PEAK CH3-4

Thoughts

If success is a cup of water, I would like to believe that mental representations is the water and deliberate practice is its cup. So is our August reading group.

Through the everyday readings, we are assimilating mental representations from both the content of PEAK and the interactions within the WeChat group. I feel grateful to be learning from Eric and each participant who have expanded my understandings to the book as well as myself. We are different, yet we are doing the same thing.

I cannot wait to read the rest chapters to see how the author describes and proves the influence of deliberate practice towards work and life, to re-think about my way of deliberate practice and find my cup to hold mental representations.

Summary

Mental representations are introduced as the secret to winning in fields like chess, instruments contests, sports etc. It is also helpful in the learning of other fields with less direct results.

Mental representations and our performance are interacting in a virtuous circle too. The more we explore our mental representations, the better we perform.

Deliberate practice is purposeful practice that knows where it is going and how to get there (seven traits).

To achieve deliberate practice, we need a good teacher and a good amount of time practicing. 10 thousand hours won't turn you into an expert and might also limit your improvements to some extent.

Expressions

A doctor diagnosing a patient with a complex set of symptoms must take in a great deal of information without knowing ahead of time which is most relevant and which might be red herrings.

red herrings 表示转移注意力的东西 (red herring fallacy指讨论问题时以顾左右而言他来回避问题）

Unlike medical students, expert diagnosticians have built sophisticated mental representations that let them consider a number of different facts at once, even facts that at first might not seem germane.

germane 表示有密切观点的, be germane to

In practice it often boils down to purposeful practice with a few extra steps.

boil down to 表示说到底就是...

...so to have an apples-to-apples comparison, we looked at the accumulated amount of practice through age seventeen and the skill level at age eighteen.

apples-to-apples comparison 表示同类之间的对比

...Gladwell offered a catchy phrase: " the ten-thousand-hour rule."

catchy phrase 表示朗朗上口的经典语句，流行语

Hodgson suggested that in a number of those flights, the judges should be given three samples of the same wine.

flight 表示among the best of a particular group