Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Psychologist Anders Ericsson on The Science of Expertise

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

Anders Ericsson is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is internationally recognized as a researcher in the psychological nature of expertise and human performance. In This Episode: -His early yearning to understand how knowledge was generated -Seeking a deeper context for learning beyond retaining information -The key to mastering a domain -How his research differs from Malcolm Gladwell's 10k hours rule -Creating “representations” to explore further expertise -The true meaning behind deliberate practice -Difference between expertise and mastery -The ideal method for learning and practice -Applying deliberate practice to less quantifiable facets of life -Whether external rewards are important for motivation_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. So that being said, this conversation is with Anders Ericsson. And Anders is flat out one of the most influential people in the space of researching expertise. And his original research captivated me a long time ago. And he was the primer, if you will, for the very popular Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour coined phrase.

We get into that. We talk about that. We talk about much more in this conversation about the applied structures and ways to think about getting better in the most accelerated way. So his recent book is called Peak Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. And he wrote that with Robert Poole. And really what, if you're unfamiliar with Anders' work, is that he's fascinated with the acquisition and expert performance of deliberate practice. So this is where the 10,000 hours all started. And I hope you enjoy this conversation. He's a rich thinker. He's a

systems thinker. And he really is revealing the way that he's come to understand how the best in the world work. Okay, so I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on this conversation. Hit us up on social and hope you have a fantastic day. With that, let's jump right into this conversation with Anders Ericsson. Anders, how are you? I'm doing really well. I'm sitting here in my office and I'm really looking forward to this chance to talk to you. Me too. And you've had such a contribution in the field of expert performance and skill acquisition and how the brain works and how the mind works and how skill development is

achieved and the difference between talent and skill. And I've followed your work for a long time. And I remember the impact that your original research with Neil, I think it's Charnas, is that how you pronounce his last name? Charnas. Charnas. You know, the original research that I read on extra performance and its structure and acquisition. And I think that was back in like 94 in that range. Correct me if I'm off. No, you're completely correct. And it was just, it was a wonderful piece of research. And so I'm so excited to talk to you about what led you, and I want to go kind of back to earlier part of your

life to see if we can help map in some kind of way the events and the thoughts and the structure of your early life that led you to be one of the best in the world in um you know skill acquisition the the understanding of skill acquisition so can you just bring me back to like what it was like when you're growing up? Well, you know, I mean, it's always a question of how far back one should go. But I think when I was in high school, I wanted to be a nuclear physicist. And I think I've always been really interested in how you can understand things at a level where you can actually do something with the knowledge. And as I was kind of exploring, when I grew up, nuclear physics was sort of like the big frontier.

As I grew up, I kind of realized that maybe there are all these questions about how scientists come up with things that seem to be more interesting to me. I think I've always been really interested in thinking. I remember really rebelling to this idea here that you had to memorize things in high school. What I tended to do in history and other subjects was to go to the library and read two or three books about a certain historical period. And by just trying to understand what was happening, I could basically answer all the factual questions that were going to be on the test. But it avoided basically that idea here of sitting and just memorizing dates that may

or may not be retained. And I think just trying to understand how knowledge was generated, even in science, really has helped me kind of have a deeper understanding here of what is it that people really found and have a way here of integrating now this knowledge. Okay, so Anders, let's go, I love the thought that even at a young age, but I don't know how young we're talking about, was this like middle school, high school? I think high school is probably where it was kind of most pronounced. And so you had this idea that I want to understand versus just retain facts. And what do you think led you to that insight at a young age? related to any way that I felt that I was actually accumulating any knowledge that I could draw on,

you know, and I guess I was sort of fantasizing about trying to do something that would make a difference to somebody. Okay, that's okay. Where did that come from? Well, I think just sort of, you know, sitting there, finding that I was very good at memorizing, but asking now, what's the value here? Could I use this time in a better way to really prepare me for becoming an adult than actually being able to be successful? successful. And I think, you know, that's a little bit some of the kind of implications here of our work that I'm trying now to promote, because it seems to me that it's not clear to me that all the time that students are spending in the current school system is really developing them in an optimal way here for being productive and successful adults. Yeah, I don't know what you know, but I do know what I was going to say before you said that last comment is that in high school,

like it feels like, sounds like, I should say, your high school experience, you were really a focused kid. And it was easy for you to retain information, but you wanted a deeper context. And then you had this other thing that you wanted to help others. Anders, my experience in high school was so different. It was on, and here you and I are in very similar fields. You're, you're, you know, doing much more research than I ever will imagine doing. But we're in the same, I don't know, arena, if you will. And my goodness, our paths were so different. I think you grew up in Sweden. That's correct. And the Swedish high school system is quite different from the American one. I think today, you know, the Swedish system and the American system may have converged,

so they're more similar. But when I grew up, it was basically you had to select here. Either you were going to be a language humanities person or you're going to be sort of a math science person. And I guess I was, you know, had elected pretty much at the start of high school to focus here in on math and science. And, okay, so I don't want to kind of move away from the path that you got to, but this is so interesting right now, which is, if you could design a high school program? Like what would be the main tenants of the structure that you would put in place for young budding minds to be able to learn best? And the reason I'm, I guess what I want to really know is what people that are even out of high school, like what can we do better to learn?

But if we start with that structure from the thought that you generated about high school, how would you structure high school? What would be those core rhythms and or strategies that you put in place? Well, you know, I think in our book we're talking a little bit about, and I think that was always something that really made me interested, was how you could apply and how you could actually use whatever you're getting as a way of enhancing your thinking. And I think, you know, if I could recommend that when it comes to students, you know, during their kind of K through 12 experience, that parents really give them a chance to acquire a reasonably high level of expertise at something.

Because I think, you know, once you can actually help an individual get to a point where they feel confident that they really understand things, so they can actually now start exploring it and personalize it and, you know and own it in a way. And I think that was really the thing that really excited me about my efforts here to do research. I actually even did a little study when I was in high school. I sent out a questionnaire to students to try to understand how their parents' political views might influence their views and what kind of activities that they engaged in here in collecting information about various political events. I thought it was really interesting. I guess once you get that flavor here and sense of confidence that you actually can do something individually, I think that really empowers people and allows them to start a trajectory here to becoming, you know, quite good at something. Okay. So if I hear this right, and I kind of, I'm trying to stitch it

together is that I think the main thing that I'm hearing is that it's important for kids to become good at something. And one of the influences has to do with them finding or choosing or figuring out what they're naturally good at their, their innate talent, if you will. And then it has to do with your research on the political influence of their parents. It has to do with family structure, has a big part to do with it. But how do you take information and then apply it to help others in some later way feels like that's also part of how you would structure the growth arc for people and do i have i feel like i'm i'm missing something and so well my feeling is that what i think we've found by looking at people who eventually become experts is that they you know develop representations and initially you know they can't do very much. But as they get more skilled in the domain, they can now start thinking about things and in their mind plan, and they can even generate ideas that are at least new to them that they

can now basically explore and see what the consequences are. And I think that way of actually mastering a domain and understanding now how teachers and other basically influences can help you actually master and actually reach that level of being able to control and think and actually contribute to a domain, whether it's an academic domain or whether it's music, sports, dance, chess, whatever. But I think that realization here of what it takes for somebody to actually reach that high level where they can now start thinking as opposed to doing what I think the school system seems to emphasize is just memorize information such that you can actually regurgitate it you know when you're being tested on it okay so rich and what what would be some of the keys that you found to of like blazing a path that hasn't been

blazed before, and other people say, well, I didn't even know that that could happen. So what are some of those keys? Sorry. Well, you know, just to give you some examples here of what I think, and I just want to come back to this idea here of what do you know, what domain that you should explore? I'm not so convinced that there's really any good evidence here that you should go around sniffing around to find something that you're already good at. that commitment and find a domain that, for whatever reason, maybe it's basically because of your parents are able now to spend time with you and allow you now to develop in an individual way much better than you could in other domains.

But I sort of believe that each of these domains have these sources of enjoyment that really are empowering. And to give an example here, I think when you have a music student gets to the point where they can actually sit down and make music, music that they can actually enjoy themselves. And that really requires something that goes well beyond, you know, the beginning music student who is just hitting keys on the piano to produce something that is on the note score. So if you can actually enjoy the music that you're making on the instrument, that provides now with

a feedback loop that opens up all sorts of opportunities for you to keep improving how you're performing, because you can critique yourself, but you can also play around now with variations that you find now will create different reactions in you and presumably people who would be listening to you playing that piece if you do a public performance. That's so good, that's really rich. And then so you're, I don't know first, but I do, it does seem to me that you're early, if not first, I don't know the kind of cadence of the important and foundational work of needing to do deep work or focused work, or, you know, I know, um, I can't wait to ask you about your reaction or response to

Malcolm Gladwell's being, I don't know, famed for coining a term 10,000 hours, which I've always thought was your work. Well, you know, it's a little complicated. We never had any contact before he published his book. You guys never spoke? I have never talked directly to him, nor one of his agents. So that created a little bit of a problem, because the way he described our research in support of his proposal here for the 10,000-hour rule, he basically found, we said that at age 20, the average of the most elite group was over 10,000 hours. But that means that over half of the individuals at age 20 actually had accumulated less than 10,000 hours.

So this idea that the 10,000-hour rule really provides with sort of a magical boundary where you actually now transcend into a different level of performance. Doesn't even get supported by our original findings. And given that he was talking about world-class performance, I guess in a follow-up paper I pointed out that those individuals who win international piano competitions, they probably have spent more like 20,000 to 25,000 hours of solitary practice before they win. kind of problematic issue is how people responded to this. And it was kind of this kind of promise here that if you just kept working and doing stuff in the domain for 10,000 hours, you will suddenly become to be an expert. And that's so fundamentally different from what we were arguing. We were just looking at that time when the music students were sitting down in front of their instruments and now having very clear goals about the practice that they were doing. And those goals were determined here by their teachers, who also may have suggested particular ways to practice that would effectively improve a given aspect of their performance.

So what we're talking about is that sequence of training activities that is guided by a teacher that over time accumulates now to very high level of performance. And I think the thing that we kind of agree on is this idea here that even the most talented, they're not suddenly displaying their performance. It takes thousands, and I don't know, probably depends very much on the domain, how much time you need in order to reach that international or world-class level. And so I've always understood the nuance of your research was that sometimes people got there before, sometimes people got there after, but to really become an expert, it was almost uncountable because that rare space is so rare.

And I don't know if I'm, I think I just recapped what you said, but is that last piece accurate? That the 20,000, the rare birds have put in so much work that that number is a bit unknown. Well, I would say that having looked at basically music instrumental performers, I have yet to find cases where people dramatically reach a basically world-class level. Now, obviously, you need to kind of take into account that some performers get international fame because they're performing at a much younger age. But I guess the argument is that I've been trying to develop that in a couple of papers. If you really apply adult standards to musicians, I'm not sure that there are any kind of recent examples here within the last hundred years of people who really reached

that world-class level on an instrument that the majority of people are trained on, like piano or the violin. Okay. And then would you, so. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell

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for 20% off. Okay, let's go back to choosing your craft, right? And I think you said you can't find or you haven't found and in inside of any craft that once you become skilled at it there can be an inherent reward in that skill that opens up opportunities to create a feedback loop that opens up opportunities to understand nuances and impact yourself in different ways and impact others in return and so can i can you can you get me right on your research around... Right, and I guess I have to be a little cautious here that I don't know of any evidence. And I guess as a scientist, the absence of evidence, just because you don't know of it, doesn't prove that there will never be evidence to suggest that. But what I've kind of argued when I look at musicians, if you start playing an instrument when you're like three or four years old, and you look at what it is that the parents actually observed before you actually

started with the training, you find that it's really not something that, in retrospect, when people have asked parents to musical students and individuals or children who never took up music, the kind of behaviors that they exhibit when they're that young, it's really not something that provides hard evidence that they exhibit when they're that young, it's really not something that provides hard evidence that they were particularly suited. And once you start training them, well, then there's going to be this contamination here between what they are being able to do after training and whatever they were innately gifted with. So I guess my argument is, as long as there

isn't evidence to really show here that you really need to have some pre-existing ability or interest, then I'm going to point out that the evidence doesn't exist, and ask people to tell me about any evidence that they know of that I might not have heard about. Did some of the, and maybe I've never read the original research, but maybe what pops for me is some of the, I don't know, urban legends and urban myths around what Russia and some of the Eastern Bloc countries were doing for selection at early age. And they were looking at like anthropomorphic body structures of young kids to predict success in particular sports. Is that different than what you and I are talking about now? You know, I've actually tried to. I spent three years or two years in Berlin. And at that time, you know, it was the wall. But the East Germans, I got a chance to at least

talk to some people who knew about the East German system, which was better understood here than the Russian system. And my sense is, you know, there are certain things like ballet. According to sort of the classical view of a ballet dancer, you can be too tall, you can be too short. There can be other, you you know basically body size related issues but my sense is that what they were doing at least wasn't formalized where they were actually be able to show now that if you are you know controlling for body size and height, which we do know that you really can't change

with training. So there you really do have to select individuals for those events like ballet, gymnastics, where you're really going to be much more successful if you're short. And obviously basketball, being a center in basketball is going to be much easier for you if you're extremely tall. I don't know, basically from my search, that there was really any evidence that, you know, would meet scientific standards that showed that they had insights into how to pick people. And if we look at the research in the United States and all over the free world, I have not seen compelling evidence that suggests that people can really be picked based here on something that you can observe in a child that is highly predictive of their performance. Now, it does turn out that early training does seem to be giving children an advantage. So, for example, downhill skiing, if you look at the skiers, I was talking to somebody who is working with alpine skiers,

if you haven't started skiing by age three, it doesn't seem like you're going to be part of the World Cup skiers. And there's other activities, I think, like swimming and gymnastics, where typically, at least for the long endurance events, you don't really see that anybody is going to be world class unless they got a reasonably early start with instruction and training that really helped you kind of get started on this long journey to world class. You know, I hear you say that, and I'm nodding my head, and then I've got this kind of sickening feeling in my stomach at the same time. And because I've seen, you know, back to our first part of the conversation about application of knowledge, and, you know, it's like, how do I put this, is that I feel like parents, the sickening feeling is coming from

parents saying, oh, well, if three is the prerequisite to being world stage at skiing, well, it's probably the same for golf, and it's probably the same for soccer, and it might be the same for baseball. So let me get my athlete, or let me get my young son or daughter in it at two and a half for competitive advantage. And, and you and I both know that that that's a disaster waiting to happen because the importance of motivation and drive and the long game that is required to fall in love with something. And I, can you speak to, like, can you speak to those three things I just talked about? at a very high level. But once they are making now the transition into adult musicians, it's very rare for music prodigies to actually make that transition. And, you know, you can only speculate. But I think one reason is that if you as a parent have more or less, you know, just trained your child, that's quite different from actually preparing your child to become an

independent performer who is actually in control of their training. So once they reach kind of an adult level, they will actually be able to take over the responsibility for their development so they can actually be successful here at this adult level. So coming back now to the early kind of exposure, I don't think anybody would have any problems with kids, you know, getting experience of skiing when they're, you know, three years old. What people would probably correctly object to is if a if a parent if you're actually pushing your three-year-old to do things rather than encouraging them and always kind of putting the child in the center so you're actually a facilitator as opposed to somebody who is training a child like it would be maybe an animal for some

kind of show purposes. Because obviously that goes so much against this idea here that you want to actually help the child to develop and build up within themselves those representations that allow them now to be independent and be able to get access to the things that they enjoy, to be able to pace themselves. And it turns out that when you're starting, maybe spending 10 minutes on something where you would be training some little aspect, but then the rest of the day, you know, the child can do whatever they want. But I think that we really need to reconceptualize the focus here on developing independent performers. And once you're trying to see here how you can motivationally, you know, really allow the child to enjoy what they're doing so they can actually see how making a public performance that you get praise for

is now related to, you know, the kind of concentrated training that you engaged in to get ready for that performance by basically allowing the child to see here the interrelationships here between training and basically the enjoyable experience of actually getting adults to be amazed and maybe even moved by the music that you're making. Oh my god, okay you just dropped so much there. Did you say representations, for them to create representations? If you're a musician, you can actually play through, you can actually manipulate. So you have a piece and then you can kind of think about what would it be like if I did it this way? And now you can actually internally evaluate whether that actually seems to be possible for you to perform in terms of what you need to do in order to create that. But maybe most importantly, would that actually sound interesting in a way that would actually allow you to give a musical experience to the audience

that would be different and exciting for them? So, okay, why don't... I love it. And I'm wondering why you moved away from the word imagery or visualization and that science to capture it in the phrase of representation. what I've found is that when you look at experts it's kind of different from just kind of more or less playing back in a passive way what happened the way that the expert represents something that happens is a much deeper representation where they actually

can manipulate it, they can actually think about if I had done this, then this would have been the consequence. And I think that is kind of the heart of the kind of representations that I think experts really need. And I think there's been much too much focus here on, you know, basically your ability to reproduce things from a static image, because that doesn't seem to capture the heart of the expert of actually being able to structure

and see what is important. And basically, being able then to manipulate and say, what if, and being able to accurately now predict what would happen if you had done something differently. You know, there's a gentleman that I work with who is renowned for being the best of the best of the best of the best ever of all time. And we were talking about this concept. Now, he didn't use the word representations. But when we talked about imagery, I asked him about like, how, how did he because the sport that he's in is so physically demanding and grueling and this this prompt on your research about four hours on average of deep deliberate work um this this his work is so demanding that like four hours would break the human and And so I asked him, like, how does he manage and to

accelerate his craft? Because he's so deeply invested. And he said, you know, what I do, Mike, is I create the most beautiful movie I could ever imagine in my mind. And every time I play the movie, I'm working to create out scenarios and scenes that I haven't seen or felt before. And I'm adding all of the details that I could ever imagine. And then he was a bit narcissistic and he said, I'm always the star. And so why wouldn't I want to create this movie where I'm the star? It's the most amazing movie I could ever imagine. And I feel it every time I create it. And that was about, I don't know, 16 years ago, he shared that with me and I said, that's it.

And so I've fundamentally seen imagery through those lenses. Now you're altering this a little bit saying representations. And I love what you said though, is that it's the manipulation of the image. And I don't think I'm too far off from that, but the manipulation of what if, how would, and exploring new endings and new options to get to the ending maybe that you want. Does that sound like we're on the same page or am I missing something? It sounds exactly right. And I think what I'm a little bit sort of trying to argue against is some of the advice here that you should just replay, you know, your most successful and how you feel. And I think those replaying may serve a function that is emotional and effective. what you're doing, then you actually do need to sort of think about what would have been some possibility that you could have done that may actually have had an even better result than

you were able to achieve here by doing what you actually did. So how bullish are you on, because I'm pretty bullish on this thought, and so I'll preload that for you, but I'd love to know how bullish you are on encouraging people at, I'm going to make up a number, X percent of time, to explore situations that are not optimal or ideal through this representation or imagery process. So, for example, as a general model, if we're going to go do something in the imagery space, I'd say 75% of the time, let's explore mastery, the most beautiful movie you can imagine. And then about 15, 20% of the time, play in that space where it's busted. The movie is not going the right way. You're in a compromised position. The wheels have fallen off and the chips are down, so to speak. And create an experience from that to optimize those

experiences as well. And because the reason I'm asking you this is because as a respected scientist, there's this pop notion that you only need to think positive thoughts. And if you think positive thoughts, the world will be better. And I just pull on that big blow horn saying, that's just bull. Like, that's just, I don't understand it. And so I'd love if you could maybe even just guide me on this about, as a practitioner, am I doing something that's damaging for neuro, I'm sorry to cut you off, for neuroplasticity, for myelinization, you know, where we're maybe grooving neurological pathways at a higher clip through imagery. And I'd love to be coached up on some of that. Well, I think it's really fascinating, and I think there's several interesting points. Now, basically, if you're looking at that ratio

here between doing things successfully versus doing something where you actually can identify here that you need to make some changes or react in a way here that you haven't previously done, that, I guess, is the heart of deliberate practice. So if you just keep doing what you have been doing, the argument is that you're going to be very limited in how much you can actually improve your performance. So if improving really means that you have to change your performance, you really need to think about how does this activity really prepare me to do something better in the future? And if you can't come up with anything that will really be

done better because you went through this activity, then maybe it serves a motivational purpose that by allowing yourself to enjoy doing this, that actually empowers you to want to invest here in doing work on changing your performance at other times. Now, the other question is, to what extent is imaging going to be the most effective activity? And I've been working with surgeons and athletes, and my belief is that I think imagery has a very important role, but sometimes if you really want to stretch your limits, you should try to have a videotape of a situation that is difficult. feedback on how appropriate your reaction is. Because if there's a mismatch between how you reacted in this unusual situation and what actually would have been the best way or one of the very good ways to react, then

you're actually missing that opportunity to make a change and actually improve your performance for future events. Okay, does that mean that you would watch a video of you doing something that was difficult for you to do? Is that what you're saying? No. Basically what I would recommend and what has been used is videos of, say, soccer games or football games. Or I guess where we kind of started with this methodology was chess games. So instead of actually seeing a chess game between two world-class players, you would basically see the position. And then you should try to figure out what would you have done if you actually had

played against this other world-class player and you come up with a move and now you can immediately get feedback about what did the world-class player do in this situation and if there's a mismatch then that is an cue to you that maybe you need to sort of think harder and try to understand now, why did you reject this move that the world-class player did? Now we have chess programs that are so much better than human players that you can actually ask that same question to a chess program and actually get immediate feedback at the level of the individual move about what you would have done differently. And I imagine if you only really get feedback here at the end of a

chess game where you either win or lose, that's not going to be as helpful as if you get feedback about, hey, you know, you're making a mistake because if you do this, then your opponent might be able to do this and actually is likely enough to really generate an advantage. So basically that idea of setting up external situations where you actually can get that immediate feedback, that seems to be the most effective way of training. I think, you know, exploring things and especially when you're trying to come up with something, you know, different and unusual, thinking through what you did and then ask the question, you know, if I had done that, what would have happened? And the

more developed your representations are, the more likely you are in actually being able to give yourself feedback about whether that would work. And then if you are unsure, you know, maybe you could set up that situation and see what happens and then basically make a decision here about whether this actually would be something that you should now train your thinking. So anytime where something related to this would be appearing, you would be reminded of this and consider that as a new option. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down.

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at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Is there a difference in your mind or from your findings between expertise and mastery? Being an expert and being a master of craft? No, the way we use the terminology, we basically refer to experts as people who think that they are experts and people who are perceived by other people as being experts. And I think the problem with that type of definition is that there's a lot of experts, according to that definition, when you actually put them in objective situations where you can evaluate their performance, they're actually not all that much better than their peers.

So what we've done is to kind of focus in on what are those individuals who can consistently perform at a higher level than their peers, and then basically try to understand now what is it that they're doing to be able to exhibit the superior performance? And once we identify the aspects that makes them different, then the next question is, how did these differences appear? And can we actually trace this in terms of any kind of training that they engaged in that could possibly explain now why they are able to do something that their peers are not. What have you found there?

Does that lead you to deliberate practice, or is it more nuanced? You know, that's pretty close to almost the definition of deliberate practice, where you actually do have a teacher who has observed a number of people actually making this path of improvement to a higher level and actually learn now what is it that our domain knows about effective training. Once they encounter somebody that they're coaching, they would now identify here, okay, so this seems to be, you know, an issue where you can improve. And here's some training activities that would allow you to improve. And then ideally, you know, bring that individual back and validate the fact that now

this training really did change their ability to deal with a certain type of situations or, you know, improve their accuracy and how they hit the ball in a certain situation. And so is there a difference in your may have a similar kind of issue here that it's a social definition. So once we know here, you know, what is it that you needo and jiu-jitsu and other kinds of things, you know, there's this hierarchy of actually tests that more or less, you know, qualifies you to reach a higher level. And I guess in any system like chess with chess ratings, you know, basically in order to be a chess master i guess you need to have a chess uh skill point of i guess 2300 or something like that and and in those domains you know there's this very close coupling here between what it is that you can do and being called a master there are other domains where you you know, that doesn't seem,

or at least I don't know of, that kind of coupling where people are referred to as being masters. And I guess that gets back to this idea here that if you've been doing something for long enough, that's just not enough for you to reach a superior performance. And therefore, I guess I would at least make the distinction here between somebody that other people think of as the master and somebody who can actually do things that other people can't. Yeah. I mean, it's like having such a rich command of the base knowledge that what is created from that is new and different and progressive and sustainably progressive. And the way I'd love for you to riff off the way I'm thinking about it right now is that masters of craft play inside the nuances that many others or none, no others can even begin to understand what those nuances are. It's like they're playing almost in a different world, playing in the transitions between the spaces.

And that's, I don't have any evidence of that. That's me being influenced by your work, being influenced by the work of those that have demonstrated mastery for a said period of time, is that they just play in the nuances where most people are looking at frame one to frame two to frame three, like, let me toss the ball, let me rotate my arm to like a tennis serve, and then let me go hit the ball. And the masters of craft are just inside of the space that of the transitions that makes it seem like it's a different game they're playing. Now that's very theoretical. Now I'm wondering if you could just bounce off that and push back on it or, or nod your head to it.

I think that's interesting. And I think in some ways that's what we're trying to do. So I guess in chess, one of the problems of actually measuring how good people are is that people play different games and there's all this complexity. But it turns out that if you actually find chess positions of a particular type where there is kind of a clear best move, either by using chess programs or other methods here where you don't have a time limit on how long you can actually search for the best move. If you present that set of positions to players,

it turns out that you can actually, one, create sort of a test that is very highly correlated now with their tournament success. And two, you can ask them to think out loud when they're selecting the moves. And that's when you actually see now how the chess masters and world-class players, they're actually thinking and exploring and evaluating things in a way that actually is different and that can explain now why they would be more likely here to be able to generate that very best move for chess position. You know, I love that thought because I've got one statement and then one question for you. I tried doing that in an open sport where the sport has high levels of unpredictability and it's physical in nature.

And it didn't work, the talking out loud piece or the thinking out loud piece. It didn't work because as soon as the athletes started thinking out loud, it was compromising their ability to do. So they were performing at a lower level, but trying to externalize what was automatic. And it created like this cluster of, there's another word that I could add to that, but it just created this almost nonsensical experience for learning. And either I was doing it wrong or it was the nature of the sport and performance because it was not like chess where it's more dynamic in thinking, but this was a dynamic mover and the thinking was automatic. And having them think out loud became so noisy to them that they didn't know

what they were thinking. And when they tried to think what they were thinking in the automatic experiences, their performance suffered. And that's okay for learning. I'm fine with that, you know, temporary. Right. You know, and we've actually done some work and the most recent study that just got accepted, we were actually having golfers think out loud while they were putting. And then you actually do see that difference in the thought processes of expert golfers versus sort of less skilled golfers. And I guess in many of these dynamic situations, it seems like you may actually have to apply the paradigm that has been used in soccer, where you actually show a video game of a soccer match, and then as soon as a particular player gets the ball, you blank out the screen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like stop at action. Right. And now you basically ask the player to actually say what they would do, and then give a sort of a retrospective accounting here of what they were thinking about. And then you might actually ask them to, you know, reconstruct the location and directions of players that would have been relevant to whatever the player would have done with the ball. And there you do see those expert differences. But I agree with you, you know, that you have to find the appropriate sort of methodology, and it may not be perfectly ideal. I know in tennis, Sue McPherson did research, and she actually had them think out loud when they were changing sides, and basically try to tap into what is it that's going on in the tennis players' heads as they were basically switching sides. And I found that the kind of thinking that the expert tennis players were engaged in

was very, very different from the less skilled players. And I think there's just a whole range of possible ways that we can kind of externalize the thinking. But I agree, it may not be easy to find what is the optimal method by which we will be able to get better insight into what thinking actually went on in the expert's head, which will provide us now with clues of what is it that you need to do in order to be able to perceive the situations in a way that are similarly rich to the master or expert. And do you think, is the goal for, in my mind, oftentimes the goal of thinking is to reduce

thinking and to position ourselves that the thinking is so optimal that thinking fades away. And is that, would you disagree, agree? Like, How do you think about thinking? Well, I think it depends on the domain. Now, obviously, if you're playing tennis at the net or whatever, if you start thinking, you probably are not going to do very well. But my sense is the way that you can think is actually when you're doing the practicing, where you can now actually work on making adjustments. But when you're actually playing the match, you will be focusing in on doing your best.

But I believe that understanding now what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it is going to make it a lot easier for you to make adjustments if you want to change things. And what we find here is that, you know, for example, chess players, you know, even when they have a simple situation, a relatively easy situation, the best chess players actually go through all sorts of checking to make sure here that they haven't overlooked something. We see the same thing when it comes to interpreting x-rays, that the expert may actually be kind of getting a sense here of what it is that they should be looking for and maybe discovering something.

But then there's this more systematic phase where they actually more or less test and make sure here that they haven't overlooked anything that would be relevant to their diagnosis. So I feel, and this may be a little controversial, that capability of actually having representations that give you that chance of analyze after the event. So you actually make sure here that you've paid attention to all the relevant things. And especially if you're making a mistake, then you can go back and really analyze what was it that you did not encode sufficiently well to allow an inferior action to be generated. So how would we apply that? That's a brilliant piece of insight that's new to me.

So how would we actually structure the application of that? Like in the most concrete way, how could somebody that is practicing something do just that structure you talked about? Well, I would just again point to this example with chess. I think there are now basically applications and websites where you actually get informed here, where you tell them what skill level you're at, and they've accumulated a lot of evidence, so they can now give you positions that are sort of appropriate for your skill level where you would be able,

ideally here, to make basically select the right move. And then you try to do it and you get feedback. And when you get feedback, you now go back and try to rethink how should I have been thinking in order to pick that move. Now, this actually allows for this adaptation. So you don't give a beginner a really difficult chess position because even knowing what the right move is, there's really no way for them to really benefit from getting that kind of feedback. So the idea here is that there's this inkling where

you're at. You can now basically give people those kinds of training tasks where they will be able to figure out here what they did differently and thereby making repairs. They're not so simple that, you know, they're just wasting their time because they already picked the right move. And they're not so difficult that basically even when they know what should have been the right move, they can't figure out why that would have been the case. Okay. So it's actually how my son is eight years old, and that's how he's learning to read. It's called just right reading.

And there's like level one, two, three, four, five, six, or whatever they are. And teachers say, oh, well, you missed. You didn't. You didn't. I couldn't say like four words or whatever it is in this book. So let's, let's stay at the level you're at. Or I don't know, there's some threshold that they know what just right means. And it sounds like that's what they've, they applied that thought. Now that, that being said. Right. You know, and it's this idea that

you're gradually refining building skills. And part of the building of the skills has to do with developing your ability to self-monitor yourself and be able to kind of design now ways of repairing things where, you know, general model here for what we're talking about that we believe can be applied to virtually any activity that we know of. Okay, and that's where I want to go. So we've been kind of in the weeds with tennis and chess and some very concrete examples, music and dance. How do we apply this information to being a dad, being an entrepreneur, being a businessman, being a mom, being a wife? How do we apply it in the things that are not so concrete? And I've got a laced question in here is, it is possible to become a master in martial arts, but based on some criteria. It's possible to be a master musician. Is it possible to be an expert or a master of relationships like a husband, a wife, a father, a mother? And so if we started with the first one, which is like, how do we apply what you've come to understand for the non-performant? No, the non. Oh, gosh, what am I trying to get to?

I don't know, everyday living as opposed to just one craft. And I would argue that one of the sort of challenges of applying what we've been doing is actually finding now kind of, you know, feedback and tasks where we actually would be able to agree on what is the right, basically, outcome. And just to sort of argue here that we can find at least sub-activities for which we already know what effective methods are. And I guess one thing that I've been interested in, I've been sort of talking to medical doctors,

and one of the issues there is the skill of actually listening to a patient. Now, once you've had interaction with a patient, the question is, can you actually describe now what it is that the patient, you know, really was believing and thought? And how did they understand this, basically, interaction and your recommendation here for treatment? And there, I think, you know, that is a skill that you can actually train. You can force people now to actually give a summary here of what the, after you see a video of an interaction between a doctor and a patient. And then you can actually have a coach that will actually tell you here, you know, you missed this, you know, and this is really not what the patient was believing. This is what you thought basically the disease was, which is actually sometimes not exactly

the same thing. But you didn't spend enough time here to explain to the patient how this treatment will actually be relevant to how they perceive their problem. I think the same thing. There's a lot of work in medicine on how do you actually tell a patient who has basically life-threatening cancer about basically how do you give those kinds of bad news to patients in a way that really in some ways makes the best of a very, very challenging situation. And I think, you know, once you start looking at spouses, you can find areas where you can basically get started where I think it's more clear here. You know, if you don't engage in careful listening, so you will actually be able to tell. Now, what was your spouse really trying to tell you? And if you start responding here by defensively, you know, arguing that they're wrong, I think that's probably not a

situation where you're going to be likely here to improve your relational skills. That's so good. And it's so right. Are you better at relationships or are you better at your craft? Well, I think you need to ask my wife about the relationship part. That leads me to believe that you're probably pretty good at them. Well, you know, I think I try. And sometimes, you know, I'm not successful. But I think just the mere fact that you pay attention to it, I think, you know, that puts you probably above average. And so being one of the deepest researchers and expertise,

so this is really about you, we could go theoretical if you want, because it certainly will apply. But what is the dark side for being one of the best in the world that you've experienced? Like, and can you maybe capture that in a story or something that I can relate to for you? You know, I don't really feel comfortable sort of arguing that I'm the best at anything. I think I'm more interested in what it is that I can do and finding ways here that I can really help people and move our knowledge forward. And I guess I pretty much try to seek out people that sometimes don't agree with me with the explicit intention here that if I can understand why they don't agree with me, maybe I will be able to move a little bit further ahead here with my own understanding. And I think basically focusing in on how you can kind of keep improving is more the important thing.

And I don't have the problem here with people seeking me out as a world expert. You know, sometimes I get some really interesting emails from people who, you know, relate issues. And sometimes I feel I can give reasonable advice. And sometimes it's hard for me to find the time to do it. But that's kind of what makes me happy, when I can look back on an interaction and feel, you know, that was interesting, and that was probably helpful. Anders, what is your craft?

Is it research? Is it writing? Is it questions? Is it asking great questions? Is it structuring experimental designs to reveal something? How would you describe your particular craft? I think that I would describe myself as somebody who is really trying to understand how thinking is being acquired and built and how it can be improved. And I think, you know, maybe something that I feel that I'm doing more than other people

is that I'm reading a lot. I guess my wife doesn't appreciate this too much, but, you know, I probably have like 15,000 books. And I'm actually, you know, constantly looking for connections here and trying to, you know, find evidence that might possibly, you know, help us better understand the general picture here of, you know, how are things effectively acquired and what are the basically some of the more general insights that we can, you know, conclude? And are there some really serious limiting factors that we basically need to pay attention to so we help people have the best possible knowledge about what they can and cannot easily change. That last statement about what are the limits or what are the bounds of what we can and cannot change, I think that feels unsolvable to me at this point. Meaning I don't know if, sometimes I wonder if we're wasting a lot of time thinking about changing thoughts. We're wasting a lot of time thinking about changing psychology because it's really physiological. And then I think about, no, that's ridiculous. Of course that's ridiculous.

Because I understand the value, I think I understand at least the importance and the value of genetic coding and basic physiology structures that are innate. And I love where you're going with this. And I can't help but to think about what 15,000 books in your home looks like as I'm staring right now in my home that I'm packing up and we're getting ready to build and move. And my wife is just all over me about how many books I have. So I just have a quick image of how much you must read. So what does that look like for you for a day-to-day reading pattern? Is it an hour, two hours? I think a lot of these books I bought for some reason. And often I can basically take five minutes to find that information that

you know I was interested in but now it's sort of like my expanded memory you know given that I own the book I can basically go back and retrieve it if there becomes an issue and I need to retrieve more information but coming back to what you were saying, I think, you know, a lot of the issues that people have been talking about has really concerned, you know, the fact that we need a model that, you know, explains how we change by the, you know, chemistry and how the genes operate. And I think what, you know, Robert and I in our book, we really made an attempt here to show that what we're claiming here is not antithetical. It's not, you know, that we're arguing here that there's this, you know, capacity or soul that is completely

unattached to the body. But in fact, we can actually understand now how engaging in various kinds of activities of straining yourself will actually create chemical reactions that will activate genes that will actually influence now the growth of capillaries and, you know, the whole range of activities that we know that a human basically can modify by exposing themselves to certain kinds of training or other kinds of external factors. So what I'm arguing here, what do we know about what people cannot do? And I think focusing in on hard evidence that people, even in spite of training, can't improve certain things is not something that we actually have accumulated as much evidence on. It really is kind of helping individuals make decisions about what they're going to be doing.

What are some of those things that you're referencing right now that people cannot change? I mean, I think of the most obvious, which is eye color. Maybe they can change it. I don't know how, but height, maybe people can change it, but we don't know how yet. Are you talking about those kind of antop or something different? Basically, height, body size, the length of bones. We know what the mechanism is that can influence that. And that's really not something that any kind of training activity is going to be able to influence. Would you put a yet? Would you put a yet after that statement or would you put a period? I'm pretty confident here that

given the kind of mechanical forces that would need to be applied to stimulate bone growth, my feeling is that we're not going to be able to do that. Now, it turns out that the diameter of bones is something that you can't change. So, for example, tennis players' right arm that they hold the racket in has much thicker bones than their left arm. And there's a lot of research showing that that differential is a function here of basically how you use your arm and the kind of vibrations that get generated when you hit a tennis ball with your racket I think that's the same for Muay Thai fighters as well and

some of the adaptations that they go through for early age with the repeated hitting of the knuckles that actually changes the bone structure. And so the reason I was asking you yet is that we do know that nutrition, environment, and thinking, and relationships can optimize a person's genetic expression. And I think that that's not a controversial statement. So if we can optimize those and have the right time, like there's a sensitive window for optimization of height, for example. And so can you riff on that just a little bit?

Well, you know, I think that, and there's very compelling evidence here that the heights of adult populations when they get appropriate nourishments, you know, are basically higher than if you don't. And I guess in some countries there's, you know, like over an inch difference here between the upper class and the lower class, which most people attribute here to, you know, the nourishment. But that, I think, is a little bit different. And maybe I'm just sort of focusing in here on practice. And I don't know anything. And they've done so much research here on gymnasts, you know, who are doing all this physical influencing.

For a while, people thought that gymnasts were stunted in their growth because of the mechanical exposure that they had. Basically what they found was that there were selection factors that actually made those individuals who remained in the sport being more successful was related now to their biologically determined height that was attributed to their parents. So, you know, again, one shouldn't say categorically anything that could be upended here by somebody finding something that makes it not true. Now, when it comes to height, I think I've spent enough time to feel that there's all

sorts of things like catch-up growth when you have a disease, basically during your developmental periods and other things that sort of suggests here that height is a pretty robust phenomenon that, you know, is not really influenced by what you do, except maybe when it comes to eating sufficient nutrition. Okay. I wonder if you could just help me understand what challenged you the most in, I guess, your life. But we're talking about your craft right now. What are the things that challenge you the most? Well, you know, I think it's, you know, trying to push and understand, you know, I think right now I'm really interested in how would you, you know, if you're a parent, design an environment that would actually allow a child

to, you know, fall in love with some kind of activity that they can then become proficient at. And it's not, you know, that they have to basically keep doing that for ages, but at least so they can reach that level of competency where they actually can develop the representations here for making a personal contribution and feel like they have a personal identity as somebody who can do something well. Can you teach on that? Where you've come to understand so far, what those elements are? You know, I feel that this is a topic that I'm working on, and I would just basically want to, you know, announce it right now that this, if somebody can help me here. But I'm not far enough along to be able to sort of feel like I should be saying something because I'm really more in the stages here of compiling information and thinking about

it. But that would certainly be, you know, a general topic. And similarly, explicating here, what are the motivational driving forces that really rewards people for, you know, sustaining this commitment to improving across a lifetime? That's, again, something that I'm very interested in and, you know, trying to understand, you know, why it seems that only a small proportion of people, you know, are at least successful in doing that. I had a conversation with, or I did some work with one of the bright minds in Silicon Valley for a startup that he was pulling together that was unbelievably successful.

And he said, Mike, what I'm interested in is most people want to think about running up a flight of stairs, like that's the model for improvement, and running as fast as they can. He says, I'm more interested in figuring out when I should run one step at a time, slowly, when I should run one step at a time quickly, and when I should leap three steps. And I just love that idea of sometimes you just leap, you know, like you don't need all the steps. And I thought that was a really interesting insight. That is going to spark this question I have for you, is that have you sorted out a model that you feel comfortable sharing about a percentage of importance for environment, genetic coding, nutrition, inner drive, deep practice, psychology?

Have you sorted out some sort of model for acquisition or expertise or path of mastery i i think i i don't find that to be a likely useful question um i love that and i i basically think that you know let's kind of accumulate more detailed information about the various domains, and then basically come up here with actual information about limits. And, you know, if somebody can come up here with a lot of genetic constraints and show here that you can, based on genes, make predictions about the success of individuals and domains, when you exclude, you know, body size factors, I'd be really interested to see it, because when I've been looking, there's just no evidence.

That doesn't mean, of course, that there will never be evidence, but at the present time, basically there isn't these genetic constraints where you would say either you have this gene or you're going to have you know only a one percent chance of succeeding here and becoming world class in this event so anyway i i think you know we need to kind of accumulate more evidence and i think that emphasis on genetics has basically made people not pay enough attention to the training variables and how they actually may explain how things change. Let's talk about motivation. Is there a difference between people, like is it problematic for people to have a high external drive, external reward focus? Have you found that to be problematic?

No. My personal sense is that the expert performers that I've talked to, that basically is not something that even is a good description of what they're doing. and finding ways here of providing the time, especially the time when you can do your best performance, to basically succeed. And to me, it's not clear that basically that kind of way of describing a source of inspiration. I think there's a lot of indirect effects. So if you don't have rewards so you can actually do this full time, you know, that may actually const cut out a feedback loop and a source of inspiration.

But I think that's a little bit of a different way of thinking about external rewards than the more classical ideas here of that basically we're all just trying to maximize our reward frequency. Beautiful. I love how you picked up on that nuance. Anders, I loved having this conversation. I could go on and on and on with you. And I love what you've contributed to me, to the field and to me personally. So I want to thank you for just what you've added to the world. And, you know, for those that are interested in this work about

expertise and the path toward it, check out Anders's new book with Robert Poole called Peak, Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. And also take a quick look at some of his original work, you know, which is The Road to Excellence, Expert Performance, Its Structure and Acquisition. And those papers are wonderful and important and meaningful. So I want to thank you. And looking forward to another opportunity to chat again. And I just love what you've contributed to the field. So thank you so much. Well, thank you, Michael. It was a pleasure talking to you.

And maybe one of these days I'll be able to see you in person. I would enjoy that. Okay, so let's figure out a time, maybe either when you're on the West Coast or when I'm punching down to Florida and love to connect with you. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay, take care. Bye. Bye. Punch over to iTunes and you can take a look for it. Easy to find. Just punch in Finding Mastery. There's also another podcast that we just fired up called Minutes on Mastery. And that's quick hits under three minutes of insights and daily little pearls of wisdom

and gems from people that are on the path of mastery. That being said, you can also hit us at findingmastery.net. And what we have there is just an archive of a blog and insights and all of the podcasts that we've ever done are also available there. You can also find us on facebook.com forward slash finding mastery. You can find us on Twitter at Michael Gervais. And if you want to take a deeper dive into the community, we've got findingmastery.net forward slash community and it's just it's everybody helping each other on the path of mastery and it's a wonderful little exchange that has surprised us all the engagement that's

taking place there so wonderful wonderful wonderful all right hope you enjoyed this conversation with Anders and look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify.

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