Practice

Practice is repeated activity with the explicit goal of improving. CF, with Oism, treats practice as the central mechanism for automatizing skills.

Why practice

• Skills aren't learned by understanding. They're learned by doing.
• automatization requires repetition. Many times, in varied contexts.
• Mastery requires deep practice. Thousands of hours.
• error-correction in practice is fast. Immediate feedback.

What practice is

• Repeated. Many times.
• Deliberate. Aimed at improvement.
• Varied. Across contexts.
• Reflective. With objective feedback.

What practice is not

• Mindless repetition. If you're not improving, it's not practice.
• Without feedback. Need to know what's wrong.
• Overreaching.: Too hard, you fail.
• Easy-zone only. No improvement.

CF's practice principles

1. Break skills into sub-parts. Learn them separately. See learning-with-sub-parts.
2. Cycle back to prerequisites. See Cycle Between Learning CF and Its Prerequisites.
3. Use deliberate practice.: Target weak areas.
4. Reflect. What errors did I make? Why?
5. Use similar successes. Practise in nearby domains.

Common anti-patterns

• Practising without feedback. You can't improve what you can't see.
• Practising only what you're good at. Ego practice.
• Practising for time, not improvement. Hours ≠ progress.
• Practising too much. overreach leads to errors.

"Effective learning requires practice. Practicing math problems is widespread." — criticalfallibilism.com