A Cocktail Party Summary of How to Go from Good to Great
If I were at a cocktail party with only a few minutes to explain the process of how to go from good to great at anything, I would use Anders Ericsson’s research. Ericsson, who passed away at the age of 72 in June, was known as the expert on how to become an expert. He was a renowned cognitive psychologist, and the author of the seminal book on going from good to great, Peak. What’s more, his “10,000 hours” research is the defacto rule of thumb for the time it takes to be great.
The Research
Ericsson’s research shows that there are only two ways to become great at anything. The first way is using deliberate practice. He states:
Deliberate practice is a very specialized form of practice. You need a teacher or coach who assigns practice techniques designed to help you improve on very specific skills. That teacher or coach must draw from a highly developed body of knowledge about the best way to teach these skills. And the field itself must have a highly developed set of skills that are available to be taught.
The second way is using what Ericsson calls purposeful practice based on studying expert performers. Purposeful practice is the process of using a progression to reach a long term skill goal. However, instead of just picking a random skill, you study the best of the best first to understand the skills you need to be the best. Ericsson states:
first, identify the expert performers, then figure out what they do that makes them so good, then come up with training techniques that allow you to do it, too.
Finally, since Ericsson is the father of the 10,000 hours rule of thumb, you can’t forget his research on the time it takes to be great. While his 10,000 hours rule gets all the hype, it’s really just a side note. The specific number is not as important as the message. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be great at anything. Ericsson concludes in his research that:
you generally find that the best performers are those who have spent the most time in various types of purposeful practice…
…By now it is safe to conclude from many studies on a wide variety of disciplines that nobody develops extraordinary abilities without putting in tremendous amounts of practice. I do not know of any serious scientist who doubts that conclusion.
The Summary
With this in mind, the cocktail party summary of how to go from good to great is this…
You can only go from good to great using two methods. Either you find a coach who is an expert at teaching the specific skills one needs to be great. Or, you use research to identify the training techniques you need to perform the specific skills that make great performers great. Then you progressively practice those techniques until you can do them as well as the great performers.
Next, you must invest a tremendous amount of time in the chosen method. Specifically, the research shows on average it will take 10,000 hours of practice. It doesn’t matter if you have coaching or train on your own. The more time you invest, the greater chance you will have at reaching the threshold of what it takes to be great.