[...] #3: Leadership skills, as well as skill at becoming exceptional, can be taught. Some high status students are natural leaders and others have the decision-making [...]

[...] #3: Leadership skills, as well as skill at becoming exceptional, can be taught. Some high status students are natural leaders and others have the decision-making [...]

[...] It’s my way of answering some of the questions he posts on his blog: how to build skills via deliberate practice, how to avoid pseudowork, and how to “do college” so you can avoid the timesinks and [...]

In academic classes, however, you read the comments on your test or essay, you review what you did wrong, and then you just don’t do it again. No need to battle lots of little ingrained habits.

In each of the subjects that I took upper level classes in (history, philosophy, and political science), there was a need to battle little ingrained habits of poor thinking and to stretch yourself to build better little habits of thinking. Rather than stumbling through courses and adjusting only when and where an instructor tells you to adjust, great students in those fields recognize that it is their habits of thought that lead to either lackluster or stellar performance and those habits are formed through deliberative practice. For many students it is not just their thinking that is required, but thinking about their thinking. Those courses are very reading and writing centric. The required ability for both reading and writing for those courses goes beyond the level taught in primary school. Mortimer J. Adler argues in How To Read A Book that most people do not move beyond the elementary level of reading until they complete graduate school. Thought patterns, or habits of thought, designed to identify bias, to identify second-order effects, to avoid eristic arguments, and to ensure clarity in thinking and writing are not easily developed. This isn’t to say that most classes at the undergraduate level require any deliberative practice at all. But, if one wants to be excellent in any of those fields deliberative practice is going to be very useful.

[...] habits, not goals. II. Workout Results 5/18 In Uncategorized on May 19, 2009 at 7:14 am I.  Study Hacks teaching moment: In a post on December 2007, Newport writes, “you don’t achieve goals, [...]

[...] Do deliberative practice, not just “a lot of work.” [...]

I’m not sure why this guy presents this stuff as if it’s his own creation.

Geoff Colvin is a reporter, not a researcher. He certainly doesn’t claim these are his ideas. Indeed, the whole point of the article (and now book) is to explain what the latest research has to say about becoming really good.

With Google Documents – anyone within the group can upload documents and others can comment or edit the work.

Even better, use the service by our friends over at Wiggio.

In academic classes, however, you read the comments on your test or essay, you review what you did wrong, and then you just don’t do it again. No need to battle lots of little ingrained habits.

Great analysis!