i agree with the spirit of this post but I think you’re leaving out an important part. It seems from the other comments that the experiment described never really happened. I think if it were tried it wouldn’t really work out as described. I know if i had been in that class and been in the quantity group, I would have made some really crappy, really thick pots and been done as quickly as possible in order to goof off for the maximum amount of time. If I had been in the quality group I wouldn’t have theorized about it, I just would have iterated on a lump of clay. Making a pot and then not firing it or anything, just mashing it back into a lump and starting over until I got to a really good one. I think I would have learned a lot more about pot making in the quality group.
What I have read and also experienced is that producing quantity is necessary but not sufficient for producing quality. If you want to get really good at something, rather than just getting somewhat good and then plateauing, you have to not only do it a lot, but you have to care deeply about how good you are doing, identify your weaknesses and work specifically to improve those. The problem with your story is that the quantity kids have no incentive to produce quality, so they probably just won’t.
For example, I’m a self-taught programmer. So, in the beginning I wrote some truly atrocious code. I got good at coding when my livelihood depended upon producing and maintaining a large complicated system. The fact that I have to maintain and improve upon this codebase in the future made me a lot better because it made me suffer for my sins, and really care about not repeating them. And obviously having my income depend on it made me care about bugs and performance and stuff a lot more. If I had just been tasked with writing a lot of code, and was paid based on line count or something, I bet I would have written a lot of code and it would have all sucked.
The problem with your story is that the quantity kids have no incentive to produce quality, so they probably just won’t.
No incentive? Don’t you think they signed up for pottery class to, you know, learn how to do good pottery? That nobody wanted to be proud of their work?
(Btw, I heard this pottery story from a different source, and IIRC it was an adult pottery class, not a kids’ one.)
I’m not sure that’s true once you limit it to adult classes (far more likely to be taking the occasional class for fun), and particularly in the case of an art class.
A “class for fun” implies that grade shouldn’t matter to the participants, so, allegedly, the two different grading schemes wouldn’t affect the participants’ behavior.
But things (such as motivation) change as a person who did pottery for fun at home, goes to do pottery for fun in a class, don’t they?
Ten years or ten thousand hours of “deliberate practice”—PDF link.pdf) - is what’s typically talked about these days to become one of the greats. Yeah, I know—ten years??? But “deliberate practice” of any length is better than messing around and will get you good, just not world champ level, long before ten years. That sounds like what you’re talking about.
What I have read and also experienced is that producing quantity is necessary but not sufficient for producing quality. If you want to get really good at something, rather than just getting somewhat good and then plateauing, you have to not only do it a lot, but you have to care deeply about how good you are doing, identify your weaknesses and work specifically to improve those. The problem with your story is that the quantity kids have no incentive to produce quality, so they probably just won’t.
A different angle from Kenny Werner, though this is about music—his Effortless Mastery is about learning to be calm and non-judgmental, then gradually adding more challenge (achieve state, approach instrument, touch instrument, pick up instrument, make sound without aiming for good sound, then slowly add work on getting skillful without disrupting meditative state).
I haven’t seen this approach applied to purely cognitive work like programming, though this doesn’t seem impossible.
i agree with the spirit of this post but I think you’re leaving out an important part. It seems from the other comments that the experiment described never really happened. I think if it were tried it wouldn’t really work out as described. I know if i had been in that class and been in the quantity group, I would have made some really crappy, really thick pots and been done as quickly as possible in order to goof off for the maximum amount of time. If I had been in the quality group I wouldn’t have theorized about it, I just would have iterated on a lump of clay. Making a pot and then not firing it or anything, just mashing it back into a lump and starting over until I got to a really good one. I think I would have learned a lot more about pot making in the quality group.
What I have read and also experienced is that producing quantity is necessary but not sufficient for producing quality. If you want to get really good at something, rather than just getting somewhat good and then plateauing, you have to not only do it a lot, but you have to care deeply about how good you are doing, identify your weaknesses and work specifically to improve those. The problem with your story is that the quantity kids have no incentive to produce quality, so they probably just won’t.
For example, I’m a self-taught programmer. So, in the beginning I wrote some truly atrocious code. I got good at coding when my livelihood depended upon producing and maintaining a large complicated system. The fact that I have to maintain and improve upon this codebase in the future made me a lot better because it made me suffer for my sins, and really care about not repeating them. And obviously having my income depend on it made me care about bugs and performance and stuff a lot more. If I had just been tasked with writing a lot of code, and was paid based on line count or something, I bet I would have written a lot of code and it would have all sucked.
No incentive? Don’t you think they signed up for pottery class to, you know, learn how to do good pottery? That nobody wanted to be proud of their work?
(Btw, I heard this pottery story from a different source, and IIRC it was an adult pottery class, not a kids’ one.)
I would say the majority of classes are signed up for because they’re easy or part of required credits for a program.
I’m not sure that’s true once you limit it to adult classes (far more likely to be taking the occasional class for fun), and particularly in the case of an art class.
A “class for fun” implies that grade shouldn’t matter to the participants, so, allegedly, the two different grading schemes wouldn’t affect the participants’ behavior.
But things (such as motivation) change as a person who did pottery for fun at home, goes to do pottery for fun in a class, don’t they?
Ten years or ten thousand hours of “deliberate practice”—PDF link.pdf) - is what’s typically talked about these days to become one of the greats. Yeah, I know—ten years??? But “deliberate practice” of any length is better than messing around and will get you good, just not world champ level, long before ten years. That sounds like what you’re talking about.
A different angle from Kenny Werner, though this is about music—his Effortless Mastery is about learning to be calm and non-judgmental, then gradually adding more challenge (achieve state, approach instrument, touch instrument, pick up instrument, make sound without aiming for good sound, then slowly add work on getting skillful without disrupting meditative state).
I haven’t seen this approach applied to purely cognitive work like programming, though this doesn’t seem impossible.
This is also more or less the approach I adopted to physical therapy, after my stroke, to pretty good results.