Where’s your Sweet Spot?
Do you want to be an expert? I know I do and with Daniel Coyle’s book, it is now easier than ever to learn faster. Coyle’s discussion of deep practice inspired me to apply these methods to my own life and to practice deeper. I discovered that I have already practiced deeply in some ways and it has greatly helped my learning. For example, I learned more about physics, efficiency and buoyancy through building (and eventually sinking in) a cardboard boat than I learned from reading it in a book. Coyle’s study really inspired me because his methods work in a variety of ways and work better than normal methods. Although Coyle’s methods enhance learning, they are hard to understand, they are specific requirements and it does not account for all success. “The Sweet Spot”, a chapter from Daniel Coyle’s non-fiction book, The Talent Code, gave examples for and briefly explained the concept of deep
…show more content…
Coyle describes that deep practice can apply to everyone. Also, he uses many extreme examples to show deep practice can be used in a variety of ways. For example, in “The Sweet Spot”, Coyle voices examples including, a Brazilian boy trying to learn a tough soccer move, a Texan girl trying to sing a song better, and the pilot training simulator that Edwin Link invented to help pilots of the U.S. Army Air Corps learn how to fly. Further, deep practice increases problem solving skills and makes a person think smarter. By focusing on what the person is not doing well, he or she is problem solving, trying to fix the problem and fixing the problem makes it a skill. Thus, struggling is an integral part of deep practice. Deep practice is an unexpected way of learning because people learn from their mistakes. Mistakes are the opposite of how they are normally thought of. Mistakes are good and actually lead to a better outcome. Talent is an achievement that can be created by deep
Coyle´s claim that talent isn´t born, that it is grown within us is part of new research in Psychology that expounds that dedication and hard work develops our most basic abilities, not the other way around. In other words, excellence comes from what Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset within us, the belief within ourselves that talent grows out of hard work, endless practices, good teaching and persistence.
The idea that practice makes perfect has been heard through the years of a majority of individual’s life. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he ultimately states that a specific number of hours someone needs to practice before they can become successful. Gladwell is not completely wrong; however, his strong claim and evidences for the 10,000 hour rule can be proven false. Many researchers have looked into lives of successful people and people who aren’t as successful. Among their research they have also conducted surveys giving them a chance to compare the hours of practice between individuals. Through this it is concluded
The capability of a person varies from each and every one. Some people can grasp easily but for some it may take time to get information to the mind. the learning styles are divided on the abilities of a person, how he grasps, how he understands the subject, is he capable of listening style, doing style or writing or reading style. In an environment were technology and studies have great importance, the way how a person understands things are widely important. The complex manner in which, and conditions under which, learners most efficiently and most effectively perceive, process, store, and recall what they are attempting to learn (James & Gardner, 1995). There are poor learners, quick learners, and theoretical learners. There is no person who can’t learn anything, some might learn theories, some might learn through practices and some learn by seeing what the work is. Through the reflective analysis my passion for learning comes in through reflective style of learning. reflector style of learning is way of learning through reflecting others work in to our practice i.e., we carefully look on to what a professional learner does and get an idea of what he
According to the authors (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983), differences between approaches to learning concern the differences that what learners are focusing on, what they are trying to achieve and how they are going about it. In the deep approach, students intend to extract meaning and, thus, engage in an active process of learning that involves relating ideas and searching for patterns and principles (Entwistle, 2000). Furthermore, the deep approach is argued to promote understanding and long-term retention of ideas that could result in long-term and meaningful outcomes of higher education (Gibbs, Margon & Taylor, 1982; Marton et al., 1997; Marton et. al., 1993; Purdie & Hattie, 2002). On the other hand, in the surface approach, the students
“The depth and complexity of the content, process, and product are enhanced by the knowledge, skill, passion area, and motivation developed by the learner (Betts & Kercher, 2009, p. 99).
Reflecting back on how every human has the capacity to learn once born caused my understanding of the meaning of learning to
Educators are set in place to guide us through a thorough understanding of a subject, and give us enough information to suffice without their immediate guidance. In piano class, our Professors have been taught to use specific methods on breaking down the skills to becoming a pianist. From scales to score reading, all of the lessons are used to gain a sustainable amount of self knowledge to plunk out notes for our future choirs or assist our own rehearsals in a practice room. Guido of Arezzo, musical therapist, pedagogue and author of Micrologus suggested a lack of common knowledge is one of the main causes for an individual to not put forth the appropriate efforts to achieve a perfect understanding of the task.
Source: "Practice Makes Perfect? Not so Much." MSUToday. Zach Hambrick, Andy Henion, 20 May 2013. Web. 04 May 2014. .
The sweet spots are the subject of chapter 1 of Daniel Coyle’s book The talent code : Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown. Here’s how. In this chapter, Coyle defining talent as “the possession of repeatable skills that don't depend on physical size” (p. 11). He contrasts the general way to explain that talent is simply a combination of genes and environment, a.k.a nature and nurture (p. 14). The main idea to be conveyed by him is how to grow talent and built skills in any discipline by deep practice. He made a smaller arguments to explain more about deep practice using Bjork, the chair of psychology at UCLA arguments “struggling in certain targeted ways, operating at the edges of your ability, make mistakes to makes you smarter, or put a slightly different way, experiences where you're forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them”. He also strengthen his argument using Bjork theory, which describes that the human brain can work efficiently through test and continuous challange. This method applied when we find the ‘sweet spot', the point where learning starts. “It's all about finding the sweet spot. There's an optimal gap between what you know and what you're trying to do. Whe...
Throughout my life I have attempted to understand many concepts. Some of them I understood right away, while others took me much longer to comprehend. Several times though, I have experienced a light-bulb moment and suddenly understood what I did not understand only moments ago. The sudden sense of accomplishment from such moments is wonderful because not only have you learned a new skill, but you also learned it in a short period of time. The time between learning a skill and experiencing the light-bulb moment where you finally understand it may take a long time, or it may be very brief.
Four decades of psychological research have taught us there is no one right way to learn. Our minds are as unique as our fingerprints. Our ability to learn is not necessarily related to high or low intelligence quotients, but rather a convergence of four important aspects of our perso...
When I retired three years ago from the United States Air Force as a Production Superintendent with 25 years of service, I was an expert in my field. During technical school I put in the classroom and study time on book materials and lectures to learn as much as I could. During the hands on experience I watched and duplicated what the instructors were teaching and asked questions when I did not understand. When I actually started working on aircraft and moving through the ranks, that’s when the true learning started. I was learning by experience. As I gained more and more experience I became an expert. Learning by experience is a lifelong learning process of success and failures. One of the greatest learning tools that can be used with life experiences is reflective thinking. As I start to learn and as I progress through my second career, reflection will be an important tool that I will use in what I hope to become; an expert nurse.
A working application of new skills, allows us to improve ourselves in practice and to
The first step of being a successful engineer is to have a systematic and efficient learning. It is very important for a student to understand the fundamentals and basic principles of engineering. For me, an expert engineer needs diverse skills and qualities, which will lift them to the higher level. I am now realizing that my approach to learning is not a way it should be. I found that by memorizing and copying out things are helping me to remember notes, but I know that these only just work for a short period. So I have to set out to understand the meaning of what I have to learn instead of concentrate my time repeating things, which are surface approach to learning. Now, w...
“Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.” – Jim Rohn