Previous
Duckworth’s Father
Anders Ericsson was an internationally renowned Swedish psychologist who studied performance and expertise. Ericsson is best remembered for finding that people generally need to practice something for 10,000 hours over 10 years in order to become an expert at it. However, Duckworth focuses on Ericsson’s research into deliberate practice. She argues that deliberate practice is the most efficient way to build skills, which is why high-grit people often use it to improve their performance.
Anders Ericsson Quotes in Grit
The Grit quotes below are all either spoken by Anders Ericsson or refer to Anders Ericsson . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7: Practice
Quotes
Ericsson generally finds that deliberate practice is experienced as supremely effortful. As evidence that working at the far edge of our skills with complete concentration is exhausting, he points out that even world-class performers at the peak of their careers can only handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and in total, can only do about three to five hours of deliberate practice per day.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. There’s no contradiction here, for two reasons. First, deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience. Anders Ericsson is talking about what experts do; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is talking about how experts feel. Second, you don’t have to be doing deliberate practice and experiencing flow at the same time. And, in fact, I think that for most experts, they rarely go together.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Grit LitChart as a printable PDF.
Anders Ericsson Quotes in Grit
The Grit quotes below are all either spoken by Anders Ericsson or refer to Anders Ericsson . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7: Practice
Quotes
Ericsson generally finds that deliberate practice is experienced as supremely effortful. As evidence that working at the far edge of our skills with complete concentration is exhausting, he points out that even world-class performers at the peak of their careers can only handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and in total, can only do about three to five hours of deliberate practice per day.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. There’s no contradiction here, for two reasons. First, deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience. Anders Ericsson is talking about what experts do; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is talking about how experts feel. Second, you don’t have to be doing deliberate practice and experiencing flow at the same time. And, in fact, I think that for most experts, they rarely go together.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
