okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, June 19, 2006
More on practice and expertise
I came across another article about deliberate practice and expertise, a topic I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
I find this stuff really interesting. Probably because it largely fits with what I've come to believe about orienteering and it gives me a little bit different way to think about training.
How long does it take to become an expert orienteer? From the article I read today, here is an answer:
As it turns out, expertise requires about ten years, or ten to twenty thousand hours of deliberate practice. Little evidence exists for expert performance before ten years of practice. Even prodigies like Bobby Fischer (chess), Amadeus Mozart (music) and Wayne Gretzky (sports) required a decade of practice to generate world class results.
Here is another quote from the article that struck me as very relevant for thinking about orienteering
In field after field, researchers find expertise requires many years of deliberate practice. Most people donÂ?t become experts because they donÂ?t put in the time.
