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Deliberate Skill Deconstruction

a tag for every miss, a number for every drill

The simple version picks tonight's weak part by feel. This one finds it from a record. For a week or two, every miss gets tagged with the part it came from. The biggest pile gets one drill with a number, tested the same way each week. After three weeks you tag again, because the biggest pile moves.

  • Moderate to start
  • High impact
  • Learn it in 2-4 weeks
  • One drill, one weekly test
where the lost games went
A chess player tags twelve lost games by cause, drills the biggest cause for three weeks with a weekly test, and then tags again Twelve lost games, each tagged with the one cause that lost it: missed tactic 6, time trouble 3, opening 2, endgame 1. Missed tactics are half the pile, so they get the drill: twenty puzzles a day, counting the ones solved first try. The same twenty-puzzle test each Sunday scored 11, then 13, then 16 out of 20 over three weeks. Then the next twelve losses are tagged again. Twelve lost games, one tag each T T C T O T C T O T C E T tactic missed · C clock · O opening · E endgame Counted missed tactic 6 time trouble 3 opening 2 endgame 1 half the losses, one cause The drill, for missed tactics Twenty puzzles a day, all tactics. Count the ones solved on the first try. the test: the same kind of set, every Sunday Sunday test, out of 20 0 10 20 11 week 1 13 week 2 16 week 3 Week four: tag again The next twelve losses. If tactics aren't the biggest pile any more, the drill moves. 1 2 3 4 5

The player thought the opening was the problem. The tags said otherwise.

Over three or four weeks

Try it now.

Start with the skill you practise most. You need a place to tally, ten minutes a week to count, and one drill you can repeat.

  1. Tag every miss for a week

    Each time it goes wrong, write one tag: the part it came from. One tag per miss, even when two parts were involved; pick the one that cost the most.

  2. Count the tags

    Line the piles up, biggest first. Expect one or two to hold most of the misses.

    If no pile stands out, your tags are too broad. Split the biggest one and tag another week.

  3. Build one drill for the biggest pile

    A short exercise that hits that part over and over, and a test you can run the same way each week, so the number means something.

  4. Drill it, and test it weekly

    Most days for three weeks. Run the test once a week and write the number down. Keep doing the whole skill as well.

  5. Tag again

    After three weeks, tag the next batch of misses. If the biggest pile changed, the drill changes with it.

Tag the cause, not the moment. "Lost on move 30" tells you nothing to drill. "Missed a fork on move 30" does.

Keep your tally here

Tag the misses, then write the drill and its numbers.

Name the parts, then press +1 each time one of them costs you. The biggest pile becomes the drill. Add each week's test score and it reads the trend.

Miss tally0 misses tagged

    The drill

    Tag a few misses to see which part gets it.

    Enter two weeks of scores to read the trend.

    Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. It's gone when you leave the page, so copy the drill before you go.

    Why solo drills

    At the spelling bee, the hardest kind of practice predicted the most.

    Angela Duckworth, Teri Kirby, Eli Tsukayama, Heather Berstein and Anders Ericsson followed finalists of the National Spelling Bee as they prepared. The spellers logged how much time they spent on three kinds of preparation and rated how each felt.

    Studying and memorising words alone, the most deliberate of the three, predicted how far a speller got better than the other two. It was also rated the most effortful and the least enjoyable. Spellers with more experience leaned further towards it.

    PreparationHow far they gotHow it felt
    Studying and memorising words aloneDeliberate practice Best predictor of how far they got Rated the most effortful and the least enjoyable
    Being quizzed by someone elseFeedback, less effort Predicted it less well Easier going
    Reading for pleasureExposure Predicted it less well Easier going
    Duckworth, Kirby, Tsukayama, Berstein & Ericsson (2011), "Deliberate practice spells success", Social Psychological and Personality Science 2(2). "Easier going" means rated less effortful and more enjoyable than solo study.

    The honest limits: the spellers chose how to prepare, and they reported their own hours, so this is a link, not a test of cause. And spelling is a skill where the parts (single words) are already separate. Most skills need you to do the taking-apart first, which is what the tally is for.

    The idea

    Why it works.

    A feel for where you're weak is a guess, and it leans towards the mistakes that were memorable or embarrassing. A tally counts the dull, common ones too. That's often where the biggest pile turns out to be.

    The weekly test closes the loop. Without it, three weeks of drilling feels like progress whether or not the number moves. With it, a flat line is a signal to change the drill, not to keep going on hope.

    When it goes wrong

    Habits that help.

    • Same test, same way. If the test changes, the number stops meaning anything. Change the drill as much as you like; keep the test.
    • One drill at a time. Two drills that both start working leave you unsure which one did it.
    • Flat for two weeks means change the drill. Make it harder, or make it look more like the moment it fails in the whole.
    • Don't drop the whole skill. Tags only come from doing the real thing. A week of drills with no games is a week with no new tags.

    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