It seems that your model is that success at a particular task is a deterministic function of effort and skill level. Hence, when you fail after one success, you conclude that you did not put in as much effort as on the success.
Another model, which I have from Thinking Fast and Slow, is that success is a non-deterministic function of your skill level. For each attempt, there is some probability of success, and this slowly increases with practice. If it increases slowly enough, it might take 10 attempts to increase that probability from ~7% to ~13%, and so it is likely that your first success will be at an attempt where you had ~10% chance of success. I suspect that a success will give you a feel for how the task should be done and that this will give you a boost in the success probability, so maybe you have a15% chance of success on your next attempt. Unfortunately, you don’t experience the probability, only the result, and most of the time the result will be a failure. This failure is just a regression to the mean and doesn’t mean that you have gotten worse or lost concentration, just that there is some luck involved. But it will feel like you got worse.
Instead of stopping, I would continue practicing while you remember your success because I think successes boost your skills more than failure does. I also think that taking a break of one or several days will mean the probability of success is lower next time.
Do you have any evidence in your data that your model is more accurate than mine? One experiment to test this would be that after each first success on a training session you flip a coin. If it is heads you play once more and record the result (and you can then continue practicing or not, it doesn’t matter) and if it is tails you stop and record your first result next time you practice the same task. I predict that you will do better when playing immediately after a success than if you wait a day or more.
In Thinking Fast and Slow a similar example was used, where a teacher thought that praising a student for a good performance led to worse results next time, and hence the teacher stopped praising the student. Again, this was just regression to the mean, and actually, praise was motivating the students.
That said, the standard practice (pun intended) is also a thing.
As L told me last night, “just because you’ve found something that works better than what you were doing before doesn’t mean you’ve found the best thing yet...”
Good question, I will try to be more precise. My hypothesis in the experiment above was:
The first attempt after the first win is more likely to succeed if it is made immediately after the first win than if it is made one or more days after the first win.
I’m not claiming the probability is high. At my very low skill level (I have probably spent 30 hours on Yousician a few years ago), I would expect that if a successfully played a song for the first time (after many failed attempts), I would have around 15% chance of success on the next attempt immediately afterwards. It might be very different for you.
I also made a claim that continuing to practice helps more than stopping after first win each time, but I did not suggest a way to test that. It is not clear to me what the best test is because the success rate might vary in the two setups. Here is a suggestion for a claim
On a given task, if you practice one day until you have 5 wins, the total time spent (or total number of attempts) on the task is less than if you play until first win 5 days in a row.
If you test your ability to perform the task one day after ending the practice above (day 6 in the first scenario and day 2 in the second scenario) then scenario 1 will give you the highest probability of win in first attempton the test day and it will also on average give you a smaller number of attempt until first win on the test day.
I’m less confident in the last prediction, because you don’t get the spaced repetition practice. Maybe playing until 4th win one day 1 and until first win on day 2 is better.
You could combine the two experiments above, so only after the first win do you flip a coin to decide if you are doing 5 times “stop after first win” or if you are doing “stop after 5 wins”.
It seems that your model is that success at a particular task is a deterministic function of effort and skill level. Hence, when you fail after one success, you conclude that you did not put in as much effort as on the success.
Another model, which I have from Thinking Fast and Slow, is that success is a non-deterministic function of your skill level. For each attempt, there is some probability of success, and this slowly increases with practice. If it increases slowly enough, it might take 10 attempts to increase that probability from ~7% to ~13%, and so it is likely that your first success will be at an attempt where you had ~10% chance of success. I suspect that a success will give you a feel for how the task should be done and that this will give you a boost in the success probability, so maybe you have a15% chance of success on your next attempt. Unfortunately, you don’t experience the probability, only the result, and most of the time the result will be a failure. This failure is just a regression to the mean and doesn’t mean that you have gotten worse or lost concentration, just that there is some luck involved. But it will feel like you got worse.
Instead of stopping, I would continue practicing while you remember your success because I think successes boost your skills more than failure does. I also think that taking a break of one or several days will mean the probability of success is lower next time.
Do you have any evidence in your data that your model is more accurate than mine? One experiment to test this would be that after each first success on a training session you flip a coin. If it is heads you play once more and record the result (and you can then continue practicing or not, it doesn’t matter) and if it is tails you stop and record your first result next time you practice the same task. I predict that you will do better when playing immediately after a success than if you wait a day or more.
In Thinking Fast and Slow a similar example was used, where a teacher thought that praising a student for a good performance led to worse results next time, and hence the teacher stopped praising the student. Again, this was just regression to the mean, and actually, praise was motivating the students.
The flip-a-coin experiment is a very good idea. Are you predicting that the result will look something like this:
Win, flip coin, heads
Win
Stop
Win (first try next session), flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
vs.
Win, flip coin, tails
Stop
Fail (first try next session)
That’s worth testing, and I can start tomorrow.
Will be interesting to see if it devolves to this:
Win, flip coin, heads
Fail
Fail
Fail
[...]
Win, flip coin, follow heads/tails instructions
Or resolves to this:
Win, flip coins, tails
Stop
Win (first try next session)
Spaced repetition (stopping after win and coming back next session) is a thing, more info here including a downloable white paper with a bibliography of resources.
That said, the standard practice (pun intended) is also a thing.
As L told me last night, “just because you’ve found something that works better than what you were doing before doesn’t mean you’ve found the best thing yet...”
Good question, I will try to be more precise. My hypothesis in the experiment above was:
The first attempt after the first win is more likely to succeed if it is made immediately after the first win than if it is made one or more days after the first win.
I’m not claiming the probability is high. At my very low skill level (I have probably spent 30 hours on Yousician a few years ago), I would expect that if a successfully played a song for the first time (after many failed attempts), I would have around 15% chance of success on the next attempt immediately afterwards. It might be very different for you.
I also made a claim that continuing to practice helps more than stopping after first win each time, but I did not suggest a way to test that. It is not clear to me what the best test is because the success rate might vary in the two setups. Here is a suggestion for a claim
On a given task, if you practice one day until you have 5 wins, the total time spent (or total number of attempts) on the task is less than if you play until first win 5 days in a row.
If you test your ability to perform the task one day after ending the practice above (day 6 in the first scenario and day 2 in the second scenario) then scenario 1 will give you the highest probability of win in first attempton the test day and it will also on average give you a smaller number of attempt until first win on the test day.
I’m less confident in the last prediction, because you don’t get the spaced repetition practice. Maybe playing until 4th win one day 1 and until first win on day 2 is better.
You could combine the two experiments above, so only after the first win do you flip a coin to decide if you are doing 5 times “stop after first win” or if you are doing “stop after 5 wins”.
All good all good, initial results here...