Keep this life skill for later
Sign in to save
← All life skills

Learning & thinking · a life skill

Simple Skill Deconstruction

take it apart, start with the part that trips you

Practising a whole skill over and over spends most of the time on the parts you can already do. Taking it apart means doing it once to see where it goes wrong, naming the parts in plain words, and giving tonight's practice to the one part that trips you most. Then you put it back and do the whole thing again.

  • Easy to start
  • Medium impact
  • Learn it in 1 week
  • Fifteen minutes on one part
one song, taken apart
A guitar song taken apart: played through it stalls at each change from G to C, its four parts are rated, the changes are drilled alone, and then the song is played again The song runs G, C, G, D, G, C, D, G, and stalls at both changes from G to C. Its parts, by how often they trip the player: chord shapes 1 of 3, changes 3 of 3, strumming 1 of 3, singing along 2 of 3. The changes trip most, so they get practice alone: switching between G and C for a minute at a time and counting the clean changes. Then the whole song is played once more, to see whether the stall moved. The whole skill one song, played through G C G D G C D G stalls at every G to C chord shapes trips me changes trips me strumming trips me singing along trips me start here The part, alone G × C Switch G and C for one minute. Count the clean ones. and so on Put it back G C G D G C D G Play it through again. Did the stall move? tomorrow: the next part that trips you 1 2 3 4 5

The song isn't hard everywhere. It's hard at two moments, and both are the same change.

Tonight, with one skill

Try it now.

Pick something you practise and stay stuck on: a song, a language, a sport, a kind of maths problem. You need about twenty-five minutes.

  1. Do the whole thing once

    Play the song, have the conversation, work the problem. Mark each place it slowed down or went wrong.

  2. List the parts

    Four or five, in plain words. For a song: the chord shapes, the changes, the strumming, singing along.

  3. Pick the one that trips you most

    Look at your marks. The part where most of them landed is tonight's part.

    If two tie, pick the one that comes up more often.

  4. Drill that part alone, with a count

    Fifteen minutes on just that part. Give it a number you can count: clean changes in a minute, words recalled, problems right.

  5. Put it back

    Do the whole thing once more. If the mark moved to a different part, that's tomorrow's fifteen minutes.

Expect it to feel worse. Fifteen minutes on your weakest part is less fun than playing what you already can. That's the sign it's aimed at the right place.

Take your skill apart

Name the parts, rate them, get tonight's part.

Write the skill and its parts. For each, say how often it trips you and how often it comes up. The card picks the part to drill and writes the plan.

    Tonight's part

    Rate a part to see it here.

      Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. It's gone when you leave the page.

      Why the weak part

      Given a choice, the experts practised the kick they were worse at.

      Edward Coughlan, Mark Williams, Allistair McRobert and Paul Ford asked expert and intermediate Gaelic football players to practise two kinds of kick, and let each player choose how to spend the practice. They tested the kicks before, straight after, and again later.

      The experts spent most of their practice on their weaker kick. They rated that practice as harder work and less enjoyable than the intermediates rated theirs. The intermediates spent most of theirs on the kick they were already good at.

      Both groups got better by the end of practice. Only the experts were still better at the later test.

      The honest limits: the players chose their own practice, so the experts differ from the intermediates in more than what they practised. It was footballers and two kicks, not your skill. It shows what practice that holds tends to look like, not that this one change caused it.

      Experts

      Practised
      Mostly their weaker kick
      It felt like
      More effort, less enjoyment
      Better after?
      Straight after: yes Later: yes

      Intermediates

      Practised
      Mostly their stronger kick
      It felt like
      Less effort, more enjoyment
      Better after?
      Straight after: yes Later: no
      Coughlan, Williams, McRobert & Ford (2014), Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40(2). "It felt like" compares the two groups' own ratings.

      The idea

      Why it works.

      Doing the whole skill again and again feels like practice, and it is, but most of each run goes on parts you can already do. The part that trips you only gets a few seconds per run. Taken apart, it gets all fifteen minutes.

      Naming the parts also changes what you notice. "I'm bad at guitar" has no next step. "My change from G to C is slow" has one, and it takes a minute to test.

      When it goes wrong

      Habits that help.

      • Keep the parts plain. "Changes" beats "transitional fluency". If you can't drill it tonight, split it again.
      • Always put it back. A part drilled alone has to work inside the whole. End every session with one full run.
      • Count something. A number tonight is what tells you, next week, whether the drill did anything.
      • Move on when it moves. Once a part stops tripping you, it stops being tonight's part, even if you've grown to like drilling it.

      Go deeper

      Keep going.

      Practise this in HourLife.

      In Goals: Sub-goals and milestones. Set goals from lifetime to quarterly, break them into sub-goals and milestones, and see how far along each one is.

      Download on the App Store Download on the Mac App Store How Goals works in HourLife