#deliberate-practice

#deliberate-practice

What does it take to become the best at something? The answer may not lie in early childhood practice or in lifelong, laser-focused dedication. Instead the path to becoming exceptional at a skill might look a lot more like meandering. That's according to a new paper, published today in Science, that seeks to untangle what it takes to excel across different disciplines, from sports to chess to classical music.

I stepped out of a cab in Graz, Austria, at 10 a.m. with five very jetlagged hours to kill before I could check in to my hotel. I had a few options: I could have asked the person at the front desk for some things to do, or I could have Googled it, but instead I decided to use generative artificial intelligence (AI). In seconds, it produced a five-hour itinerary of Graz's top tourist sites, arranged in a walking order with built-in stops at recommended coffee and lunch spots. Generative AI can feel pretty miraculous when it does things like this, and it is easy to see why people are tempted to use it for other tasks, including for schoolwork and learning.