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The Challenge What Experts Do
Science of Badass Building Skills
The longer we practice an explicit skill that we can’t do
reliably, the less likely we are to ever reach mastery. If you
can’t get 95% reliability in one to three practice sessions,
change the exercise! Either split the task into a smaller
sub-task, or reduce the performance criteria.
If the task/skill is too complex (too many unmastered skills),
break it into ner-grained sub-tasks/sub-skills
If it’s not complex but it’s too difcult, make
the performance criteria easier
Task A
Task A
easier
Task A
much
easier
simplify it
keep simplifying
reduce criteria
reduce criteria
Task A
Separate Skill/Task A
into sub-skills
Isolate/separate Skill/Task A
into ner-grained sub-skills
If you can’t get to 95% reliability, stop trying!
You need to redesign the sub-skill
“Play this song,
normal tempo”
“Play these four
measures of this song,
normal tempo”
“Play these four
measures, left hand
only, normal tempo”
“Play these
four measures
normal tempo”
“Play these four
measures half-tempo”
“Play these four
measures of this
[easier] song, as
slowly as it takes
for 95% accuracy”