Presentation given at Big Design 2018 about how we can improve our professional and personal lives by employing the techniques of deliberate practice.

1. Leveraging Deliberate Practice to
Become Ridiculously Successful
Todd Reynolds
Principal UX Designer at TaxAct
@toddjreynolds#bigD18

2. A little about me…
Cutest family photo you’ll see today in 5

3. A little about me…
Cutest family photo you’ll see today in 4

4. A little about me…
Cutest family photo you’ll see today in 3

5. A little about me…
Cutest family photo you’ll see today in 2

6. A little about me…
Cutest family photo you’ll see today in 1

7. Take a quick Marco Polo for Brooke and the kids.

11. Remembering some digits
I need a volunteer…
In his book entitled Peak, Anders Ericsson tells the story of an interesting research project. It went like this: The participant came in and the researchers would recite a
random string of numbers. Then the participant would need to repeat the numbers back to them perfectly.
Let’s give this a try…
2 6 4 1 8
1 1 0 3 0 8
0 0 4 2 4 0 7
3 6 1 8 6 4 4 5
4 4 2 1 0 1 7 0 3
6 8 0 2 8 2 4 8 9 9

12. Average short-term memory
retention is about
7 or 8 digits
3 6 1 8 6 4 4 5
The average is about 7 or 8, some people can get to about 9 or 10 before they hit their natural ceiling. The participant in Ericsson’s study was average. Day one he
topped out at 8, but was more consistently around 7. Day two was a little better, but not much. Day three. Day four, saw no improvement. It seemed he had reached his
limit. But day five came and they had a break through. By increasing the length of the string when he got it right, and taking a step backwards when he made an error, by
the end of the day, he had perfectly repeated an 11-digit string—two more than his previous high.
After 60 sessions he was up to 20 digits, more than they had expected.
After 100 sessions, he had improved to 40, more than anyone, even professional mnemonists.
By the end of the study and 200 sessions, he was able to reach 82!

13. 8 6 2 9 2 8 2 5 3 6 5 0 0 8 5 9 5 8
9 3 8 7 3 9 0 0 8 7 9 0 0 9 4 1 6 2
8 7 7 1 2 3 9 7 9 4 0 0 6 6 0 0 9 4
6 5 1 7 5 5 9 8 0 5 8 8 8 1 6 9 7 4 4
4 9 9 5 7 6 9 4 4

14. Why should this be
exciting?
Our brains are incredibly adaptable! We can learn to do almost anything, if we put forth the effort. ”When experts exhibit their superior performance in public their
behavior looks so effortless and natural that we are tempted to attribute it to special talents. However, when scientists began measuring the experts' supposedly superior
powers…no general superiority was found."

15. “…researchers have settled on what
they believe is the magic number for
true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

16. 10,000 hours =
5–6 years of experience?
10,000 hours, divided by 40 hours a week, is 250 weeks. Assuming you take two weeks of vacation every year, it would take five years of work to reach the 10,000 hour
threshold. But that's assuming you're never in meetings. So, let's say six years.
But there is a wide range of abilities in designers that have five or six years of experience. Why is that?

17. 10,000 hours of the right
sort of practice
Study of chess players that all accumulated the 10,000 hour level of practice time. Some became grand masters, while other remained at the intermediate level. The
difference is how they spent their time. It was widely thought that tournament time would be the biggest factor, but the study found that hours spent in serious study of
the game dominated the other factors. Players that became grand masters dedicated an average of 5,000 hours to study, while intermediate players only spent about
1,000 hours on study. 5x difference.

18. Learning to golf
You try it out. You embarrass yourself.

19. You hire a coach to teach you the basics. You practice more. Maybe have another lesson or two. More practice.

20. And eventually, it becomes mostly automatic. You’re able to play without the embarrassment of swinging and missing completely and you can now enjoy a round of golf
with your friends. It’s hard at first, but with time, you master the basics. That’s the typical path that most of us take when we learn to do anything. Golf. Tennis. Pizza-
baking.

21. Improvement stalls,
Performance deteriorates
Here’s the problem. The assumption is that after learning how to hit a golf ball, that just continuing to hit balls at the driving range will result in improvement. We assume
that someone who has been hitting golf balls for 20 years is better than someone who has been doing it for 5 years. We assume that a teacher or a doctor who has 20
years of experience is better than someone with only five years of experience.
Studies show that continued “practice” doesn’t lead to improvement. In fact, over time, these abilities that have become somewhat automatic slowly deteriorate in the
absence of deliberate efforts to improve.

22. Okay. So…?
Okay, so what? What does this have to do with us? Well, let’s take a quick look at a common day-in-the-life of a gainfully employed person in our industry…

23. • Meeting
• 15-30 minute after-meeting meeting
• Back to your desk, open up Sketch
• In flow for 10 minutes
• Another meeting
• Lunch

24. • Another meeting
• Design time
• Interruption by co-worker ranting about their
first-world problems
• Invited last-minute to 4:30 meeting
• Go home and do the design work that didn’t
get done that day
If this is common for you, like it is for me, it’s easy to see why we might get stuck at an acceptable level of performance.

25. Stuck on a Plateau
This is the main issue. This is the problem we need to solve for. If you just show up and work hard, you'll soon hit a performance plateau and you’ll stop getting any
better.
In most types of work—that is, work that doesn't have a clear training philosophy—most people are stuck.

26. My longboarding example
Let me share a short anecdote that illustrates this a bit.

27. For me, it wasn’t golf. I suck at golf, and have little motivation to learn. But I’m learning to longboard.
Timed myself from one point to another, keeping track of how many times I lost my balance. Then did it again and tried to beat my time. Then did it again.
I also kept track of the number of consecutive pushes I did because I noticed that I needed to improve.

28. What is Purposeful Practice?
• Well-defined, specific goals
• Focused practice
• Involves feedback
• Gets you out of your comfort zone

29. Deliberate practice is
“…activity designed for the sole purpose of
effectively improving specific aspects of an
individual's performance.”
Deliberate practice is a step-by-step process of working on specific skills, and then moving on to other skills that build upon previous skills.

30. Deliberate practice is
• Purposeful, informed practice
• Supervised by mentor, teacher, or coach
• Usually in a well-defined field
• Relatively objective outcomes
The biggest difference between purposeful practice and deliberate practice is the presence of a coach, teacher, or mentor. It also helps to be doing something in a field
that is well-defined and has relatively objective outcomes, like music, dance, chess, team sports, etc.

31. "Doing things we know how to do
well is enjoyable, and that's exactly
the opposite of what deliberate
practice demands.…

32. …Deliberate practice is above all an
effort of focus and concentration…

33. That is what makes it "deliberate," as
distinct from the mindless playing of
scales or hitting of tennis balls that
most people engage in."
Geoff Colvin

34. It’s going to be tough—
Don’t give up.

35. Story about
Benjamin Franklin
Ben Franklin writing story…
Spectator – Reproducing stories — noticed a lack of vocabulary — modified his exercise to write poetry versions of the articles, forcing him to use words that would
match the rhyme and rhythm of each verse — then transform poems back to prose — worked on structure by writing hints about a story on pieces of paper — jumbled
the papers — organized them — rewrote the article — if mistakes were made, he’d correct them and learn from them for next time.

36. Step 1—Focus
• Decide on your definition of success
• What skills/knowledge are you lacking?
• Make a plan on how to improve
weaknesses
• Practice, focusing on your plan
What is the goal?
What does it mean to you to be a ridiculously successful designer, manager, developer?
What is the gap?
What skills and/or knowledge are you lacking to meet your goal of being great at that aspect of your profession?
If you can identify the gaps, you’ve found your focus for your purposeful, deliberate practice.

37. Step 2—Feedback
• Feedback, either from yourself or from
others, is crucial.
• Feedback allows you to monitor your
progress and identify the next weakness
• Embrace honest feedback
Embrace honest feedback—even if it destroys what you thought was good.
…It's in honest, sometimes harsh feedback that you learn where to retrain your focus in order to continue to make progress.

38. Step 3—Fix It
• Based on feedback, continue to acquire
the skills you need to meet your objectives

39. Choose Simple, Meaningful Tasks
• 10 push-ups every day vs. reading a fitness
magazine every day?
• Writing jokes vs. researching jokes?
• Don’t break the chain
Seinfeld strategy… Do you know this story well enough to tell it?

40. Create our own practice
opportunities
Without a teacher we must develop our own exercises. Our jobs, our hobbies, etc, seldom provide us with the focused repetition we need to improve, so we must
manufacture our own opportunities.

41. Luckily, we have the
Internet
What if we were more open about it? Maybe we can’t find a UX coach, but what if we asked our colleagues for ideas on how we could improve our visuals design skills?
Or our ability to problem solve? Or our listening skills? Or even improve our levels of engagement in meetings? Many of our peers may have insights that could help us
get better at our craft, if we only asked.
Whatever you’re looking to learn and improve at, the Internet is there to help you.
Dann Petty’s “Spaced” challenge gave thousands of designs a great opportunity to practice and get some feedback on their work.

43. Me and Framer
Last fall I started an effort to create 100 prototypes with Framer that recreate interesting interactions I see in the apps and products I use. I think I’m up 22. :( Things have
been busy.

44. Where do you want to
improve?
Identify the gap.
Let’s think for a minute. Many of you might have already thought about something you’d like to work on during this presentation. If you haven’t already, identify your own
gaps.

45. What activities will push
you to get better?
Make a plan and find or create activities
designed to help you improve.

46. Learn to Love Critical
Feedback
Feedback is how we can measure our
improvements and adjust our plans

47. Don’t. Give. Up.
Practicing is hard. But it’s what separates
greatness from mediocrity.

48. What do you think?
@toddjreynolds#bigD18
I’d love to get your thoughts on these ideas.
Let’s talk for a minute…
Now, if you’d like to practice and improve your craft at TaxAct, find me and let’s talk.
Thanks for coming and sharing this hour with me.