learning in adults.