The Deliberate Practice Pilot Program
I’m fascinated by deliberate practice.
I’m convinced this advanced practice philosophy can help knowledge workers rapidly pick up skills that will make them invaluable and provide control over their career. It is, as I’ve argued here, in my last book, and in the Wall Street Journal, perhaps one of your most effective tools for building a working life you love.
But it’s also really hard to figure out how to adapt these ideas to the world of knowledge work.
I decided a good way to proceed with my investigation of this topic would be to: (1) take my best shot at distilling what I know into a formal system; then (2) recruit a group of people, from a variety of different knowledge work careers, to try out my recommendations and report back what they experienced.
This is exactly what I’m going to do.
Over the past few months, I’ve worked extensively with Scott Young (a master of rapid learning), to create a four week pilot program that walks you, step-by-step, through our best understanding of how to identify key skills and then apply deliberate practice techniques to dominate them in a small amount of time.
Now we want to recruit an (extremely limited) group of participants to give this pilot course a try and tell us how it went. In other words, I want real people, in a variety of real jobs, to kick the tires on these ideas Scott and I have been writing about for so long.
Learn More About This Experiment
I don’t want to clog Study Hacks with tons of logistical posts about the experiment — more details, how to sign-up, etc. — so I created a separate e-mail list for this purpose. If you’re interested in learning more about this pilot program click the link below to sign-up for the list.
This will be the only place where you can hear more details and receive information about the first-come-first-served sign-up that will likely happen as soon as next week.
Click here to sign-up to learn more…
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Hey Cal,
Looking forward to this program. Currently working full time and pursuing a Master’s degree in a technical field requiring lots of deliberate practice, so really looking to capitalize on study time.
Is the link still functional? I haven’t received a confirmation email yet after signing up.
Could you check if the sign up link is working? I have tried 3 different emails and nothing works …I did not get the confirmation email on any one of them.
It worked for me. Got the link, I clicked on it, and it sent me back to this blog
Like Balaji Srinivasan, I’ve also received no confirmation e-mail from the sign-up link.
Same here, I got no response email.
Just to confirm — I did not receive a confirmation e-mail either.
This sounds exciting and I’ve hoped you two would make something like this!
Likewise, I followed the instructions and signed up twice, but never received the confirmation (double checked my spam/bulk folders too).
Balaji, it arrives really late. I just got mine a few minutes ago after several hours have passed.
There were a lot of comments asking about the confirmation e-mail, I didn’t approve them all, since they were all asking the same question: “where is my confirmation e-mail?”
As far as I can tell, they system is working, it’s just backed up because a lot of people signed up for the newsletter at the same time. People do seem to be receiving their confirmation e-mails. If you haven’t received your confirmation by tonight, e-mail me!
Are you going to have a control group?
Yea I received my confirmation email, it just takes a couple of hours.
To be sure, when you click the confirmation link, are you supposed to be re-directed to this post (as this is what happened when I clicked it)?
I’ve always enjoyed your collaborations with Scott and vice versa. I’ll be waiting for pilot results! 🙂
I hope you guys pick at least one person who is not from the sciences in any way – to make sure you get a full (and more accurate) range of data 😛
Clicked to confirm and was brought to this post. Is that correct?
I’m a pastor in Alaska, and I plan to apply this principle to learning to read the New Testament in the original language of Biblical Greek. This past year I’ve learned how difficult learning this language can be without deliberate practice, and now I have a workbook for both practice and immediate feedback. P.S. I know you hear it all the time, but excellent work on this blog (I’m not a blogger at all, this is the only one I visit!)
The challenge in some fields is figuring out which area for deliberate practice will pay off best.
I didn’t know I’ve to pay $100 to participate…sorry, but I’m out.
Hi Cal,
Clicked to confirm and was brought to this blog. Is the confirmation working properly? Thanks for the opportunity to be included in your pilot course. I enjoy helping fellow researchers perfect their processes and presentations by providing honest trial and feedback.
It’s too bad that we have to pay $100 to be test subjects…
your blog seem to say that if we put in the hours and follow the plan, we should get really good.
I’m wondering if we had a goal, perhaps there’s a big thrill if we achieved our goal. what if we could get a big kick every time we achieve our goals? i’m thinking that would motivate people to work at achieving their goals.
Hi Cal,
Love the idea of this program – I am fascinated by deliberate practice in entrepreneurship. Anything I can do to help? Even if I don’t get in to the program, I just want to hear some of the learnings about it.
Thanks,
Alex
I’m glad you hit your target of 50 applicants so quickly. Shame I couldn’t get up at 3am to try my luck. Time zones around the world are a pain when these sort of deadlines get set. Having said that I’m looking outward to benefitting from the research you and Scott are doing.
I’d be interested to hear how this experiment has gone and any key takeaways. Case studies could also be very instructive around where participants have succeeded / gone wrong. I’d be especially interested to see how they have fared in identifying the key items that they should focus on, structuring their practice, and enabling a feedback loop with enough speed and depth to improve.
It’s a very interesting project and I hope to learn more.