Here’s the secret to becoming great at anything.

I finished reading this book "Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise" by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, a while back.

It was one of the “dry-est” books I have read in a long while because it was packed with research studies.

Despite being a psychology student, reading lengthy psychology studies wasn’t something I enjoy very much, though I appreciate the learnings from them. It’s just not my thing and I wished I would enjoy them more. But still, I managed to finish the book, yay.

I think there are many takeaways from the book, and one of them was the fact that the book debunks the myth of natural talent.

I am sure we can all agree that there are times where we feel like we are not talented in a certain skill etc, and we end up giving up on it. We are in this constant search of things that we are “talented" in.

While people with certain innate characteristics such as IQ may have an advantage when first learning a skill, that advantage actually gets smaller over time, and eventually the amount and the quality of practice take on a much larger role in determining how skilled a person becomes.

As a matter of fact, talent/IQ might actually make one more “disadvantaged” in learning a new skill because they might experience more growth in that skill at the start, but gradually reach a skill plateau earlier compared to the “average” person. This will lead them to feel more demoralized and give up on learning the skill.

Whereas, the average person who continues to learn the skill, and observes a steady yet moderate amount of skill growth (compared to high spikes of growth followed by small amounts of growth for these “talented” people), and this keeps the average person going at the skill much longer which eventually leads to mastery.

The book shows strong support for the idea that it is possible to get good and be great in any skill if you put in long hours into the skill. You might be familiar with the 10,000-hour rule where it suggests that anyone can achieve mastery in a skill with 10,000 hours of practice.

However, the author argues that this oversimplifies the process of becoming an expert. Mastery requires not just time but also deliberate practice, which is focused and purposeful training aimed at improving specific aspects of performance. So you need to spend long periods of time to acquire the skill, not just through repetition, but through DELIBERATE PRACTICE.

Deliberate practice involves challenging tasks that constantly pushes individuals beyond their current abilities. You can’t get better if you constantly do the same practice. You need to be constantly leveling up your practice, just like how you build strength in the gym.

With that said, you can’t be great at a skill if you don’t know what great looks like. So you would need to have the right mental representation and a mentor to teach and guide you.

Mental representation refers to the cognitive framework or mental model that individuals create to understand and visualize a skill or concept. It involves forming a clear image of what excellence looks like in that particular domain.

Having a well-defined mental representation helps learners focus their efforts on the key elements that contribute to excellence. It serves as a benchmark to measure performance.

It also helps them to analyze their performance critically and identify areas for improvement. It acts as a reference point for making adjustments.

Learners would also be able to process new information more effectively by linking it to existing knowledge. This connection fosters deeper understanding and retention of skills.

Some examples of mental representations include (a) musicians develop a mental representation that includes fingering techniques when practising a music piece; (b) golf players developing mental representations of their swing mechanics; and (c) chess masters visualizing potential moves and strategies based on patterns they've encountered in previous games instead of just seeing individual pieces on the board.

In layman terms, mental representation is kind of like an ideal way/form of what excellent performance looks like.

This is where mentorship or guidance is especially important.

A mentor can offer insights into what excellence looks like in practice, helping learners visualize their goals more clearly. They can share their experiences and demonstrate effective techniques.

Most importantly, mentors are able to give you immediate and specific feedback which helps learners to identify strengths and weaknesses in their performance. This feedback is crucial for refining skills and making necessary adjustments in practice.

You can’t expand your comfort zone if you don’t know where the boundaries are and as a novice, you often don’t know if you are doing things correctly. You don’t want to be working hard in the wrong direction. That’s when a mentor would come in handy.

Though eventually you will become skilled to a point where your current mentor wouldn’t be able to give you more constructive feedback and you would need another mentor with higher expertise (unless you have reached the peak of expertise in that skill which you would then need to formulate your own practice to expand your skill).

So yeah, all in all, the book says that we often overestimate the role of “talent” in acquiring skills or expertise, though he recognize that there are innate factors like height etc which could affect performance in certain skills such as sports, as well as age (i.e. some skills are better learned when you are younger such as music/language) but still possible to have a moderately high level of competency if you start from adulthood.

It is possible to get good at a skill even if you are not talented in it, so long as you put in lots of hours of deliberate practice.

There was a researcher who groomed his three daughters from birth and they all eventually became chess grandmasters (he and his wife were deciding which skill to teach them and eventually they chose chess as it was one of the easiest to “observe competency”).

I guess after reading the book, I kind of felt a sense of relief (?). To be presented with an idea that it is possible for you to become great at a skill without innate talent, would mean a lot to anyone. Especially even so for me when I had finally decided to take a plunge to practice my drawing skills to get good at it.

Even before reading the book, I have already decided to invest time every day to practise drawing, and I think the book just helped to reaffirm that what I was doing was “right” and meaningful.

With the things I learned from the book, I also adjusted my drawing practice so that I am expanding my comfort zone in some way, and constantly learning new ways of drawing.

And I know that as I invest more and more time, eventually one day, I would become great at drawing 🙂 (This was also part of the reason why I wanted to use the time that I spend on creating Lemon8 content on drawing instead, oops)

And for you, if you have something that you have always wanted to learn, but didn’t start trying or gave up halfway because you feel like you have no talent for it, I would like to “inspire” or push you in some way to give it another try. I want to tell you that IT IS POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO BE GREAT AT IT. You just have to start today, don’t wait anymore!!!

Keep me posted on your progress and I would love to share your joy 🙂

P.S. As they say, in some way, “hard work” is also a form of talent. Just make sure it is used in the right direction.

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