This book focuses on the incredible power of Deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is both purposeful and informed. It is “purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there.”

The perfect pitch can be “taught” with proper practice. Steve Fallon could remember 82 digit numbers by keep practicing the short term digit recall task with the author. If we examine violinists or ballet dancers, the most important determinant of their skill is the amount of time that they spent practicing.

Without deliberate practice, once someone reaches an acceptable level, they don’t grow anymore.

Such purposeful practice requires a specific goal, a focus, and feedback. It should push one out of their comfort zone.

A lot of deliberate practice is about obtaining more efficient mental representation. See also Embedding.

In some areas deliberate practice is difficult to do because there is no measurable “expertise”. For instance wine experts fail to rate the exactly same wine consistently if it’s blinded. Professional Psychiatrists are no better than beginners with minimal training in therapies (House of Cards Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth).

In medicine, getting immediate feedback is difficult and thus deliberate practice is difficult. But in surgery more immediate feedback is available. This makes experience very important for surgeons. For prostatectomies, the cancer recurrence rate differs a lot (17.9% vs 10.7%) based on the surgeon’s experience (a study by Vickers).

The principles: 1. Find a good teacher 2. Focus 3. Plateau 4. Motivation