Practice and Mastery
I was in the car this morning listening to a new audio book - Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”. An outlier is a statistical anomaly that at first blush defies explanation. For example, it is commonly thought that talent plays a big role in achieving predominance in a given sport or activity. Gladwell challenges this idea by taking a hard look at experts in the field of business, music, sports and other vocations. In his book, Gladwell makes some startling assertions. The first, that excellence in one’s pursuit has a lot to do with enabling circumstances. A laymen might simply call this “luck”. The other thing, the insight that I believe is more relevant to flying 3D aerobatics, is the role that practice plays in the pursuit of mastery.
The Sound of Music
Gladwell looked at three groups of music students at a prestigious music school. There was the first group that was considered the cream of the crop. These were the students that held the most promise, destine to become professional musicians - no questions asked. The second group were the middle of the pack musicians. This group was good, they definitely had talent, but they weren’t masters. The third group consisted of musicians of average talent - certainly nothing spectacular. These were the folks that were expected to become high school band teachers and lower tier professionals. Musicians, yes - but mediocre at best. What was the difference? Were the top-tier students sons and daughters of famous artists? Were they products of some master musical program, extraordinarily gifted, entitled?? No. The ONLY measurable difference between the representative groups were the number of hours that they had devoted to practice. That’s it! More interestingly, Gladwell was able to come up with what seems to be a universal constant. 10,000 is the magic number. It takes about 10,000 hours, on average, to move from novice to master. 10,000! According to Gladwell, it takes about this long to wire our brains up to mastery levels.
How Does this Relate to Flying 3D Aerobatics?
That should seem obvious but how often is simple practice overlooked? How much do you practice? How do yo practice? I would wager that a trip to the field every couple of weeks isn’t going to get you to world class. 10,000 hours takes about 10 years to log if you are flying 20-30 hours a week. THAT’S a lot of aerobatic flying! That might not be practical for most all of us, but the point is this: practice, practice and more practice makes perfect!
I wonder how much 3D Aerobatic practice flying Andrew Jesky puts in?
-Happy Hovering,
Peter
Welcome to R/C 3D Aerobatics! This site is a work in progress, so please be patient while we build things out! I want to give everybody a preview of what to expect, but before I get to that though, let me speak a little bit about what I envision this site to be. I’ve been a long time R/C’er. As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing something with Radio Controlled Modeling since I was 12. I’m a bonafide enthusiast. Recently, I’ve really been intrigued with cheap, yet capable “foamie” models. The great thing about these is they are nearly throw-away. It’s the only way I know to fly real aircraft upside down inches from the ground without risking hundreds or thousands of dollars. Instead, you’re risking $50 bucks. That’s less than a cart rental at a golf course and it goes without saying: flying is tons more fun! Brilliant!
Thu, Mar 12, 2009
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