DELIBERATE PRACTICE is for everyone who dreams. A good teacher does not have to be one of the best in the world, he or she should be accomplished in the field. A good teacher should have some skill and experience in teaching in that field. Many accomplished performers are terrible teachers because they have no idea how to teach.

Learning to engage consciously, developing and refining your skills is one of the most powerful ways to improve the effectiveness of your practice. Just having fun you probably will not improve. Focus and concentration are crucial. So it is better to train at 100% effort for less time than at 70% effort for a longer period. One should devote an hour or more each day to practice that can be done with full focus. When your focus is not effective change your study, that day, to another skill plan. This will shape your motivation. Do not practice by doing the same thing over and over again without any focused plan for improvement. A hallmark of an expert performer is one that constantly strives to improve their technique. A big lesson for today is that we can certainly acquire new skills as we age. Expert performers take from their teachers the MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS that they used, and continue to use them to monitor their own performance. This will guide them to greatness. Expert performers develop their special abilities through years and years of DELIBERATE PRACTICE. There are no shortcuts. There are no born prodigies, not without intense, extended practice. With DELIBERATE PRACTICE the emphasis is on the skills versus the knowledge. You pick up the necessary knowledge in order to develop the skills; knowledge should never be an end in itself. You build MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS by thinking about something; You build them by trying to do something, failing, revising, and trying again, over and over. Determining what a student should be able to do is far more effective than determining what the student should know. With the MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS the skill is taught step by step designed to keep the student out of their comfort zone but not so far out that they cannot master that step. Give plenty of repetition and feedback; try, fail, get feedback, try again so the student will then build their MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS. WE all can move forward.

Categories: Book Summary Philosophical Perspective

ron winnegrad

Ron Winnegrad has been a Perfumer and teacher for 46 years. As a perfumer, Ron has been able to express the world he sees through a rainbow of olfactive and emotive visions. As a teacher, Ron has helped others to see fragrance through his own multi sensorial lens.