Is GTD More "Relaxed" and "Loose" than I think

[furashgf]

Like many of the people who post to these kind of web lists, I've spent all this time coming up with ways to link projects to next actions, organize brainstorms of next actions so they can be turned into next action tasks, etc.

Yet when I re-read GTD, I don't hear ANY of that! I'm guessing (someone could correct me if I'm wrong) that many devotees who never post to these lists (or DA himself) don't bother with "well, what if I have a project without a NA for 2 days until my weekly review" etc. DA seems perfectly comfortable with doing a 1-time mindmap on a paper, then using it sort of as a guide as he picks tasks for the next week. There's no section in GTD about "How to keep your mindmaps in sync with your next actions."

This is not intended as a critique of anybody who'se managed to make these kinds of things work with tools - good for you! I'm just checking to see if these are things I really need to worry about. I'm guessing DA doesn't care if he:
has the occasional NA that isn't connected to a project
has a project that is really a subproject of another project but isn't perfectly link
has a mindmap that doesn't match all his next actions
etc.

[pageta]

Next actions can stand alone - they don't necessarily have to be linked to a project. I would say at least half of my next actions stand alone.

It is important to have a next action for a project if you want to be making progress on that project. If it's okay to let the project rest for a couple days, great. Once you decide you need to get moving on the project again, come up with a next action for the project and it's back on track.

Mindmaps are great, but you can't necessarily be working on all facets of a project at once. Really, the bottom line is that you are moving forward on the things that matter most. Getting a rental car scheduled for your next vacation might be something you could do now, but if there are more important things to be done, simply having it on your mindmap (and not having it as a next action) may be all you need at this point.

[furashgf]

But I'm guessing there are people out there who don't spend $ and time trying to magically ensure everything stays in synch. They just do the steps (weekly review, organizing, etc.) and then rely on intution to fill the gaps. Is this true? It's the feeling I get from re-reading GTD.

[kewms]

But I'm guessing there are people out there who don't spend $ and time trying to magically ensure everything stays in synch. They just do the steps (weekly review, organizing, etc.) and then rely on intution to fill the gaps. Is this true? It's the feeling I get from re-reading GTD.

Yes, that's true.

The nature of this forum is that people talk about ways to improve their systems. That doesn't mean that GTD requires perfection, or even that the "perfect system" can be defined. It just means that the relatively small subset of GTD users who post here have decided that improving their systems is important to them.

It's also the nature of forums in general that people talk about what doesn't work. So, even though most people who post here are probably GTD users, they are more likely to post about their problems than their successes.

Returning to your original question, the correct system is the one that works for you. If things are getting lost or being left undone, you might need to rethink your system. If everything is purring along, don't worry about it.

Katherine

[ceehjay]

But I'm guessing there are people out there who don't spend $ and time trying to magically ensure everything stays in synch. They just do the steps (weekly review, organizing, etc.) and then rely on intution to fill the gaps. Is this true? It's the feeling I get from re-reading GTD.
I don't worry about having everything linked together. I try to keep it simple. I use a paper/PDA combo. My ongoing lists (Someday/Maybe, groceries, places I would like to visit, restaurants I like, books I own, books I want to read, ditto music, packing for a trip, etc.) are on the PDA. Current projects and next actions are on paper. If the deadline is this week, I already know it and won't be dropping the ball on next actions. The Weekly Review is important to me because it keeps me up to date on everything else. I am not into high-tech and linking like some who post here, but I am a believer in doing what works best for you no matter whether it is simple or complex.

Carolyn

[Zatara]

I'm guessing DA doesn't care if he:
has the occasional NA that isn't connected to a project
has a project that is really a subproject of another project but isn't perfectly link
has a mindmap that doesn't match all his next actions
etc.
I also guess the always relaxed and loose Eddie Van Halen doesn't really think about all scales and arpeggios when soloing. Perhaps he may even skip or slip into a "wrong" note every now and then... He probably realizes by now that it is all about creating music, not being perfect!

However, I would never understimate the years of patient and systematic discipline necessary to get to his level. And yes, there must have been a moment when even he needed to have all those crazy harmonic relationships cleared on his study book.

Guitar players' forums may discuss subjects that are completely irrelevant to Eddie now. But not for the future Eddies...

[TesTeq]

And yes, there must have been a moment when even he needed to have all those crazy harmonic relationships cleared on his study book.
Not necessarily. He can simply hear and feel it.

So maybe only some people can feel GTD.

The subtitle of David's book is "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity".

[Zatara]

Not necessarily. He can simply hear and feel it.

So maybe only some people can feel GTD.

The subtitle of David's book is "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity".
I don't know Eddie, so maybe you're right and this was a bad example.

But then consider Mozart, or Einstein, or even yourself when a learning a new language or skill. My point is that the structure and pseudo-rules created during a learning process are not necessarily vital to achieve something, but they are surely vital to the learning process itself.

Raw talent may only bring you so far in certain areas, and it is a misconception that just because GTD is an art, it doesn't require discipline and hard work. I guess people underestimate the years of perspiration that Mozart, Einstein or David Allen had to put in so they could excel on their craft.

Remember Michael Jordan? Making it look easy is part of the genius...

PS: If you know Alexandre Dumas and just pay attention to my nick, you will understand how strong I feel about this! :idea:

[kewms]

Not necessarily. He can simply hear and feel it.

So maybe only some people can feel GTD.

The subtitle of David's book is "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity".

Nonsense.

I'm not a musician or a GTD black belt, but I am a martial arts (aikido) black belt. And I can tell you that talent helps, but consistent practice matters more. Music, martial arts, and productivity are all learnable skills.

Katherine

[Zatara]

I am a believer in doing what works best for you no matter whether it is simple or complex.
This is a common saying in these forums and I perfectly agree with it.

Nevertheless, one should be very careful about what "best" means, because adapting to a new way of doing things may seem "worse" at first. If you are on the path of mastery, you should accept that drawbacks are inevitable, and actually desirable so that you can achieve new levels of productivity.

A black belt in any martial art will easily confirm this point.

[pageta]

Perhaps the reason why it seems everyone is so "up tight" about connecting next actions to projects, etc. is that this is the area where either you have to figure out how to make the software you're using work for you. It's fairly straightforward to just enter a simple task or project in the average software, but how to connect them may not be immediately apparent and thus that is what everyone seems to be discussing all of the time. They may all be practicing a more "relaxed" and "loose" version of GTD - you're just hearing about the little glitches they're trying to solve. In other words, they're "walking" with GTD but you don't hear about that because what they're talking about is the stone in their shoe. Just a thought...

[andersons]

Not necessarily. He can simply hear and feel it.
Nope. Absolutely not. Every highly skilled musician has practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced. Those who have reached a level of international recognition of their skill typically have at least 10,000 hours of directed practice behind them. Behind every "amazing talent" is a lifetime of honing the skill. No exceptions.

There is just no such thing as "simply hear and feel." You cannot "simply hear and feel" until you have learned how, through hundreds or thousands of hours of experience.

I can hear a new song on the radio and "simply" go play it on the piano. But if you look closely at my history, you'll see thousands of hours of hearing music played in my family, playing the piano myself, taking lessons, trying to play music I had heard, studying music theory, composing music, teaching all kinds of music -- etc. There is no magic. Past experience accounts for skill. Period.

To assume there must be a special gene for guitar-playing "talent" encoded in Eddie van Halen's DNA seems ridiculous.

The closest phenomenon to "simply hear and feel" is the performance of idiot savants, but even they have many hours of perceptual learning of the music they can play. They cannot play music with different underlying structure (such as twelve-tone).

As Mark Twain said, "It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

[TesTeq]

Nonsense.

I'm not a musician or a GTD black belt, but I am a martial arts (aikido) black belt. And I can tell you that talent helps, but consistent practice matters more. Music, martial arts, and productivity are all learnable skills.

Katherine
Nonsense???

Most of the people hear pleasant sounds (or interesting words) only - not the music! They do not recognize the sequence of chords in the song and are not interested why C - Am sequence is so pleasant. And that it shoud be followed by F or Dm or Em in some cases. And that F followed by Fm is a very romantic sequence. If you cannot hear it you will never know what I am talking about.

You can teach the blind person what color pairs look good together but she/he will never see it (in other words she/he will never feel it). The consistent practice won't help.

By the way what you mean by learning music? Learning the dates of Mozart's birth and death? Or where to put the note G on the musical staff?

And martial arts are not learnable too for those who cannot control their emotions and focus their minds.

You can tell me that talent helps, but consistent practice matters more.
I can tell you that consistent practice helps, but talent matters more.

It's a tie (1:1).

[TesTeq]

There is no magic. Past experience accounts for skill. Period.
There are skills that are or aren't learnable for some people. For example there is a rule of thumb that if your third start on water-skis is successful you will enjoy this sport and learn it very quickly. But some people do not give up even after 20th failure. Maybe they will succeed after 25 attempts but they will never be winners and they will never enjoy it.

Everybody has a built-in set of potential skills that he should develop.

Period.

[kewms]

Most of the people hear pleasant sounds (or interesting words) only - not the music! They do not recognize the sequence of chords in the song and are not interested why C - Am sequence is so pleasant. And that it shoud be followed by F or Dm or Em in some cases. And that F followed by Fm is a very romantic sequence. If you cannot hear it you will never know what I am talking about.

Music theory is taught by just about every music instructor on the planet. It is demonstrably a teachable skill.



By the way what you mean by learning music? Learning the dates of Mozart's birth and death? Or where to put the note G on the musical staff?


Learning when note G is the best choice, and how to play this particular note G.



And martial arts are not learnable too for those who cannot control their emotions and focus their minds.


Very few people can control their emotions and focus their minds on their first day on the mat. Most people can do so after a year or so of practicing martial arts, yoga, meditation, and similar disciplines. Mental focus is very teachable.

Katherine

[Zatara]

... but they will never be winners and they will never enjoy it.I disagree with you in so many points that I don't even know where to start. But I could summarize everything by suggesting you to focus on the shades of gray, not only on black and white. Between being deaf and being like Mozart, or being blind and being like Picasso, is actually where most of us carry our existences. Training and persistence may get us to our best, no more no less.

I am also quite sure I am not a winner as a father. There are plenty of guys better than me out there. But it doesn't stop me to try my best and enjoy each moment with my little girl...

[TesTeq]

Music theory is taught by just about every music instructor on the planet. It is demonstrably a teachable skill.
So - once again - as a blind (wo)man can be taught the color theory but (s)he will never see them, a (wo)man can be taught the music theory but (s)he will never hear its beauty. And there is no chance (s)he will become a virtuoso or composer.

Very few people can control their emotions and focus their minds on their first day on the mat. Most people can do so after a year or so of practicing martial arts, yoga, meditation, and similar disciplines. Mental focus is very teachable.
Don't you know anybody who couldn't stand the discipline of practicing martial arts, yoga, meditation and resigned after first month (or two)?
I know many such people. This is the example of the lack of "martial art skill".

[andersons]

There are skills that are or aren't learnable for some people. For example there is a rule of thumb that if your third start on water-skis is successful you will enjoy this sport and learn it very quickly. But some people do not give up even after 20th failure. Maybe they will succeed after 25 attempts but they will never be winners and they will never enjoy it.

Everybody has a built-in set of potential skills that he should develop.

Period.
No. I'm sorry -- there is a mountain of high-quality rigorously-observed data to contradict you.

Researchers have looked and looked and looked for decades upon decades for a shred of evidence of "natural ability" or "potential" or "talent." Whatever you want to call it. Not a shred of evidence has been found.

On the other hand, all demonstrated skill is almost perfectly predicted by amount of experience. It is one of the tightest functional relationships you'll see when you observe and measure human performance objectively.

The bias to see talent is strong, like the obvious view that the earth is flat -- but a mountain of rigorous observation contradicts the talent view. Period. I've read most of it.

The main effect of perceived talent is that it leads people to spend a massive amount of time developing their skill. The belief about talent is simply a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The trick is not to get discouraged by your 3rd failure to get up on waterskis, and to ignore the "rules of thumb." I didn't get up on my 3rd attempt, but I went on to become an expert waterskiier. And I enjoyed it.

[TesTeq]

I disagree with you in so many points that I don't even know where to start. But I could summarize everything by suggesting you to focus on the shades of gray, not only on black and white. Between being deaf and being like Mozart, or being blind and being like Picasso, is actually where most of us carry our existences. Training and persistence may get us to our best, no more no less.
As far as I remember (and you can check it by reviewing your previous posts) you were talking about Eddie Van Halen and his guitar mastery. All my subsequent posts are about mastery, about brightest white - not any grays.

I agree with you that we should try to do our best - not necessarily be the best.

But I disagree that if two people put exactly the same effort in practicing the skill they will achieve exactly the same effect (as some people on this forum think). We would have 100% guarantee of success. But there is no guarantee that after 102567 hours of tennis training everybody will play like Andre Agassi or after 101709 hours of guitar playing everybody will play like Eddie Van Halen.

[kewms]

Don't you know anybody who couldn't stand the discipline of practicing martial arts, yoga, meditation and resigned after first month (or two)?
I know many such people. This is the example of the lack of "martial art skill".

Often, it's discomfort with a particular instructor or discipline, or unwillingness or inability to fit the practice into their schedule. Often, the "lack of skill" vanishes if the person finds a more comfortable environment.

Please find a single example of a person who achieved mastery of any discipline without hundreds or thousands of hours of practice.

Please find a single example of a person who continued to practice any discipline for hundreds or thousands of hours without achieving mastery.

(Physical disabilities don't count. I'll concede that a blind person is unlikely to become a skilled painter. On the other hand, I'll bet there are at least a few blind sculptors out there. And Beethoven was stone deaf when he composed his greatest works.)

Katherine

[TesTeq]

No. I'm sorry -- there is a mountain of high-quality rigorously-observed data to contradict you.
You do not provide any links or sources to document your claims so there is no mountain.

Researchers have looked and looked and looked for decades upon decades for a shred of evidence of "natural ability" or "potential" or "talent." Whatever you want to call it. Not a shred of evidence has been found.

On the other hand, all demonstrated skill is almost perfectly predicted by amount of experience. It is one of the tightest functional relationships you'll see when you observe and measure human performance objectively.

The bias to see talent is strong, like the obvious view that the earth is flat -- but a mountain of rigorous observation contradicts the talent view. Period. I've read most of it.
What about twins? It happens that both are taught a skill but only one succeedes. Did you read the explanation of this phenomenon?

The trick is not to get discouraged by your 3rd failure to get up on waterskis, and to ignore the "rules of thumb." I didn't get up on my 3rd attempt, but I went on to become an expert waterskiier. And I enjoyed it.
Congratulations!

[kewms]

But there is no guarantee that after 102567 hours of tennis training everybody will play like Andre Agassi or after 101709 hours of guitar playing everybody will play like Eddie Van Halen.

How many people with 100,000 hours of guitar or tennis practice do you know? It's pretty likely that most of them are professionals.

Now, I'm willing to concede that physical skills in particular have an inborn component. Someone who is 5'4" tall is unlikely to play basketball like Michael Jordan. There are measurable differences in mental abilities, or at least the people who write IQ tests claim that there are. But I believe andersons' comment that talent effects are dwarfed by the benefits of focused practice and hard work.

Katherine

[TesTeq]

Please find a single example of a person who achieved mastery of any discipline without hundreds or thousands of hours of practice.

Please find a single example of a person who continued to practice any discipline for hundreds or thousands of hours without achieving mastery.
I think there is some misunderstanding. I do not say that talent can replace hundreds or thousands of hours of practice. My statement is:
You cannot be a master without a talent no matter how many hours you are practicing. But if you have talent you must practice to develop your talent and become a master.


(Physical disabilities don't count. I'll concede that a blind person is unlikely to become a skilled painter. On the other hand, I'll bet there are at least a few blind sculptors out there. And Beethoven was stone deaf when he composed his greatest works.)
You are partially right with Beethoven but he had chance to learn, hear and feel music before he had become deaf. He had talent and developed all the required skills earlier.

[kewms]

You cannot be a master without a talent no matter how many hours you are practicing.

Again, please identify a single example of a person who practiced a skill for thousands of hours and failed to achieve mastery.

Katherine

[TesTeq]

How many people with 100,000 hours of guitar or tennis practice do you know? It's pretty likely that most of them are professionals.
Yes, I was talking about world-class professionals and masters. Everybody can play tennis and enjoy it. But I believe that there is something more in Andre Agassi play than thousand of hours of training. It is mastery, it is art and it is charisma.

Do you know that Lance Armstrong heart works much slower than yours. So he can make much bigger effort than you and his heart is still in the "valid range of operation". Isn't it a built-in ability that he was able to use when he was training?

By the way - can charisma be taught?

[andersons]

You can teach the blind person what color pairs look good together but she/he will never see it. . .The consistent practice won't help.
No -- you can't teach a blind person what colors look good together.

We're not talking here about a severe structural problem in the nervous system. If a person's optic nerve is severed, absolutely no visual signals will reach the brain for perceptual processing. Or if there is a huge lesion in brain area V1. Or any number of other structural deficits. Nothing can be seen because there is no signal to interpret, or a severely degraded signal.

But all interpretation is learned with experience. And it MUST be learned. Yes, a healthy retina is necessary to see. But you also have to learn to see -- learn to interpret the signals from the retina. Object recognition doesn't come pre-loaded and working from birth. Nor color recognition. It's all learned. This learning happens most rapidly in the first 2 years of life, but can continue throughout life.

Human babies are born with very limited sight. Their brains learn over time to interpret the visual signal from (unimpaired) retinas with ever-increasing sophistication.

If you were to put blinders on an infant from birth, then remove them after a couple years, the child would be functionally blind for life. The signals sent from the retina would be normal, but the perceptual interpretation in the brain that allows you to "see" would never have been learned. The critical period for the brain to learn to interpret the visual signals would have been missed.

Parents do the opposite with their babies. They go out of their way to stimulate the baby's vision with colorful toys and books. They teach their toddlers to name colors and objects. The child is exposed to a variety of stimuli and taught to name differences between them. Repeatedly. For years. A massive amount of learning experience is needed just for typical, normal adult vision.

Visual perception can be learned and fine-tuned in adulthood as well. You can teach an adult with normal retinas to discriminate fine shades of color they couldn't discriminate ("see") before. An interior designer can learn to distinguish and name different shades of white in a Benjamin Moore color deck. A lab technician can learn to distinguish relevant patterns in the very noisy picture in a mammogram.

In music education, students are exposed to a variety of stimuli and taught to discriminate and name differences between them. The process is essentially the same as teaching an infant to see.

There is apparently no special structure in the nervous system that is necessary to learn to waterski. Of course a quadriplegic cannot learn, because you do need an intact spinal cord sending and receiving signals to the leg muscles. But assuming you have an intact spinal cord, you can learn to waterski if you want to.

There is apparently no special brain structure for music either. If you can hear, you can learn to identify and name chords if you take the time to do so. You just need to learn to interpret signals from the auditory nerve. If your auditory nerve can transmit the signal, your brain can learn to interpret it and discriminate ever-finer differences between signals.

[TesTeq]

Again, please identify a single example of a person who practiced a skill for thousands of hours and failed to achieve mastery.

Katherine
I do not know personally all the children learning tennis in tennis academies but only few of them have become top class players. Nobody would send Maria Sharapova to the USA if she wouldn't show the extraordinary ability to hit a ball using tennis raquet.

I think that it can be hard to find a good example because such person would be really dumb or mad. Practice a skill for 10000 hours (4 hours each day - nearly 7 years) and have no successes is a really dumb idea.

[Zatara]

Sorry, I know I started it but could we please seek an agreement on GTD?

It seems we all agree practice and discipline are necessary to mastery. The difference between a master and a genius depends upon raw talent, but no one can determine this beforehand.

Therefore, our only alternative is to continue developing our GTD skills and systems. Some of us may reach David's level, but most won't. Personally, I would be glad with the master level. Moreover, David is probably not only a genius but also a top-professor, and this is even a more rare combination.

Does everyone agree?

[TesTeq]

In music education, students are exposed to a variety of stimuli and taught to discriminate and name differences between them. The process is essentially the same as teaching an infant to see.

There is apparently no special structure in the nervous system that is necessary to learn to waterski. Of course a quadriplegic cannot learn, because you do need an intact spinal cord sending and receiving signals to the leg muscles. But assuming you have an intact spinal cord, you can learn to waterski if you want to.

There is apparently no special brain structure for music either. If you can hear, you can learn to identify and name chords if you take the time to do so. You just need to learn to interpret signals from the auditory nerve. If your auditory nerve can transmit the signal, your brain can learn to interpret it and discriminate ever-finer differences between signals.
Very interesting. Thanks for information. I am certainly not the expert in the brain area but I wonder why - if our knowledge is such detailed - we still are not able to teach computers waterski or compose music. By teach I do not mean to load the waterski or music program developed by humans but self-learning process based on experiences.

[kewms]

Yes, I was talking about world-class professionals and masters. Everybody can play tennis and enjoy it. But I believe that there is something more in Andre Agassi play than thousand of hours of training. It is mastery, it is art and it is charisma.

Do you know that Lance Armstrong heart works much slower than yours. So he can make much bigger effort than you and his heart is still in the "valid range of operation". Isn't it a built-in ability that he was able to use when he was training?

By the way - can charisma be taught?

Lance Armstrong attributes much of his success to his fight with cancer, which basically reshaped his body. I'm not sure he would call susceptibility to testicular cancer a "talent."

The connection between training, heart rate, and aerobic capacity is well known. Run ten miles a day for a year, and I guarantee your maximum effort will be higher than it is now. (Assuming you don't already run ten miles a day, of course.)

Several organizations claim to be able to teach charisma. I haven't tried their programs, so can't vouch for them.

The difference between Andre Agassi and the world number 100 is lost in measurement noise when you consider all tennis players, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Katherine

[TesTeq]

Lance Armstrong attributes much of his success to his fight with cancer, which basically reshaped his body. I'm not sure he would call susceptibility to testicular cancer a "talent."
It's not fair comment.


The connection between training, heart rate, and aerobic capacity is well known. Run ten miles a day for a year, and I guarantee your maximum effort will be higher than it is now. (Assuming you don't already run ten miles a day, of course.)
I've read that it is not possible to achieve such low rest heart rate via training but maybe sources are wrong.


The difference between Andre Agassi and the world number 100 is lost in measurement noise when you consider all tennis players, so I'm not sure what your point is.
It is measurable difference - he is still in the first 10 of the world list but you should watch him play and you'll see the difference. As I said - mastery, art and charisma - hardly trainable in my opinion.

[TesTeq]

Sorry, I know I started it but could we please seek an agreement on GTD?

It seems we all agree practice and discipline are necessary to mastery. The difference between a master and a genius depends upon raw talent, but no one can determine this beforehand.

Therefore, our only alternative is to continue developing our GTD skills and systems. Some of us may reach David's level, but most won't. Personally, I would be glad with the master level. Moreover, David is probably not only a genius but also a top-professor, and this is even a more rare combination.

Does everyone agree?
Agree - let's do our best.

[furashgf]

Well, nifty discussion. However...

DA's typical response has been that, when he started using a palm, he kept his lists in the vanilla to-do list, and did his planning in whatever way was comfortable (mind map). There is no where I can find where he talks about spending tremendous effort keeping the mind maps 100% up to date, or linking the mind map directly to each task.

So, given that ... isn't it possible for someone to do GTD without using 8 gaziilion tools? Maybe only DA has accomplished this.

[andersons]

You do not provide any links or sources to document your claims so there is no mountain.
Honestly, I did not believe what I'm saying here today when I first started reading about it, either.

Start here:
Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.T., Tech-Romer, Clemens. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100(3): 363-406.

There are 272 articles cited in the review. I have read most of them. This is a peer-reviewed journal for the best work in the field. This is one of my fields of research.


What about twins? It happens that both are taught a skill but only one succeedes. Did you read the explanation of this phenomenon?
Yes. Differences in performance are fully explained by differences in the amount of instruction and the amount of experience. There is as yet no example where the amount of instruction and practice does not differ upon examination.

If you have a fully documented counterexample, please provide it.


Congratulations!
Thank you. Maybe it's time to revise your "rule of thumb"! ;-)

I don't remember how many tries I needed. I do know I gave up the first day because I got tired and the ski was huge and heavy. I was a skinny and weak little thing and couldn't keep the ski upright in the water. We got a new ski -- fiberglass instead of solid oak. Then I was able to get up.

But that's nothing. I grew up on a lake. One day we watched a middle-aged woman a few properties away repeatedly try to get up for about an hour and a half. We couldn't believe she kept trying. Usually the boat drivers are not so patient. And what about the fatigue. But she did get up eventually and we saw her enjoying waterskiing for years afterward.

[kewms]

So, given that ... isn't it possible for someone to do GTD without using 8 gaziilion tools? Maybe only DA has accomplished this.

My feeling is that productivity and task management are far easier than playing world class tennis or guitar. Productivity is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If you have to work your system for 4-6 hours a day, you probably are not Getting Things Done and you probably need to rethink what you're doing.

With that said, there's a difference between a complex system and a time-consuming system. The whole point of the various software tools people talk about here is to replace human effort with automation. I don't have to worry about maintaining project-action links because my tools do that for me.

There are also vast differences in the kinds of work people do. DA's system no doubt works very well for someone who spends most of their time traveling and giving seminars. That doesn't mean it will work well for someone who spends most of their time writing software, doing accounting work, or building houses.

There are people (other than DA) who have implemented GTD with very simple tools, and people who have implemented it with very complex tools. What tools do you need?

Katherine

[andersons]

Yes, I was talking about world-class professionals and masters. Everybody can play tennis and enjoy it. But I believe that there is something more in Andre Agassi play than thousand of hours of training. It is mastery, it is art and it is charisma.

Do you know that Lance Armstrong heart works much slower than yours. So he can make much bigger effort than you and his heart is still in the "valid range of operation". Isn't it a built-in ability that he was able to use when he was training?
There's a problem with the Andre Agassis and the Lance Armstrongs and the Michael Jordans: in every case where their training has been scrutinized carefully, it's found that they train more and/or train differently than their professional peers.

If two factors BOTH influence an outcome, we can statistically model how much of the outcome depends on each factor. If training time accounted for 75% of the outcome data, we could assume that "talent" accounts for the rest.

However, in every studied case including the seemingly-magical performances of the superstars like Agassi, training time accounts for almost ALL of the outcome. There is simply nothing left to account for.

Given all the other times that even extraordinary success occurs only accompanied with extraordinary training, I would predict that if strictly measured and observed, we would see that Agassi and Armstrong have trained more and trained differently than their less successful peers.

[Zatara]

David is at another level, considering both his raw talent and his years of experience. Obsessing about his own GTD system, Eddie's guitar, Mozart's piano or Agassi's racket is just unproductive.

What we, poor mortals, can do is practice our GTD skills to be the best we possibly can, using any tools necessary for that.

So is it possible for someone to do GTD without using 8 gaziilion tools?

Yes, of course, as much as Eddie can play Eruption with a cheap acoustic guitar. But the real question is how would you get to Eddie's level? Do you really think that buying his guitar and amp will do it?

[andersons]

DA's typical response has been that, when he started using a palm, he kept his lists in the vanilla to-do list, and did his planning in whatever way was comfortable (mind map). There is no where I can find where he talks about spending tremendous effort keeping the mind maps 100% up to date, or linking the mind map directly to each task.

So, given that ... isn't it possible for someone to do GTD without using 8 gaziilion tools? Maybe only DA has accomplished this.
GTD as a system is not "relaxed" or "loose." It says to keep ALL your commitments written down. It differentiates between projects and actions in an unusual (unique?) way.

If you are describing his system accurately, either the stuff in DA's mind maps is unrelated to his projects and actions, or else the links are only in his head.

DA could be comfortable with his system because 1) it fits his lifestyle and psychological preferences, 2) he's been using it for a long, long time, and 3) he's willing to spend time maintaining it. Maybe the book doesn't project "tremendous effort" because if he framed it that way, no one would try it. The book does describe a 2-hour weekly review, and that is a lot more effort than many people are willing to give. And it is commonly said that it takes "years" to become a "black belt" in GTD. The common analogy is with something that takes a lot of time and effort.

Many of the people I have introduced to GTD have seen it not as "relaxed" and "loose" but more like "insanely anal -- you've got to be kidding me."

Why care about how David Allen uses his system? The question is, how much of your commitments do YOU need written down and/or linked?

Vanilla Palm is not inherently simpler than add-on applications with more features. The native ToDo app has fewer features and simpler data structures, but if those features and data organization are a poor fit for YOUR data, you will struggle to maintain your system with that tool.

Simplicity of use comes from the fit between the tool and the job you want it to do. It is frustrating to make pesto with a chef's knife. It is extra work (at best) to slice tomatoes with a food processor.

[andersons]

. . .I wonder why - if our knowledge is such detailed - we still are not able to teach computers waterski or compose music. By teach I do not mean to load the waterski or music program developed by humans but self-learning process based on experiences.
I think the field is getting there. There has been some success with computer models of self-learning. The neural network models can learn all kinds of stuff. They learn partly by comparing their output with a goal output, so it is a self-learning process based on experiences. They do require better feedback and more repetitions than humans do, though, to achieve the same learning.

There are some successes claimed with models that compose music.

Some models of "cognitive" skill learning (like geometry, algebra, and programming) have also been applied in teaching with great success. For example, one model identified the knowledge (facts) and the procedures (skills) that experts use to solve algebra problems. A computer "tutor" then taught novices algebra, analyzing their answers to determine what fact or skill was needed, then showing them that specific fact or skill. The students learned algebra skills in a fraction of the usual classroom time.

Waterskiing is another story. We are a long, long way from understanding the motor system. With my current limited understanding, I am more in awe that we can all walk on a bumpy path than that Lance Armstrong can ride a bike longer and faster than anyone else.

[Max]

I'm confused.

Can I become a Mozart if I just have enough experience at music?

Can I be equally good at tennis, music, programming, and hobknobbing?

Do I have talents or not?

I have no God given abilities, and I am just a widget thrust into the world I am good at programming and suck at the trumpet due soley to the experiences I have had?

I feel a bit disoriented as if I have been starring at a carousel to long.

[TesTeq]

I'm confused.

Can I become a Mozart if I just have enough experience at music?

Can I be equally good at tennis, music, programming, and hobknobbing?

Do I have talents or not?

I have no God given abilities, and I am just a widget thrust into the world I am good at programming and suck at the trumpet due soley to the experiences I have had?

I feel a bit disoriented as if I have been starring at a carousel to long.
As I understand what andersons writes - YES. andersons says that everything is a matter of practice. You can achieve anything you want if you put enough effort. You can be Mozart, Brad Pitt or George W. Bush if you want. Just practice.

Personally I do not believe it but I am not an expert. Apparently andersons has read much more books on the subject so I have to give up in this discussion.

Besides I do not like the idea that I am just a lazy man and it is the reason why I am not the pop star, top tennis player, best-seller writer, Microsoft owner or President of my country.

[andersons]

As I understand what andersons writes - YES. andersons says that everything is a matter of practice. You can achieve anything you want if you put enough effort. You can be Mozart, Brad Pitt or George W. Bush if you want. Just practice.
Not exactly. It is too late for me to put in 10 years/10,000 hours to become an international level golfer; besides the lack of time, age-related decline becomes a problem. :-(

And you cannot do it all. Remember how well Michael Jordan did in baseball?

But it is never, ever too late to increase your skill, and no one can really predict your ultimate skill level if you will just keep practicing. Even if you do not achieve early success, don't worry. Early success is a bad predictor of later skill level, but time spent practicing is.

I cannot say for certain that there is no such thing as talent or heritability of these skills because negatives cannot be proven. But the likelihood of talent being important seems small given the lack of evidence despite looking hard for it, plus all the evidence that relates skill with practice.


Besides I do not like the idea that I am just a lazy man and it is the reason why I am not the pop star, top tennis player, best-seller writer, Microsoft owner or President of my country.
Well, let's not bring Presidents in here. It could be argued that becoming President does not require skill so much as money and a great marketing team. :-)

It does not take 10,000 hours to develop skill that will enrich your life. Significant skill -- not enough to make you famous, but enough to be rewarding -- can be developed in far less time.

The experts mentioned in this thread, Agassi, Armstrong, et al., have given up much to achieve superior performance. The rest of us don't work that hard at tennis because we simply don't want to. That's not laziness, IMO, it's a perfectly reasonable choice. There is a limit on the number of hours in your life. Every hour spent practicing is an hour NOT available for other things you could be doing. Including sitting on the beach in Hawaii.


But I believe that there is something more in Andre Agassi play than thousand of hours of training. It is mastery, it is art and it is charisma.
My opinion about charisma is not based on research. I think that the charisma is a combination of spectacular skill and appealing personality traits. His skill allows him to elegantly make shots that look impossible. His personality is pleasing, outgoing, enthusiastic, intense. He smiles a lot; he reacts emotionally to the game. In the US at least, people are rated highly likable when they have these traits and display these behaviors. Combine the spectacular performance with the winning personality and you have charisma.

I think that Pete Sampras was every bit as brilliant a player as Agassi. He made spectacular shots and beautiful plays. But Sampras was reserved. He didn't show emotion on his face. No one said he had charisma.

And I never hear about the charisma of players with winning personalities but less successful performance. Before Agassi reached the top of the rankings, when his performance wasn't as good, where was the charisma?

If you can know charisma when you see it, then you should be able to watch lower ranked players in the Top 100 and predict who the next Agassi will be. In fact, if charisma is so important, it should be possible to watch children playing tennis and predict who the next Agassi will be. The charisma should be observable all along if it is not learned. But I don't think people can make that charisma prediction reliably above chance or independent of skill.

[TesTeq]

I cannot say for certain that there is no such thing as talent or heritability of these skills because negatives cannot be proven. But the likelihood of talent being important seems small given the lack of evidence despite looking hard for it, plus all the evidence that relates skill with practice.
I believe that talent is a catalyst in the skill development process.

Let's assume that we have person A (tennis talent 90%) and person B (tennis talent 10%). In my opinion in the same conditions (the same training effort) person A will learn to play tennis many times faster than person B. And person B will never achieve skill levels that are achievable for person A.

[Zatara]

I'm confused.
Can I become a Mozart if I just have enough experience at music?
Can I be equally good at tennis, music, programming, and hobknobbing?
Do I have talents or not?
I have no God given abilities, and I am just a widget thrust into the world I am good at programming and suck at the trumpet due soley to the experiences I have had?
I feel a bit disoriented as if I have been starring at a carousel to long.I will try to summarize our collective findings here. Please add your comments.

In order to achieve mastery in anything that depends on skill (tennis, music, sports or GTD), 4 requirements have to be met:

1) Boundary conditions
You cannot be blind if you want to paint like Picasso. You cannot be deaf if you want to play like Mozart. You may even get deaf afterwards, when all mental representations are in place (Beethoven), but not while you are still learning.

Not fitting within the boundary conditions is not lack of talent. I (think I) don't have any talent for drawing, but as my two hands and sight are perfect, I would position myself within the boundary conditions. Shades of gray.

2) Time
There is an optimal time to start developing your skills. Children can learn a new language and reach native proficiency, but it is much harder, if ever possible, for an adult to do it.

3) Talent
Tough one, no one knows for sure how much of a role it plays. Personally I tend to agree with TesTeq that, if you level all other conditions, talent may explain the difference between the master and the genius. Andersons and current scientific literature tend to the other side, where talent doesn't play a role, only practice. However, even they accept that this cannot be proven, because of the difficulty in finding a negative control (like training a "non-talented" person to genius level).

I am still open to Anderson's view, especially when I remember George Leonard's book on Mastery and the paradox about his best white belt students, who would give up or stagnate after some time and get passed by the "worse" but more persistent ones. This is particularly true for bodybuilders also, most of the very, very big ones say they were very skinny teenagers and this was actually the motivation for improvement. Their naturally well-built peers (talented?) seemed to lack the motivation.

Anyway, as you cannot define your talent beforehand, this seems to be just an academic discussion, since either way you still need to...

4) Practice
We all agree that without this one, any level of mastery is impossible.

Conclusions:
The first 3 requirements are beyond your control, so no matter what you believe in, start practicing now.

Considering the most common scenario, you are also probably able, but too old and not talented enough to reach master level. You will need all the help you can have.

If you can buy a CD player that plays half-speed tunes, so that you can follow and "see" the relationships in Eddie's solos, do it. The fact that he doesn't need one now or didn't own one when he was a kid is irrelevant, all that matters is if this will bring you closer to mastery.

If you can have a software that links your projects to your next actions, the only relevant question is if this will bring you closer to mastery. If David doesn't use one or has never used one is completely irrelevant.

[ceehjay]

My summary: This is my last visit to this thread. It doesn't contribute to my goal of becoming more productive with less stress. In fact, it has increased my stress. I long for the helpful posts of a year or more ago, and I find myself wondering if this forum has outlived its usefulness for me. Maybe I am closer to black belt than I think.

Of course, no one else would really care one way or another about this, but like others who post here, I just wanted to have my say.

Carolyn

[Zatara]

I long for the helpful posts of a year or more ago, and I find myself wondering if this forum has outlived its usefulness for me. Maybe I am closer to black belt than I think.In martial arts, this would be a typical green belt comment. Once one knows all the moves of karate for example, it is tempting to think that mastery is nearby...

Big mistake!

Mastery requires much more practice, and generally mentoring some white belts, especially the "not-so-talented" ones. They will force you to question your own technique, to go slower and try every possible combination, etc.

If you miss the helpful posts of one year ago, maybe you should start writing them now. But of course this depends on your goal: being a karate master or kicking someone's butt on the streets...

[Max]

And I never hear about the charisma of players with winning personalities but less successful performance. Before Agassi reached the top of the rankings, when his performance wasn't as good, where was the charisma?

I don't think that charisma has much too do with success in tennis. I do know that Agassi has always had charisma. I was a fan of his since I first saw him. He was cool. Loved the image and long hair. And we was not at the top. Actually for a while when he cut (shaved) his hair are focused all his attention on the game he had less charisma.


Also, thanks all for the summaries. I still don't believe I could ever carry a tune in a bukket, but that's a mutt point.

{note to self: practice checking tickler every morning}

[andersons]

I believe that talent is a catalyst in the skill development process.

Let's assume that we have person A (tennis talent 90%) and person B (tennis talent 10%). In my opinion in the same conditions (the same training effort) person A will learn to play tennis many times faster than person B. And person B will never achieve skill levels that are achievable for person A.
You are not alone with this theory. I firmly believed it too, before I read the literature. If you are interested in the subject, I recommend that paper; the data are compelling. Many scientists have shared the talent theory and have looked for support and have come up empty. This astounding lack of evidence has shaken my belief in the existence of talent.

In controlled observations, teachers identify that person A has talent, person B does not. However, the teacher's idea of "talent" is simply based on observed performance to date. Person A is seen to have talent because he is performing better at that time. But when A and B BOTH continue to train approximately equally, the performance difference goes away, and the "talent" prediction does as well.

You never see a "many times faster" learning difference over time with the same training. At most, you'll see one person start with an edge and maintain that edge -- a constant difference. No multiplication. The factor that IS multiplicative is the practice difference (below is a paraphrase for brevity):

We found large differences in the histories of deliberate practice for experts and amateurs. At no point during development did the two groups accumulate comparable amounts of practice or attain comparable levels of performance. Experts started 4 years earlier and their average practice increased each year. The current amount of practice is more than 10 times higher for the experts than the amateurs [16 years later, at age 20].

Over the years, experts' total practice increased exponentially. Amateurs' increased linearly. That is the multiplicative difference between them. My amount of practice -- about 5000 hours -- puts me right in the middle of the expert curve: way above the amateurs, but way below the top experts. Which is exactly where my skill level is, too. I can't claim to have more talent than an amateur. I would like to think I don't have as much talent as Murray Perahia, but I haven't practiced as much either.

I think we want to see these spectacular performers as something magical, but in reality they are working their butts off.

When "talent" can only be identified AFTER a person has achieved extraordinary performance, and that performance is ALSO directly related to increased training, the theory is shaky at best. We cannot find an effect of talent, because in every case, people who perform better have practiced more! 10 TIMES more.

I am passionate about the subject because as both a teacher and a learner, I have shortchanged others and been shortchanged myself for a perceived lack of talent. I didn't bother working at things I really wanted to do because my father thought I had no talent in the area. My students' performance improved greatly when I saw it as related to lack of training, not lack of talent. The take-home message is -- no one has been able to identify talent PREDICTIVELY independent of training, so don't shortchange yourself or others for a perceived lack of talent.

[Zatara]

Also, thanks all for the summaries. I still don't believe I could ever carry a tune in a bukket, but that's a mutt point.Sorry, but English is not my first language and I've no idea of what you're talking about. :-?

[andersons]

I don't think that charisma has much too do with success in tennis. I do know that Agassi has always had charisma. I was a fan of his since I first saw him. He was cool. Loved the image and long hair. And we was not at the top. Actually for a while when he cut (shaved) his hair are focused all his attention on the game he had less charisma.
I agree that his personality and appearance were always appealing; it's just that I didn't hear the really awestruck commentary about "charisma" until he also achieved some spectacular successes. And good point -- I revise my theory of charisma to include appearance: attractive appearance + personality. We are blown away -- and rightly so -- when someone is gorgeous AND has a sparkling personality AND can hit a tennis ball with the best of them. There are some tennis players today with similar charisma but minus the consistently great play. Some might get there. I would predict who based on their training schedule, not their appearance or appealing personalities.


Also, thanks all for the summaries. I still don't believe I could ever carry a tune in a bukket, but that's a mutt point.
I have taught supposedly "tone deaf" people to carry a tune. The "tone deaf" students were required to be in my choir, and I wanted my choir not to suck -- so I found a way. If you can listen to 2 pitches and tell me which one is high and which is low, you can learn to sing them. If you can't hear the difference, you need a lot of perceptual training first, which is a lot of work. However, the vast majority of non-musicians can hear pitches quite well.

I also know that vocal tone can be dramatically improved with voice training.

I don't know WHAT it is about singing. The people who complain to me that they can't sing are really not bad and could be quite good with a bit of practice. The people who want to sing the solos sound terrible and can't be helped because they firmly believe they have the greatest voice God ever made.

However, don't bother working at singing unless you really want to. But do check the tickler file every morning! :-)

[kewms]

I don't know WHAT it is about singing. The people who complain to me that they can't sing are really not bad and could be quite good with a bit of practice. The people who want to sing the solos sound terrible and can't be helped because they firmly believe they have the greatest voice God ever made.

I don't think it's just singing. I've seen a similar phenomenon with writers and martial artists, too. It takes a certain level of skill to be able to see your own mistakes, and a higher level of skill to be able to fix them. "The expert is the one who knows how little he knows," and "ignorance is bliss."

Katherine

[Rainer Burmeister]

The Weekly Review is important to me because it keeps me up to date on everything else.
The reviews (monthly, weekly, and daily) are the most important parts (habits) of GTD for me. Especially the daily reviews give me some kind of momentum that makes it unnecessary to link everything consciously. But I presume I do some unconscious linking, because during my reviews I come up with ideas for my projects. Two daily reviews every day seem to be optimal for me.

Rainer

[Max]

Sorry, but English is not my first language and I've no idea of what you're talking about. :-?

"cannot carry a tune in a bukket" means that the person cannot sing well.

I meant "mute point" not "mutt point".

A mute point is one that does not matter. In this case, I have no desire to sing so it does not matter if I have musical talent or if talent is needed.

Also, just trying to lighten the mood with a bad pun.

[andersons]

Zatara, nice summary.

About consensus, this is my own personal view, not right or wrong but based on my personal values. I am comfortable with disagreement and find it valuable so long as it is reasoned and respectful. I have strongly disagreed with others on this thread, but I hope I have been respectful while presenting my view and the reasons for it. At least, that was my intent. I often learn more from respectful debate than from agreement. If I debate a position, at worst I solidify what I know so far. At best, I learn I am wrong, or I consider facts and ideas and viewpoints I hadn't thought of before, opening my mind.

I realize that not everyone likes debate or is interested in a given topic. Everyone is free to ignore threads or posts. My screen name is always there, and anyone can ignore my posts.

ceehjay, although you probably won't read this since you are done with the thread, I respect your view that the thread is worthless to you. However, several of us clearly were willing to discuss the topic and were interested enough to continue the discussion, so it clearly had value or interest to us. There are posts and threads here that are not interesting to me, so I simply skim or skip over them. I think that if people are interested enough to discuss something, whether it be the fashion style of backpacks or Levenger products or psychoanalysis, as long as it's not vicious or offensive, that's the kind of open discussion the forum enables. Even when not directly related to GTD. There are many off-topic threads, there always have been, and I don't understand why this one is bringing down the board.

And there are 2 topics on thread now. This is hardly unique to this thread or this forum. I read other forums where thread topic is strictly controlled. This is achieved through either expensive moderation, or many tiresome posts saying "your post is off topic."

[Zatara]

I meant "mute point" not "mutt point".Learned one new thing today, thanks.

[Zatara]

"I often learn more from respectful debate than from agreement. If I debate a position, at worst I solidify what I know so far."You're completely right, and that was my attempt to solidify what we all knew so far. My goal never was to stop debate.

For the rest, all I can say is amen.

[airolg]

Are you sure it's not moot point?

http://www.answers.com/topic/moot-point

Not to start a debate or anything...

[Max]

Are you sure it's not moot point?

http://www.answers.com/topic/moot-point

Not to start a debate or anything...


Actually, that would be correct. So, not only did I make a typo, but I also used the wrong word. :(

Also, i will go ahead and point out that bukket is actual spelled bucket but my favorite restaurant and seaside hangout is spelled 'Bukkets'. This is a common Freudian slip for me to make. ;)

Moral of the story is to be sure to drink one's morning caffeinated beverage before posting.

[Day Owl]

Of course "moot point" is correct. But in context, "mute point" is a lovely pun.

[airolg]

My intention was not to correct you so much as it was to have it correct for the future readers of the forum. As you know, people read things, believe they are correct, commit them to memory and then use them wrongly from that point forward. Sorry if I offended anyone. :wink:

[smithdoug]

Musicians with perfect pitch (a proxy for "musical talent") have a particular anatomical asymmetry of the planum temporale within the cortex of the brain, as shown by in vivo magnetic resonance imaging. Most professional musicians do not have perfect pitch. But a few do. (Mozart is said to have had perfect pitch. ) And apparently no amount of practice can produce the kind of anatomical asymmetry in the brain that facilitates perfect pitch. At least not later in life. There's speculation that the right kind of practice at the right time--early in life, when the brain is most plastic--might lead to these kinds of changes.

The brain remains malleable throughout life and it's that malleability (or plasticity) which enables us to learn. But the brain is far more plastic in early life; before puberty. Enough of the right kind of practice can make almost any of us a master of almost anything. But there are still those who go well beyond mastery. It's widely thought that, at the least, they must have had sufficient early experience to develop the neural structures that enable for truly exceptional performance later on. And one can not rule out a genetic component.

Again, that's not to say that someone without the most propitious early developmental experiences (or genetics) can't achieve very high levels, even mastery. But they may not be able to reach the pinacle. Athletics, at the highest levels, magnifies very, very fine differences; differences too small to measure in a laboratory.

I coached world-elite athletes in an earlier life. Give me a twelve-year-old, any "normal" twelve-year-old, and I'm confident I could train him or her to become an Olympic-level athlete. But I can't necessarily say they would be the very best in the world in a highly competitive sport.

My own empirical observation, from being around two athletes each of whom dominated world competition in his own era, is that they brought a special focus to their training--and attention to detail--that the others did not. It's not so much practice as the "right" practice.

The right practice and training and mental attitude can get you awfully damn far, and well ahead of most. But it's also possible there may be one or two or a few who by virtue of better neurology, as a result of better early developmental experiences and/or genetics, will always be a bit ahead.

Sorry to be so late to this conversation. I was impressed by what Zatara had written elsewhere and was compelled to plumb around and see what else he had to say.

[BigStory]

Well, this has been a very cool discussion to follow, and I just wanted to add a thought that occurred to me early on.

I think the comparison between music and GTD is kind of apt, because music involves the discovery of a kind of "truth" about reality. Some notes harmonize, others don't. A person has to love music to take the trouble to figure this stuff out on thier own. Sure you can be taught, but the love is still the driver.

What in the world possessed DA to spend 20 years coaching people in personal productivity, and through those experiences be able to discern certain truths about it that are fundamental and "harmonius." It couldn't have been just a paycheck (even a big one) at the end of the day. He had to be finding some kind of delight in doing it. Listening, thinking, pondering it to get to the heart of it.

I think that perhaps if anything leads some people to be "geniuses" as opposed to only mastering a skill, it might be that kind of delight. Where that comes from I don't know. I know that you enjoy the things you do well, more than other things. But what kept DA at it, even when he wasn't very good at it? It had to be more than just a will to practice. It had to be a certain kind of pleasure.

Just my thoughts,
Thanks for the work all of you put into this thread.

Gordon

[andersons]

Musicians with perfect pitch (a proxy for "musical talent") have a particular anatomical asymmetry of the planum temporale within the cortex of the brain, as shown by in vivo magnetic resonance imaging. Most professional musicians do not have perfect pitch. But a few do. (Mozart is said to have had perfect pitch. ) And apparently no amount of practice can produce the kind of anatomical asymmetry in the brain that facilitates perfect pitch. At least not later in life. There's speculation that the right kind of practice at the right time--early in life, when the brain is most plastic--might lead to these kinds of changes.
It's funny to read about perfect pitch because I was just recruited to participate in a perfect pitch experiment today. (Ugh.) This is my understanding of the literature.

A few years ago, I heard Elizabeth West Marvin of the Eastman School of Music lecture on the ways Eastman had developed to help students with pitch overcome that disability and instead develop the much more musically useful skill of relative pitch. There's no correlation of perfect pitch with musical skill or "genius." It is now believed in the conservatories that perfect pitch, known as absolute pitch (AP), is a detriment to musical performance.

I am one who was diagnosed with perfect pitch. And it didn't seem to help my piano skill at all. Just got me stuck in an experiment booth. With my amount of practice, I'm no better than my piano-playing friends without perfect pitch. It always seemed to interfere with my musical goals, so I tried to suppress pitch naming as much as possible. And there are a lot of out-of-tune instruments out there, including my own antique piano. If I don't suppress the pitch naming, I'd go insane.

Non-musicians can't name pitches, of course, but they can often reproduce them accurately even after a long delay. After hearing a tune, they were asked to sing it about a week later, and reproduced exactly the same pitches much more frequently than would be expected by chance. Without being able to name those pitches, non-musicians could often sing them by memory. My spouse does this all the time with no musical training at all -- right on pitch (over and over and over, to my chagrin).

I don't think the AP imaging findings tell us much. The brains of those with the ability to name pitches have smaller right planum temporales. The left is the same size as the non-AP group. So the asymmetry comes from the right side being smaller. Smaller -- that is odd, and the speculative conclusion of the study is shaky, relating a correlation in adults to causation by a genetic influence that "pruned" the right planum temporale. There is no evidence in that study for that speculation, no evidence for when and how the right planum temporale became smaller than normal.

In fact, many, many more recent imaging studies have shown large cortical reorganization in response to training; this was previously believed improbable. For example, in adult monkeys trained in a finger-tapping task, there was reorganization of the somatotropic finger areas in motor cortex, in just a short amount of training.

Cortical reorganization has been repeatedly associated with training and detraining. For example, right-handed violin players have increased cortical representation of the left string-playing hand/fingers, but not for the right hand which simply holds the bow. The brain areas controlling the left fingers are larger and more finely tuned (less overlapping).

At the time of the perfect pitch studies, just a few years ago, it was not believed that that much cortical reorganization can occur in adulthood, but many studies now provide converging evidence that it can. Weinberger, for example, has shown plasticity in auditory cortex receptive fields in rats (or guinea pigs or such) in response to auditory tones they had learned. Their brains reorganized, and they got better at identifying tones.

So the brain continually changes in response to training, both functionally and anatomically. (For humans and animals. Anything with a brain.) Musicians with AP have an ability to name pitches, which is associated with a smaller right planum temporale than normal, but this AP ability has been developed only with intense early musical training (<7 years old). AP, however, may interfere with some musical skill and is purposely de-trained in conservatories. Most world-class musicians and geniuses do not have AP, but they all started training early, usually around age 4, and increased their practice each year until they amassed at least 10,000 hours.


My own empirical observation, from being around two athletes each of whom dominated world competition in his own era, is that they brought a special focus to their training--and attention to detail--that the others did not. It's not so much practice as the "right" practice.
It sounds like anecdotal observation, but mine is the same (with musicians, not athletes). Not only do the best practice more, they practice with great focus and intensity. And yes, I'm amazed at the attention to detail. I read that they are also paying more and more attention to recovery, CNS recovery in particular. And world-class musicians also are very careful to rest; they sleep significantly longer than musicians with less skill. And they take naps. There is mounting evidence that consolidation of learning in the brain takes place during sleep. In such a competitive world arena, whoever can recover faster and train more has the edge. A very few edge out their peers and then seem magical.

In competition, though, athletes and musicians continually try to perform better than the heroes of yesterday. And so the pinnacle of performance years ago becomes commonplace today. The violin virtuoso Paganini "would indeed cut a sorry figure if placed on the modern concert stage."

[Zatara]

And yes, I'm amazed at the attention to detail. I read that they are also paying more and more attention to recovery, CNS recovery in particular. And world-class musicians also are very careful to rest; they sleep significantly longer than musicians with less skill.

Thanks to you and smithdouglas for reminding us of these two very important aspects of practice.

[moises]

I remember reading about the overriding importance of practice in determining musical expertise years ago in the popular press. I haven't read the actual studies but I assume their conclusions are well-supported and valid.

Given that the difference between virtuosos and amateurs is time spent practicing, and given that the number of people who desire to be virtuosos exceeds the number of people who are virtuosos, we can take a step back and ask another question: why do some people who want to be virtuosos practice much more than other people who want to be virtuosos?

As a parent of a nine-year-old child, as a part-time teacher, and as a full-time boss, this is a very important question for me. The answer to the question why some people work harder to get what they want than others is best answered with words like "drive" and "motivation." If two people want the same thing, we can say that one has more drive or is more motivated than the other.

But that answer appears to beg the question. What more do we mean by drive than "spends a lot of time practicing"? So the question remains, what differentiates the more devoted practicers from the less devoted practicers?

If talent is determined by practice time, and drive determines practice time, what determines drive? Social science has increased our knowledge by dissolving talent into practice time. Can it tell us where drive comes from?

[kewms]

If talent is determined by practice time, and drive determines practice time, what determines drive? Social science has increased our knowledge by dissolving talent into practice time. Can it tell us where drive comes from?

Some of it is external motivation. There's a fair amount of evidence that people meet whatever standards are expected of them. If you tell someone they have great potential but need to work hard to really achieve, you'll get better results than telling them either (a) they have no talent and are hopeless or (b) they have great talent and shouldn't need to work. (These results are regardless of what tests actually say about the person's potential.)

Some of it may be innate. See the research on EQ, which measures things like willingness to accept delayed rewards. I'm not an expert, but I suspect that EQ, like IQ, has both nature and nurture components.

Katherine

[andersons]

. . .why do some people who want to be virtuosos practice much more than other people who want to be virtuosos? . . .
Social science has increased our knowledge by dissolving talent into practice time. Can it tell us where drive comes from?
Not to the point where we have a comprehensive theory that can predict (to my knowledge), but yes to the point of identifying a bunch of known factors that affect drive. There are known factors at several levels: social, cognitive, and neurochemical. Katherine already mentioned some of the social factors; they are very important. The implications of the neurochemical factors are enormous, but the cognitive are easier to talk about.

From a cognitive perspective, it could be
1) incorrect beliefs - perceived lack of talent, not understanding the work required to achieve, wanting something for nothing
2) correct beliefs - the cost-benefit ratio is high and gets higher the better you get

A reality of life is that we always have to give something up (the cost) to get something (the benefit). Time and energy are both required costs of skill development, and both are strictly limited. We must make choices because of our limited resources available to obtain what we want.

I see motivation as that which overcomes resistance enough to affect behavior, as opposed to desire which is not necessarily strong enough to affect behavior. When a person says he wants something but is not willing to do what has been proven to be necessary to achieve it, I see that kind of “want” as desire, not motivation. It is admiration for the outcome, or perhaps jealousy for the acclaim. Certainly it would always be nice to get something for nothing. Someone can give you money, but he can’t give you achievement. It must be earned.

For many people, wanting to play the piano is like wanting to win the lottery. If I had a nickel for every person who told me, "I would give ANYTHING to play the piano like that." Umm -- no. It always turns out they aren't willing to do much, if anything. I sometimes say, "Well, find a good teacher, practice daily, and in 5,000 hours you'll be just as good as me." A friend then says to me, "I could practice a million hours and never be able to do that." Well, I don't feel any sense of special talent, but I do remember all the hours on the piano bench. I remember that I had to learn, and it was hard. I remember watching my mother's fingers and thinking, I could never do that. Yet now I can do what I previously thought was impossible. But my friend has a perceived lack of talent.

The lack-of-talent belief can also be an “out.” You know how David Allen says that some people don’t want to organize their commitments and see them all in writing because they don’t want to face the reality? Likewise, if I see practice as my only requirement for achievement, then I must take responsibility for my lack of achievement.

Another reason, though, could be ignorance of how much work it takes to achieve. I have many times admired achievement and vastly underestimated the work required. Even when I knew how much work piano playing required, I still severely underestimated how much work choir directing required. Knowledge fixes this particular problem; once I see a clear path to an outcome, or at least what I can do to get started, I'm on my way. The stages progress from "Wow, that's amazing" to "How do you do that?" to "Yikes, that's a lot of work" to "OK, I'll try it."

There is another reason, though, for stopping short of practicing to virtuoso level. A very good one -- the cost in time and energy. There’s a limit on how many hours you have and how much cellular energy you have available to get work done during your life. So you must make choices as to how to spend those limited resources. Virtuosity is a very expensive choice, as shown by the “power law of learning.”

There are diminishing returns to increased amounts of practice. The cost-benefit ratio keeps increasing. When an expert practices for an hour, performance improvement is tiny or miniscule. When a novice practices for an hour, performance improvement is massive. (It doesn’t subjectively feel that way because we tend to compare our performance with experts’ rather than our own previous performance.) Much more improvement takes place in the novice's hour of practice than in the expert's.

This relationship is known as the “learning curve” or the “power law of learning” because it is best fit by a power function (performance as a function of time spent). It’s ubiquitous in measurement of learning. Early improvement is rapid, but slows with increased practice. And slows and slows. The cost-benefit ratio goes up and up. The expert must practice more and more hours for less and less measurable improvement.

If you look at it this way, you could say it’s “crazy” to be willing to work to become a virtuoso because the cost is so high. You could say that it’s perfectly reasonable to reduce practice to maintenance levels when you reach the flat part of the learning curve.

This is why people might feel they have "hit a plateau" and then get discouraged from future work. The learning curve itself never really seems to plateau completely, but the slope really does flatten out. If you quit or reduce effort a little past the tangent point on the curve, you have optimized the cost-benefit ratio.

[andersons]

Three reasons, mentioned previously:
1) ~10,000 hours (by age 20, they practice >25 hours per week)
2) > 10 years
3) starting early (~age 4 -- how else to accumulate that much training?)

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2815/1797/1600/practiceByAge.jpg

[kewms]

This relationship is known as the “learning curve” or the “power law of learning” because it is best fit by a power function (performance as a function of time spent). It’s ubiquitous in measurement of learning. Early improvement is rapid, but slows with increased practice. And slows and slows. The cost-benefit ratio goes up and up. The expert must practice more and more hours for less and less measurable improvement.


To what extent can you replace practicing "more" with practicing "better"? In athletics in particular, there are injury risks associated with overtraining, and often the activity itself carries an injury risk as well. To what extent can mental practice -- visualization, watching video, etc. -- reduce the amount of time devoted to physical practice? Or is that too dependent on individual training and coaching methods to generalize?

Katherine

[TesTeq]

To what extent can you replace practicing "more" with practicing "better"?
Yes, "better" is very important but I still think that there is something more.

In the "XV International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw" (http://www.konkurs.chopin.pl/index.php) in this year there were some exceptionally trained pianists from China, Japan and Korea. They were playing perfectly, no wrong note, perfect timing. They could play the music twice as fast with the same accuracy. But the winner was young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz. Why? He simply feels the romantic soul of Chopin's music. He doesn't play notes. He plays stories, emotions, landscapes. Can it be acquired by practice?

You can learn the craft by practice but the real art and mastery requires talent.

[MikeC]

Ah Talent. There are two secrets of success in this world. One is Time Mgt. And the other is Weight Shift. And I believe you are born with each. Or not.

You athletes understand weight shift.
I could practice golf 8 hours a day and I am not going to make the PGA tour. I don't have the talent. Read: weight shift.

My New Years resolution 2 years ago was to "become Anal." Didn't make it. Now it's "get structure and discipline." (a Morgenstern principle) This I can do. But it will be work.

Folks with the talent for Organization and Really Getting Things Done rarely become unorganized. They rarely let anything slip tru the cracks. (ie, my friend George who calls me at 11pm on February 2nd to ask a tax question--he's working on his tax return already.....I'm in BED! Thats a natural folks.)
mike

[kewms]

You athletes understand weight shift.
I could practice golf 8 hours a day and I am not going to make the PGA tour. I don't have the talent. Read: weight shift.

Weight shift can be taught. I've learned it as part of my martial arts practice.

FWIW, I was probably one of the least athletic members of my high school class. Now, [mumble] years later, I've got a heart rate of 65 and can toss people who outweigh me by a hundred pounds across the room. And this is with only 4-5 hours a week of consistent practice.

The moral of the story is, don't dismiss the impact of practice until you've actually tried it.

Katherine

[MikeC]

The moral of the story is, don't dismiss the impact of practice until you've actually tried it.

Katherine[/QUOTE]

I agree! You practice practice practice....and Discover you have talent. That's why we take our kids to soccer, dance, karate, basketball....etc...to see what might "click."

[jkgrossi]

But I'm guessing there are people out there who don't spend $ and time trying to magically ensure everything stays in synch. They just do the steps (weekly review, organizing, etc.) and then rely on intution to fill the gaps. Is this true? It's the feeling I get from re-reading GTD.

I happen to be one such person...

[moises]

If one takes a cognitive approach, one must tease out different kinds of beliefs.

I might have a realistic goal with a clear understanding of the effort required to achieve it and a realistic chance of attaining that goal.

So, in that respect, I have no cognitive deficits.

I might still act irrationally, however. I might choose short-term pleasure and not achieve the much greater long-term rewards.

Some might argue that my irrational behavior is explained cognitively by my holding of such beliefs as: "I just can't stand the discomfort of writing, I deserve to surf the internet instead," and "Everyone will think this article I am writing is stupid, I should stop working on it."

Let us put the beliefs expressed in the prior paragraph to one side, for the moment. So I will remain agnostic as to whether those beliefs are the explanatory cause of irrational behavior.

I would suggest that motivation and drive to sacrifice short-term pleasures for the sake of long-term goods can be enhanced by following some general principles. And GTD is one particular species of these general principles. That is why so many of us are so enthralled with GTD, because it has enabled us to act more rationally; it has enabled us to keep our long-term interests in sight; it has enabled us to practice more and engage in seeking short-term pleasures less.

The general principles are:

1. I write down my goals.
Read andersons' description elsewhere of an experiment she carried out in one of her classes. At an elite college or university, very few of the students knew how to set goals for themselves. The importance of this has been emphasized by David Allen and every other motivational personality ad nauseum, yet very few people actually do it.

2. I write down my progress towards my goals.
GTD forces us to do this. My goal typically is a project written down in the form of the desired outcome: my book is published. I then create a project plan and check off the next actions as they are accomplished.

3. I make my work area as functional as I can.
David Allen always talks about fancy pens and fun toys and this always bothered me. But I now comprehend what he is getting at. Do what it takes to get the job done. If you need to change your file folders, do so. Your file system is key to getting your work done, if you have an office job. If it's hard to read and you have to do a lot of reading, that's bad. Get the kind of lighting you need so that reading is not a strain. If your desk is uncomfortable, get one that is comfortable. Make it as easy as you can to achieve your goals.

4. I tell others what my goals are.
If I tell my wife I will help my son with his school project this weekend, I am much more likely to get it done than if I silently tell myself to help my son with his school project this weekend. Points 1 and 4 are instances of the more general point that it helps to express my goals so that they are out of my head.


Now, what about my beliefs that "I just can't stand the discomfort of writing, I deserve to surf the internet instead," and "Everyone will think this article I am writing is stupid, I should stop working on it"? My guess is that if I held those beliefs before I actively performed 1-4 above, I will not hold those beliefs after. It's not clear to me that my irrational behavior has a cognitive explanation. The cure for my irrational behavior is not necessarily to eliminate my distorted beliefs, it is, rather, to engage in the behaviors outlined above in steps 1-4. By doing 1-4, I will likely extinguish my irrational behavior and increase the likelihood of achieving my goal.

So I can increase my drive and increase my motivation by doing 1-4. And GTD is a particular instance of 1-3.

[eowyn]

Somebody once told me "What comes first - motiviation or action?" His answer was action.

I find that if I let myself do only a very small thing (such as put those two dishes away in the kitchen or open up the assignment on the computer) , all of a sudden I an be engrossed and enjoying the task (and all the kitchen benches are cleared or the report progresses signficantly).

[andersons]

To what extent can you replace practicing "more" with practicing "better"? In athletics in particular, there are injury risks associated with overtraining, and often the activity itself carries an injury risk as well. To what extent can mental practice -- visualization, watching video, etc. -- reduce the amount of time devoted to physical practice? Or is that too dependent on individual training and coaching methods to generalize?
Practicing better: Experts develop highly structured practice methods. For example, good coaches periodize training goals for athletes. In music, there is a documented account of a pianist planning her different practice session strategies: analyzing a piece, isolating sections for technical mastery, practicing for memory, and practicing for emotional expression of the whole piece. Effective practice was systematically broken down into different goals and different sessions, scheduled over time to reach mastery by the time of the scheduled recording session. Compared to an amateur's practice, the expert's is more structured, purposeful, and planned.

There's more awareness in athletic coaching that practice strategies must be designed to avoid overtraining and injuries. I wish some of this knowledge would filter down to the university and high school levels where I see coaches overtraining their athletes to the point of nervous breakdown. In the university goal-setting assignment I described in another post (http://www.davidco.com/forum/showpost.php?p=33028&postcount=11), a number of students were on the swim team and were clearly being overtrained. It was very frustrating to read about. Every one of them reported that several weeks after the season -- after a few weeks of rest -- they measured their best times of the season. Good coaches know how to get their athletes to peak for competition, not for 3 weeks later. Even musicians can overtrain and experience burnout as well.

But there doesn't appear to be a substitute for practicing more. Training time is limited by the need for rest, recovery, and memory consolidation. If an individual can speed up recovery and practice more, however, I think that the increased training time will beat out even the most sophisticated practice strategy. But given that training is limited by the need for recovery, more effective practice becomes a necessity. Today's top performers are doing both -- looking for ways to train more effectively AND train more. For myself as a non-performer, though, I focus on practicing better rather than more because I then have more time for other things. :-)

Video as feedback: Feedback is critical for learning. But a great deal of feedback is internal. The brain's comparison of the intention to the outcome is the major source of feedback for learning, and this comparison takes place online during practice. Any external feedback like video may augment this, but won't replace practice time.

The usefulness specifically of video feedback depends on the nature of the task, I think. Feedback should be effective when it maps the demands of the task to the way the brain represents the task. For example, video should help with conscious strategy of a sequence of movements over time, like "plays" that are planned in soccer, football, tennis, hockey, etc. Watching a play unfold in slow motion should help develop the conscious strategy of movement sequences. And of course it is widely used for this. Video should also help with ballet and figure skating where precise positioning of joints during the movement is required. (These should be some of the hardest skills to learn IMO because the motor system was not designed to control precise joint positions throughout a movement.) In these skills, the performer has to generate positions that look good to the judges, so it should be quite helpful to see what the judges see rather than guess based on proprioception.

Intuitively, I would doubt that video would help that much for a specific karate kick intended to hit a target (don't know much about karate, so I may be completely off the mark about its goals). It may help a little, but the karate kick is programmed in terms of kicker-centered coordinates. Video shows observer-centered coordinates. How helpful would it be for your brain to transform arbitrary observer-centered coordinates to self-centered ones for programming? I don't think the mapping would be that useful. If it does not matter what the kick looks like, but mainly where it lands, I would always focus on the target. The motor system is very good at programming movements to hit a target, but does best when you don't try to control how the joints move to get the limb to the target.

Mental practice: Mental practice can improve performance, but not as much as physical practice does. It is a skill that itself improves with practice. Even though there's less improvement for the time spent, as you point out, if you can improve a little with no risk of injury or overtraining, and less wear and tear on slow-healing joints, that's a good thing.

Visualization is supposed to be good for arousal regulation ("nerves"). I personally visualized my recital in every detail every night for 6 months, and that was my first performance that I felt was just as good as my practicing. "But I got it in practice" is an infamous cry every piano teacher hears, and probably every athletic coach feels as well.

A nice thing about mental practice is that you can control the outcome. You can visualize yourself executing perfectly. The motor system is very noisy with highly variable output; at higher skill levels especially, all you're doing in practice is trying to reduce the variability of movements, which is very hard.

For piano playing, I've found that mental practice shows me clearly which parts of a piece I don't know well enough. I have to know it very well to imagine it clearly. Wherever my imagination becomes vague and fuzzy, I know I need more practice there even if I can get it when I'm physically playing it.

One other thing I can think of about practicing effectively is simulating performance conditions in practice as much as possible. This is closely related to arousal -- the stress of competition creates different demands than a low-stress practice session. I always tell my piano students to put pressure on themselves during practice, but minimize pressure on themselves during performance. We tend to do just the opposite: when we practice, we feel it's OK to make mistakes, but when we compete or perform, we don't want to mess up. The increase in pressure cripples your brain during performance conditions.

Thomas Carr did an amusing but informative study of choking under pressure for novices learning to play golf. One group practiced without pressure. Another group practiced under pressure of being told that they were being videoed and watched by experts. Also, they were told they had been paired with an unknown teammate, that if both of them improved their previous score by 20%, they would both receive a money bonus, but if either one failed, neither would get the money. The pressured group did worse during practice than the unpressured group. But in a later high-pressure competition test, the pressured practicers outperformed the unpressured practicers.

The higher your skill level, the more important it seems to be not to try to control your movements as you perform. The skill exists in subconscious brain representations, and trying to control the steps of the skill reliably degrades the outcome in experts.

[kewms]

Thank you. Such a detailed response was very helpful.



Intuitively, I would doubt that video would help that much for a specific karate kick intended to hit a target (don't know much about karate, so I may be completely off the mark about its goals). It may help a little, but the karate kick is programmed in terms of kicker-centered coordinates. Video shows observer-centered coordinates. How helpful would it be for your brain to transform arbitrary observer-centered coordinates to self-centered ones for programming? I don't think the mapping would be that useful. If it does not matter what the kick looks like, but mainly where it lands, I would always focus on the target. The motor system is very good at programming movements to hit a target, but does best when you don't try to control how the joints move to get the limb to the target.


I don't know much about karate either. Aikido (my art) is a bit different in that it's more about controlling the attacker's balance than landing a kick at a specific target. I've found video can help by letting me compare what I'm actually doing (as opposed to what I think I'm doing) to what the instructor is doing. Actually feeling the technique helps more, but is also more physically demanding. It's a tradeoff.



The higher your skill level, the more important it seems to be not to try to control your movements as you perform. The skill exists in subconscious brain representations, and trying to control the steps of the skill reliably degrades the outcome in experts.

Which raises interesting pedagogical questions about how to teach beginners. I'm most familiar with the debate in the aikido context, but I imagine it exists in other disciplines as well. One approach is to be very precise about hand position, foot position, stance, etc. The other approach is to simply model good technique, occasionally pointing out helpful technical details, and allow beginners to figure out for themselves how to move that way. The tradeoff seems to be between technical precision and interpretive freedom. Too much precision leads to rigidity, too much freedom leads to poor body mechanics.

Katherine

[andersons]

Thank you. . .Which raises interesting pedagogical questions about how to teach beginners. . .One approach is to be very precise about hand position, foot position, stance, etc. The other approach is to simply model good technique, occasionally pointing out helpful technical details, and allow beginners to figure out for themselves how to move that way.
You're most welcome. I would probably favor a combination approach with emphasis on the latter at the beginning, mainly for motivation. I would imagine a practice session for beginners in which at the beginning they practice stance, hand position, etc. Then for the latter part they imitate the teacher. I would increase the technical training as their motivation and discipline allow.

A cool trick in instruction is to relate a movement to something the learner already knows how to do. For example, in juggling, one of the most common problems in learning is tossing the balls out in front of you rather than up. You can repeatedly tell learners to toss up, but of course they already know that and can't do it. After much practice, they will get it. But a quicker way is to use the avoidance motor patterns they already know. Put the learner in front of a wall and the motor system will automatically try to avoid the hands hitting the wall. The balls tosses will be constrained upward.

With piano, I try to encourage the curved hand and finger shape by holding a soft ball under the palm and telling them to keep their hands relaxed around the ball, touching it. Stuff like that. Works much better than barking "Curve those fingers!" for a half hour. :-)


I was probably one of the least athletic members of my high school class. Now, [mumble] years later, I've got a heart rate of 65 and can toss people who outweigh me by a hundred pounds across the room. And this is with only 4-5 hours a week of consistent practice.
Now my question is, what made you devote a lot of practice to an athletic endeavor despite the discouragement of high school?

Thank goodness high school experience does not define one's whole life.

[BigStory]

QUOTE: there were some exceptionally trained pianists from China, Japan and Korea. They were playing perfectly, no wrong note, perfect timing. ...But the winner ...simply feels the romantic soul of Chopin's music. He doesn't play notes. He plays stories, emotions, landscapes. END QUOTE

Do you think it is possible that the difference here is cultural, rather than skill or talent? Asian cultures are not normally very emotionally expressive and focus on what is "proper", in my experience. And Europe (I think) has a "Romantic" history" that may not have a a parallel in Asia. My knowledge is extremely limited, but it seems possible to me.

Regards,
Gordon

[TesTeq]

Do you think it is possible that the difference here is cultural, rather than skill or talent? Asian cultures are not normally very emotionally expressive and focus on what is "proper", in my experience. And Europe (I think) has a "Romantic" history" that may not have a a parallel in Asia. My knowledge is extremely limited, but it seems possible to me.
Yes. But another question occurs immediately:

Why has Europe such "Romantic" history and culture - so different in comparison to Asia. Probably cultural path chosen hundreds years ago affects the future for ages.

The same can be true for personal skills development. If we assume that:
- at birth everybody has nearly the same chance to learn a given skill;
- the skills learned at the beginning affect our future learning capability;
we can say that the first days, weeks and months of life determine your future abilities.

So at birth we are on the top of the "Hill of Possibilities". There are many paths down with groups of related skills. The light push in a given direction determines our path on which we travel comfortably. But changing the path (learning the non-related new skill) will require some climbing (more effort than in case of people that at birth were pushed in this direction and are already here).

andersons, what do you think about the "Hill of Possibilities" idea?

[kewms]

Now my question is, what made you devote a lot of practice to an athletic endeavor despite the discouragement of high school?

Thank goodness high school experience does not define one's whole life.

Amen to that!

It's an interesting question, and I'm not entirely sure of the answer. Aikido (and also recreational cycling, which I did a lot of in between) is more mentally engaging, I think, and also more of a means to an end. At my school, at least, there's also less emphasis on external competition and more appreciation of the value of consistent effort. Beginners in particular are respected for simply showing up regularly, regardless of how quickly (or not) they learn. (And I was not an aiki-prodigy by any means.)

I think a number of intangible factors figured in, too. I like the people at my aikido school a lot better than most of the people I went to high school with. I was blessed with very good instructors at the early part of the learning curve. That sort of thing is hard to measure, but was very helpful at the early part of the learning curve.

Katherine

[andersons]

In the "XV International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw" (http://www.konkurs.chopin.pl/index.php) in this year there were some exceptionally trained pianists from China, Japan and Korea. They were playing perfectly, no wrong note, perfect timing. They could play the music twice as fast with the same accuracy. But the winner was young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz. Why? He simply feels the romantic soul of Chopin's music. He doesn't play notes. He plays stories, emotions, landscapes. Can it be acquired by practice?

You can learn the craft by practice but the real art and mastery requires talent.
I fully appreciate the difference between playing notes with technical mastery and playing with emotion and soul. But I see it more as a value judgment, not as a demonstration of talent. Most Western music lovers will share your value of the emotional expression (including me), but objectively I could just as easily say that the Asians' greater speed and perfect accuracy is evidence of their greater talent.

As BigStory mentioned, the differences in cultural psychology between Asians and Europeans could account for much, if not all, of what you hear in their performances of Chopin. And along with their cultural differences, their training goals are also different. You get what you train for. The Asians practice for dazzling speed and accuracy, not for a creative or emotional interpretation. For the Europeans, though, the technical precision is just a requirement for the most important goal of the creative, expressive, emotional interpretation of a piece.

I once saw a review paper about the differences in cultural psychology of Asians versus Americans. I didn't read the whole thing, but the conclusion was that there were large and fundamental differences between the cultures, including perceptual differences. For example, when both groups view the same scene, they see and remember different things. Even their eye movements (saccades) trace distinctly different patterns. The authors concluded that the findings of cultural psychology for the US could not be applied to Asians.

Coincidentally, I had lunch today with a friend of mine from Korea who is a proficient pianist. I asked her for details about her musical and piano training in Korea. Starting in early childhood, she attended piano school after regular school for 2 hours a day. School time and practice time increased as she got older. She said that none of her teachers ever talked about emotional expression as a musical goal; that speed and absolutely perfect accuracy were drilled into them; that they did a huge amount of just technical training; that there was a spirit of high-pressure competition for speed and accuracy. There was no learning about the historical context of the music, the composer's viewpoint, the theory, the analysis. The European music was new to them, and -- well, foreign. The students' goal was to master the technical difficulties so that they can play the music correctly and perfectly, exactly like the one perfect performance they are taught to imitate. They are strictly to imitate, never diverge or create.

It is hard for me to imagine piano lessons without a teacher working on the emotional expression of a piece, so I asked her if there were any emotion attached to the music at all. Don't they feel anything when they play Chopin? She said that for their own Korean music, they paid much more attention to the emotions it expressed. But learning European music was a competitive endeavor: it is prominent in world-level competitions; it is technically difficult; and the Koreans are determined to master the difficulty and perform it faster than anyone else.

My friend said that any original thinking is discouraged in Korea, in music as well as in the rest of their education and in their lives. They are not to think for themselves; they are to master skills with drill and respect their elders.

In the US, even in the more casual piano training I received (lessons once a week, rather than piano school every day), artistic expression was emphasized at every lesson.

And the Europeans view(ed) Americans as philistines (at least in some books I have read). From early childhood, the young European pianist has daily lessons with master teachers. (One author ridiculed the American way of taking lessons once a week and asked how we could expect to improve without daily lessons. In a week, he said, the child would practice incorrectly and therefore learn the bad habits which would then be hard to unlearn. The "talented" child needs daily guidance to avoid developing "bad habits" between lessons. If a pianist has such special talent, why is so much daily correction needed? This is the same author who believes you either have the talent or you don't.)

Early in training, the young pianist is taught the goal of emotional expression. The Europeans believe that expression is learned by 1) broadly learning about the historical context, the theory, and the structure of the music; 2) listening to the masters and training the ear; and 3) explicit direction in playing the notes and phrases of the music. In one master class I observed, the master teacher spent a great deal of time relating the historical context of Mozart and the structure of the entire piece to the dynamics of the notes in one phrase. For about an hour. On that one phrase. And in Europe, the student apparently listens, listens, listens to the masters, live in master classes, attending concerts, hearing recordings, etc.

But another explicit goal for the European (and American) pianist is a unique and creative interpretation. Chopin's music has been around a long time and has been interpreted hundreds or thousands of times; Europeans and Americans want to hear something different -- a unique viewpoint, a unique interpretation -- that is still consistent with the essence of Chopin. Koreans do not even know what you're talking about when you say that.

Although we are always impressed by a uniquely creative artistic viewpoint, it is never seen without a tremendous amount of work. So yes, it is most definitely acquired; and the artist's goal throughout training is to develop that artistry. It may not be achieved through a precise sequence of steps, but many, many hours of practice and training are most definitely required, not only for the more technical aspects but also the connection of the technique to the expression of emotions.

So Rafal, playing the music of his fellow European (Pole?), in his native culture, is at an advantage to play Chopin in a way that Europeans will most appreciate. But the large differences in training of Chopin between Europeans and Asians also account for the differences in how they play his music.

For me, seeing a source for the artistry heard in the playing of Rafal (goal-directed training) does not eliminate the magic. The source is not magic, but the effect is. To me, at least. Maybe I can get my Korean friend to hear it if I can get a recording of Rafal.

[andersons]

The same can be true for personal skills development. If we assume that:
- at birth everybody has nearly the same chance to learn a given skill;
- the skills learned at the beginning affect our future learning capability;
we can say that the first days, weeks and months of life determine your future abilities.

So at birth we are on the top of the "Hill of Possibilities". There are many paths down with groups of related skills. The light push in a given direction determines our path on which we travel comfortably. But changing the path (learning the non-related new skill) will require some climbing (more effort than in case of people that at birth were pushed in this direction and are already here).

andersons, what do you think about the "Hill of Possibilities" idea?
TesTeq, in this thread I have maintained that talent does not account for skilled performances that we observe, even in the megastar performers. However, I don't really believe that everyone is equal at birth or even thereafter. I would not call the differences "talent" but rather "genetic differences" or "genetic advantage." I think something like your idea, targeting early development, is probably the right direction for identifying genetic advantages assuming they exist.

On the other hand, we have to remember that researchers have already tried to identify those genetic advantages early in childhood, but with little success. I always have to come back to this fact, and it's really quite remarkable. Why have genetic advantages been so hard to find? One reason is that almost nothing is 100% heritable or even highly heritable; there are always interactions with environment during development, even in how genes are expressed in the developing fetus in the womb. (Eye color is the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that is 100% heritable.)

And genetic advantages are hard to find because training is still absolutely necessary for skill. So if a 3-year-old is tested and said to have special talent for music, but doesn't train properly, she won't become highly skilled.

IQ, BTW, is supposed to identify a genetic advantage by testing for "intelligence" independent of knowledge and learning; but IQ doesn't predict achievement.

Or perhaps a critical early interaction between genes and environment happens a lot earlier than researchers have been looking for. In a classroom of 4-year-olds, for example, there are already large differences in their exposure to music. I had heard a lot of Chopin by the time I was 4. My classmates had not.

Getting into more speculation, it's possible the researchers looking for genetic advantages have been testing the wrong things. They hypothesize about what might be a "fundamental ability," resistant to teaching, for a given domain. For example, to identify "talent" in a 3- or 4-year old before piano training, they might look for musical abilities to sing pitches (among many other things). But these domain-specific tests have failed to predict who will end up with performance skill years later; "low-talent" children show high skill in piano playing years later, and vice versa. (Tests of "fundamental abilities" in adults don't even "predict" who already has skill at the time of testing!) However, maybe the supposed "fundamental abilities" are not the right ones to be testing.

Instead, maybe the genetic advantage lies in something like what moises mentioned, motivation and drive. This would be consistent with the findings that early "talent" equals a child's motivation to train, rather than measurable performance superiority. After all, young children willing to spend hours each day training to become a chess master, pianist, or tennis player are not that common. Motivation and drive are brain functions that would connect goal-directed practice to a strong sense of reward. Findings in neurobiology are shedding a lot of light on how motivation and drive work in the brain. Perhaps a child with strong connections between intention, working memory, and reward systems in her brain, when exposed to a domain like music, learns a strong motivation to continue to practice in that area. Especially when parents and the child's culture strongly reward and encourage the skill as well.

So this speculative idea tweaks and elaborates on yours. I would agree that "the skills learned at the beginning affect our future learning." But in the statement "the first days, weeks and months of life determine your future abilities," the word "determine" is far too strong. There are too many influences all throughout development. And one more tweak -- alas, I find the comfortable downhill travel of the "hill of possibilities" a bit too easy. Even the most highly skilled pianists describe practice as being intensely hard and long. It seems more like an uphill climb for everyone.

But for now, we still can't identify possibilities in children. Even if these elusive possibilities do exist, skill development still requires massive training. And there are no shortcuts. The most "talented" performers have spent more time training.