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Hitting Plateaus; why normal practice isn't enough

Zarxrax

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I came across an article in the New York Times about memory: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/20/magazine/mind-secrets.html

While the article might be interesting to blind-solvers, that's not the aspect of it that caught my attention. Rather, it was this part:

When people first learn to use a keyboard, they improve very quickly from sloppy single-finger pecking to careful two-handed typing, until eventually the fingers move effortlessly and the whole process becomes unconscious. At this point, most people’s typing skills stop progressing. They reach a plateau. If you think about it, it’s strange. We’ve always been told that practice makes perfect, and yet many people sit behind a keyboard for hours a day. So why don’t they just keeping getting better and better?

In the 1960s, the psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner tried to answer this question by describing the three stages of acquiring a new skill. During the first phase, known as the cognitive phase, we intellectualize the task and discover new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently. During the second, the associative phase, we concentrate less, making fewer major errors, and become more efficient. Finally we reach what Fitts and Posner called the autonomous phase, when we’re as good as we need to be at the task and we basically run on autopilot. Most of the time that’s a good thing. The less we have to focus on the repetitive tasks of everyday life, the more we can concentrate on the stuff that really matters. You can actually see this phase shift take place in f.M.R.I.’s of subjects as they learn new tasks: the parts of the brain involved in conscious reasoning become less active, and other parts of the brain take over. You could call it the O.K. plateau.

Psychologists used to think that O.K. plateaus marked the upper bounds of innate ability. In his 1869 book “Hereditary Genius,” Sir Francis Galton argued that a person could improve at mental and physical activities until he hit a wall, which “he cannot by any education or exertion overpass.” In other words, the best we can do is simply the best we can do. But Ericsson and his colleagues have found over and over again that with the right kind of effort, that’s rarely the case. They believe that Galton’s wall often has much less to do with our innate limits than with what we consider an acceptable level of performance. They’ve found that top achievers typically follow the same general pattern. They develop strategies for keeping out of the autonomous stage by doing three things: focusing on their technique, staying goal-oriented and getting immediate feedback on their performance. Amateur musicians, for example, tend to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros tend to work through tedious exercises or focus on difficult parts of pieces. Similarly, the best ice skaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land less often, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they’ve already mastered. In other words, regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail. That’s what I needed to do if I was going to improve my memory.

In other words, just practicing over and over again will only get you so far. To really improve, you have to constantly push yourself. Work on your problem areas. Get out a metronome and let it force you to move faster.
 

MaeLSTRoM

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Definetly works though.
Have you ever had it when you finish a solve or even during one that you realise that you could do what you're doing alot faster (e.g Push on fnger tricks higher TPS) but not becuase you're going slowly?
I think this is a perfect example of what happens, you really just have to push through to go faster.
 

Evan_Frame

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That is an excellent article that I am going to apply to other parts of my life. In cubing however I am still looking forward to the OK plateau. :)
 

JustinJ

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Personally, I don't really agree with the metronome stuff. At least to get to the point where I am, aside from learning algs and stuff, pure practice worked fine. The way I always thought about it was that by practicing, you subconsciously gain a better understanding of how the pieces move and can predict and find things better, although I'd like to hear someone faster's opinion on that.
 

some1rational

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Nice find! Interesting read. I think this is something most veteran cubers (or veterans of any skill for that matter) 'understand/realize' innately, but it's always nice to have it spelled out concretely. I especially like the example of the amateur and professional musician.

I have a personal example in this case, which is related to cubing. I was stuck at about 22-23 second averages for at LEAST 4 months. I performed a lot of 'autonomous' practice daily but wasn't improving in the slightest which frustrated me almost to the point of quitting.

I decided after 4-5 months of almost zero improvement that I'd try something different, and that was to work on solving on another color (I was white cross like most people). I did this with blue until I reached my white cross times. Then I did it with red. And then I worked on opposite cross. In this process of becoming color neutral (took about 1.5-2 months) my times started to steadily go down and now I average around 18-19 seconds.

I've technically plateau'd again though, however, but I still have x-cross techniques to learn so I know that's something just barely out of my reach/limitations that would definitely make me faster if I pursued it. Still havn't built up the patience though "-_- (no one said 'worthwhile practice' was easy, haha).
 

cmhardw

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Oh my, this article is gold in my opinion. I can already see two big things that he does differently with memorizing than I do, and I'm interested to try his take on things. I wonder if a set of those blinder goggles would be of any use for blindfolded solving They would get in the way of the blindfold obviously, but you could take them off and put the blindfolded on after if they were useful enough.

Wow... I almost feel like I should read this article again, while taking notes. Thanks for this link!
 

Rob2109

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Just my quick two cents worth. I'm a classically trained pianist and I've been attracted to speedcubing as there are loads of similarities between the disiplines. The way I would learn a piece has been the same way I've approached learning algs. I could write a more in depth explanation if anyone is at all interested, Rob.
 

cmhardw

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Rob, I'd be interested. I improved my pb single in 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7BLD all in the space of about two and a half weeks simply by learning how to sculpt with clay. I'm really becoming a believer in the power of cross training and seeing how things are done in other disciplines.
 

Anthony

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Personally, I don't really agree with the metronome stuff. At least to get to the point where I am, aside from learning algs and stuff, pure practice worked fine. The way I always thought about it was that by practicing, you subconsciously gain a better understanding of how the pieces move and can predict and find things better, although I'd like to hear someone faster's opinion on that.

Not that I necessarily qualify as someone faster than you, but I totally agree - particularly pertaining to F2L, of course. Generally, people who aren't very fast and have less experience cubing find pieces significantly slower, cannot track pieces very well and stick to solving pairs the most obvious ways. One thing I've noticed for sure is that I've subconsciously learnt a bunch of VHF2L cases without realizing it simply by solving the cube so many times. I'm also not a big fan of using a metronome, but I suppose it may "work" for some people. I've never practiced cubing any way besides just scrambling and solving.
 
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whauk

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Just my quick two cents worth. I'm a classically trained pianist and I've been attracted to speedcubing as there are loads of similarities between the disiplines. The way I would learn a piece has been the same way I've approached learning algs. I could write a more in depth explanation if anyone is at all interested, Rob.

i am sort of a hobby pianist (currently i am working on schumann's piano concerto, so i am not that bad^^) and somehow i dont see similiarities between cubing and piano... can you explain a bit more? i am really interested.
(sry if this turns ot)
 

uberCuber

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i am sort of a hobby pianist (currently i am working on schumann's piano concerto, so i am not that bad^^) and somehow i dont see similiarities between cubing and piano... can you explain a bit more? i am really interested.
(sry if this turns ot)

I also am having trouble seeing how there are "loads of similarities" (I am also kind of a hobby pianist, currently working on liszt's hungarian rhapsody). I would love to hear what you have to say about this

@OP, thanks a lot for the link, very interesting read
 

freshcuber

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Oh my, this article is gold in my opinion. I can already see two big things that he does differently with memorizing than I do, and I'm interested to try his take on things. I wonder if a set of those blinder goggles would be of any use for blindfolded solving They would get in the way of the blindfold obviously, but you could take them off and put the blindfolded on after if they were useful enough.

Wow... I almost feel like I should read this article again, while taking notes. Thanks for this link!

The blinders could be looser and when you bring down the blindfold you could knock the blinders down out out of the way so that it'd hang around your neck.
 

Selkie

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A very interesting article and some great thought provoking information. Even though only cubing since the new year I have kind of levelled off the last two weeks, much to my frustration. But there again I am just scramling/solving. Going to try some more intense training on those areas that need most improvement. Thanks OP :)
 

Rob2109

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When I was going through the Chopin Etudes I realised I had to work hard at improving technique and through technical studies realised that less is more. The faster you play, the less effort you need to put in – good technique is about eliminating unnecessary movement. Whilst watching the very fast cubers I’ve noticed the same thing, finding good fingertricks and avoiding regrips is a fairly similar process to getting round a passage of music. I admit that is breaking the whole process down to the purely physical movements and that there is a whole lot more to music and cubing than just being able to turn fast but that is how i’ve been approaching learning algs. Using a metronome to increase speed is an approach I’m going to use, one turn per click then gradually speed up the beats. This is how you would get the benefits from a technical study and unlock serious speed without straining, so I reckon the same technique is transferable to cubing.

As far as memory goes, I’ve learnt loads of handy ways of memorising stuff and efficient ways to practice piano. Break material down into manageable chunks, learn the first chunk learn the second then latch the chunks together. Always leave something right, if a section works, leave it for a while, never walk away having done something wrong as that is more likely to stick in your head. Much of this has been discussed on the forum about how to memorise algs and so it might sound like common sense for a lot of you.

I hope this helps, it’s hard to put down in words everything I want to express, this so far relates to CFOP btw, I know there is more freedom in other methods but I’ve only got as far as CFOP, Rob.
 
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