Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

In my search for more articles about “deliberate practice,” I came across this piece in TIME Magazine.

The Science of Experience

The piece as a whole isn’t a knockout — I think it stretches a bit too much in trying to analyze the Presidential candidates — but this part was worth the price of admission:

Take figure-skating. For the 2003 book Expert Performance in Sports, researchers Janice Deakin and Stephen Cobley observed 24 figure skaters as they practiced. Deakin and Cobley asked the skaters to complete diaries about their practice habits. The researchers found that élite skaters spent 68% of their sessions practicing jumps — one of the riskiest and most demanding parts of figure-skating routines. Skaters in a second tier, who were just as experienced in terms of years, spent only 48% of their time on jumps, and they rested more often. As Deakin and her colleagues write in the Cambridge Handbook, “All skaters spent considerably more time practicing jumps that already existed in their repertoire and less time on jumps they were attempting to learn.” In other words, we like to practice what we know, stretching out in the warm bath of familiarity rather than stretching our skills. Those who overcome that tendency are the real high performers.

So, what about you: Are you stretching out in the warm bath of familiarity? Or stretching your skills?

Seems to me that during an incipient recession is a perfect time to focus on the latter.

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(Photo by le.)