The Friday Mindset - Issue #51

May 13, 2022

Friday's here, the sun is out... it's enough to make you want to thumb a slice of lime into the neck of a novelty Mexican beer and listen to 90s RnB.

But before that, a few things to ponder at the end of a busy week at work. Over the last few issues we've talked procrastination, impulse control, environment design... and now it's the turn of - drumroll - deliberate practice.

Some good stuff this week! Kick back, take a few, and enjoy.

Something to try...

This week, a neat 4 minute video clip for you.

This will make a really effective tutorial session - watch the clip, lead a discussion. The clip focuses on practice, and how it improves the acquisition of physical skill. Baseball, basketball, dance, violin playing... that sort of thing.

We suggest a very simple discussion:

To what extent could the same approaches be used to improve a mental/intellectual skill - like learning something?

Dive in...

Can the acquisition of physical skills teach us anything about the acquisition of intellectual skills?

Something we've been reading...

This article - Farnham Street's Ultimate Deliberate Practice Guide - is one of the most complete discussions of deliberate practice we've seen. Instead of resources and information being scattered across the web, this is a clear, well-structured and very readable summary of everything on the topic all in one place!

Understandably, it's a long read and of course you should immediately dive in... however, we know you're busy people, so we've filleted the article by selecting the sections about implementing deliberate practice into a word document. It might work well as a handout and a starting point for discussion. (It's no substitute for the whole thing though!)

The article itself, in all its glory, can be found here:

Deliberate practice is the key to expert performance in writing, teaching, sports, programming, music, medicine, therapy, chess, business, and more. But there’s more to it than 10,000 hours. Read to learn how to accelerate learning, overcome plateaus, turn experience into expertise, and enhance focus.

The word document that covers the actionable implementation can be accessed here:

A very shortened version of the Farnham Street article...

Our latest offer...

We're full for training this summer. We have three days in late August, then it's dates in the Autumn term.

But... if you do want to meet with fellow professionals and explore/discuss the model with us, there's one date when anyone can come along. That's right, we've finally got it sorted; the Eventbrite link to our training day this July. We'll be covering...

  • The VESPA model, illustrated with a handout of ten, brand-new and unpublished activities!

  • How to implement the model in your context, with examples of how it's been done in other institutions!

  • Structuring effective coaching conversations!

....that's enough exclamation marks, you get the picture. It's going to be an exciting day; lots of resources and handouts to give away, a chance to ask questions, plenty of discussion and reflection and so on. Put July 7th in your diaries.

So that's us done. Treat yourself to something, it's Friday and you deserve it.

All the best,

Steve and Martin