Deliberate Practice discussion

[Human Mint]

Opening the thread for more pratice talk.

To me it is hard to think in terms of deliberate practice, since training is a messy process with many different phases. As you level up your skills you progressively transform your practice routine. I just try to orient my practice towards general goals.

But it is almost guaranteed that you'll get good just by sheer volume. Constant repetition is crucial. No one can pin point exactly what makes you learn something.

The only problem it can feel very draining. That's where I think the advice of practicing for a couple minutes a day comes in, because you're generating more stamina.

Practicing to the point that it doesn't feel like work requires a build-up.

Building familiarity is a powerful concept.

Edited Tuesday at 01:59 PM by Human Mint

[Elliott]

I think it's different for me, I'm a binger. I go in bursts of practice, in all my free time for a month I can out of pure desire focus on learning something, sometimes more than a month, I can spend 18 hours a day on the weekend on something. Then I can go months on a break. My girlfriend used to almost get concerned about me at times, she just makes fun of me a little now. For things I care less about it's still in the binge on and then off, but only a few hours a day when it's on. I usually have genuine strong desire to learn or practice something I'm interested in.

Edited Tuesday at 02:24 PM by Elliott

[Human Mint]

@Elliott That is absolutely fine. You'll only get concerned with consistency if you can never get enough, like me. Then you'll start to think in ways to invoke that desire to train even when you don't want. Than can happen if you have a strong sense of urgency.

[Elliott]

1 hour ago, Human Mint said:

@Elliott That is absolutely fine. You'll only get concerned with consistency if you can never get enough, like me. Then you'll start to think in ways to invoke that desire to train even when you don't want. Than can happen if you have a strong sense of urgency.

It works well for you?

I think I would like scheduling and structure if I had little going on. I just like structure because it takes less thinking, i don't think it's what motivates me.

[Human Mint]

20 hours ago, Elliott said:

It works well for you?

I think I would like scheduling and structure if I had little going on. I just like structure because it takes less thinking, i don't think it's what motivates me.

It works, for sure. But I am not at an advanced stage so still a lot to discover. A common enemy of focus and practice is addiction, whatever you can think off. But stacking hours of practice, nothing beats that.

Your memory is a precious thing. Choose what you want to cement on it wisely.

 

[Elliott]

39 minutes ago, Human Mint said:

A common enemy of focus and practice is addiction, whatever you can think off.

Your memory is a precious thing. Choose what you want to cement on it wisely.

 

I haven't had any formal addictions but when I'm inclined toward unproductive habits I always find the root cause to be something environmental such as a job, people, community, food, or the physical environment.

[Ulax]

I agree that hard work is very important in terms of getting results.

But I disagree that it is almost guaranteed that you'll get good just by sheer volume. You'll probs guarentee at least intermediate. But getting to advanced level in a field requires iteration and good theory usually.

[Human Mint]

3 hours ago, Ulax said:

I agree that hard work is very important in terms of getting results.

But I disagree that it is almost guaranteed that you'll get good just by sheer volume. You'll probs guarentee at least intermediate. But getting to advanced level in a field requires iteration and good theory usually.

It sounds weird to me. It is like if you walk the same path over and over again you'll eventually remember every little detail of it, even if you weren't proactive.

In my experience the biggest obstacle is to stop trying. 

 

[Ulax]

16 minutes ago, Human Mint said:

It sounds weird to me. It is like if you walk the same path over and over again you'll eventually remember every little detail of it, even if you weren't proactive.

In my experience the biggest obstacle is to stop trying. 

 

I get you. If you keep working on it you'll know it very deeply. There's definitely some truth to that.

However, the issue with hard work alone is you often train bad habits. 

[Human Mint]

@Ulax For sure. You learn what you repeat, for good or for bad.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Consistency has always been my jam.

[Joshe]

Was just working through an idea about how to be more effective, and it seemed relevant here. For me, the biggest factor is energy. I mean, I need mindset tweaks as well, but energy is the main thing. 

So, I was thinking, how the hell can I figure out what makes my energy do what it does? It's too complex and too much to track. So, I thought of designing a telemetry system that can capture as much data about me and my state as possible. 

Oura ring, continuous glucose monitor, internet browser history, time spent driving, time spent at desk, AI chats, meal composition via local AI image analysis, phone logs, and other things I'm forgetting. 

The idea is to capture as much data as possible without requiring me to capture it, because that's the main failure mode. Then, funnel all of that data into a database for pattern analysis. Combine all that with maybe 2 or 3 automatic check-ins per day where the system asks me specific, high quality questions via a speaker and listens back for my answers, and I think that's a pretty damn solid telemetry setup for getting your energy figured out.

I imagine this sort of thing will be commonplace 500 years from now, but the tech to do this is available now. People get the Oura ring and CGMs and just look at the apps and get very little from it. These apps have APIs that let you extract the data and bring it into your own system. The more contextual state data you can capture, the better the prediction machine, and it can be set up to largely operate on its own. I'm confident I can implement all the tech with AI, but I'm not sure how difficult it will be to extract predictive patterns, and not sure if my lack of statistics knowledge is going to make it difficult, but I'm optimistic it's solvable and the patterns will emerge. 

Anyway, energy is the main reason we deviate.

Oh yeah, another big thing is having control over the things that go into your mind. For this, I'm setting up a system that can balance out my energy whichever way it needs to be balance by intelligently making me think about or experience specific things. One early idea is that if I'm being too serious for too many days in a row and I should lighten up, then the system could randomly come over my speaker or phone with some funny stuff to nudge me in that direction. Or if I'm slacking off, it can give me intelligent reminders for why I care about my goals but just not today. And you wouldn't have to record these audios yourself. Recently, I started playing with local text to speech models, which basically allow you to create your own Hey Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. With these TTS models, AI, and personal telemetry, you can design your own coach. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Joshe