Sunday, March 22, 2020

Arts Management 2020 - Session 4

How to be an Expert
To look forward to a rewarding career, one needs to know concepts that will help in moving ahead. One needs to know how to sharpen skill, how experts work and train. To reach the top of the pyramid which is what everyone must aspire for, one must be exposed to the ideas about how experts are made.

Here I took inputs from a well-read article in the Harvard Business Review on 'The Making of an Expert' by K Anders Ericsson, Michael J Prietula and Edward T Cokely. Please read.

https://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert

The main points made in the article are that superior performance does not come easy - it is the result of struggle, sacrifice and painful self-assessment. It requires a decade of deliberate practice, well-informed coaches and a scientific approach.

10,000 hours
The number of hours they pegged their research on of practice (deliberate practice) was 10000 hours.

Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is a specific form of practice where the practitioner does not just put in time, but the quality of effort. The practitioner picks up specific aspects of his skill and works on them deliberately. She creates scenarios in her mind and at simulating real-life situations and practices with intense concentration.

In deliberate practise there are two types of learning
- Improving skills one already has and is good at (working on making the strengths stronger)
- Extending the reach and range of skills (which means one must improve on what one does not know well, or what one does not know at all i.e. working on the weak areas).

Practising these two aspects requires a considerable amount of concentration. Now, the experts feel that one must decide how much practice one is good. For some two hours, for some four and for some even more. The key is to bring quality and awareness to every practice session so one improves one aspect, one becomes really good and one aspect.

The difference between a normal performer and a high-quality performer is deliberate practice.

Who is an Expert
n expert is defined as one who
- turns in consistently superior performances to peers (and in all conditions)
- produces concrete results
- whose expertise and skill can be replicated and measured in a laboratory (should know the science behind what she is doing)

Practice
To analyse practice sessions, deconstruct them into strong areas and weak areas, and pick specific areas to work on, in every single session. Also figure out how to bring higher awareness to each session to get insights into the science behind the performance.


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