Despite arguments to the contrary, teaching kids chess or piano doesn’t somehow make them smarter in school.) Experience can transfer proportionally to the number of similar elements shared by two activities-near transfer is a valuable learning tool, but far transfer has been largely debunked. The former is near transfer while the latter is far transfer. You can use your experience with one musical instrument to help learn another, but it doesn’t make you better at math. Psychologists first distinguished between “near transfer” and “far transfer” of learning in 1923.

(Shortform note: Science shows that there are limits to how far skills can transfer. The most exceptional students typically spread their practice time across three instruments. Instead, what set them apart was the number of instruments they knew how to play. Basic training in a wide range of activities teaches a unique kind of skillset-one founded on instincts and principles that apply across disciplines rather than habits that apply in only one context.Ī study conducted at a high-level music boarding school found that the highest-performing students didn’t practice more than others, took fewer formal lessons, didn’t start playing at a younger age, and didn’t even come from musical families. Musicians, entrepreneurs, and athletes alike benefit from a period of early exploration, for a couple of reasons.įirst, Epstein establishes the principle that broad learning teaches transferable skills. Stage 1: Explore and ExperimentĮpstein asserts that the first step to mastery is an era of exploration and experimentation with different activities-a “sampling period,” as he calls it. We’ll examine each of these life stages in turn. When all they have is a certain procedure, every problem looks like that kind of nail.Instead of picking one skill and trying to stick with it for your whole life, Epstein suggests that you:

'It's a problem to have people be that specialized. 'This incredible study shows you're actually safer going when they're away.' Author David Epstein. 'It turns out that are so attached to certain types of specialized procedures, they use them over and over, even when they're not indicated and the rates of complications actually go up,' Epstein explained.

But brand-new research shows that the founders of blockbuster startups on the day of founding have an average age of 46.'Įpstein's advice in the book sometimes comes across as almost counterintuitive, as when he suggested that the best time to have a heart procedure done is when the specialists are all away attending a national cardiologist conference. 'Like Mark Zuckerberg famously at 22 said young people are just smarter. 'We beat ourselves up about trying different things,' Epstein said.

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