Creating a Practice Loop

“Desirable difficulties suggest a tension between seeing and doing in our practice. Without the opportunity to see a pattern for solving a problem, we have to invent it for ourselves. In the best case, this can involve added cognitive load. In the worst case, we may never learn the helpful strategy.

Conversely, if we always have easy access to helpful hints, we may not internalize the lessons. One way to resolve this tension is to combine the three components of seeing an example, solving a problem, and getting feedback into a practice loop. By repeatedly cycling through the loop, we ensure that all three ingredients of successful learning are available to us.

Octavia Butler (Science fiction author) applied a similar process when advising new writers. “For instance, if they have difficulty with beginnings—they have wonderful stories to tell but don’t know where to begin or how to begin—I have them look at work they enjoy reading. . . . I then ask them to copy half a dozen beginnings; I ask them to copy directly, word for word.”

Butler explains her strategy, “This is not about imitating someone else’s beginnings; that’s why I want at least a half a dozen. It’s about learning what is possible. One of the problems we have as writers is that we either know too much or not enough. . . . We know that there is an ocean of possibilities out there, and we’re overwhelmed. We don’t know how to take from the ocean just what we need.”

By studying how other authors have solved similar problems, you can sample from a range of options when dealing with your own stories. Seeing examples is the first step in building new skills.

Next, you need to actually perform the skill you’re trying to practice. Seeing can assist with doing, but it can never replace it. To learn a skill, we need to overcome the brain’s effort-saving tendencies that avoid internalizing knowledge we aren’t actively using. Action guides attention. Researchers have found that students tend not to study worked examples until they encounter a problem that requires using them. By cycling back and forth between examples and practice questions, you ensure you’re attending to the lessons and not just skimming them over.

Finally, we need to get accurate feedback on the quality of our attempt. This is a clear stumbling block for skills like writing. Butler struggled for years owing to a lack of high-quality feedback telling her what mistakes she was making in her work. When given the opportunity, Butler aggressively sought feedback on her work. During her classes at the Screen Writers’ Guild, she sought out feedback from one of the teachers, Sid Steeple. “Whatever you wrote he would go over it and talk to you about it and you might go home feeling like you didn’t much like him but it was the kind of criticism I needed,” Butler explained.

As you progress in a skill, the practice loop can be made more challenging. Seeing examples can fade away as you increasingly tackle problems using your internal reservoir of knowledge. The problems you choose can increase in complexity, as you can manage extra cognitive load from bigger projects. Finally, self-assessment can play an increasing role over external feedback as you develop refined intuitions as to what counts as excellent work. The practice loop creates an opportunity to optimize the level of difficulty”

This is a practice that could well apply to acquiring all sales skills, including cognitive skills that can cultivate anticipatory thinking