The Sweet Spot
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I'm reading Daniel Coyle's Little Book of Talent. He writes,
“There is a place, right on the edge of your ability, where you learn best and fastest. It’s called the sweet spot. Here’s how to find it.
Comfort Zone. Sensations: Ease, effortlessness. You’re working, but not reaching or struggling. Percentage of Successful Attempts: 80% and above.
Sweet Spot. Sensations: Frustration, difficulty, alertness to errors. You’re fully engaged in an intense struggle – as if you’re stretching with all your might for a nearly unreachable goal, brushing it with your fingertips, then reaching again. Percentage of Successful Attempts: 50-80%.
Survival Zone. Sensations: Confusion, desperation. You’re overmatched: scrambling, thrashing, and guessing. You guess right sometimes, but it’s mostly luck. Percentage of Successful Attempts: Below 50%.
To illustrate the importance of the sweet spot, the author presents the example of a student clarinet player who was part of a study, who accomplished a month’s worth of practice in five minutes. While she played, whenever she made a mistake, she stopped dead, made corrective moves (which he elaborates on) started again, got a bit further, made another mistake, stopped again, and went back to the start. In this fashion, working instinctively, she learned the song. They calculated that she learned more in that span of five minutes than she would have learned in an entire month practicing her normal way, in which she played songs straight through, ignoring any mistakes. Each time she made a mistake, she was 1)sensing it and 2)fixing it, welding the right connection in her brain. She was not just practicing. She was building her brain. She was in the sweet spot.
He writes, Seek out ways to stretch yourself. Play on the edges of your competence. Albert Einstein said, ‘One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.’”
I have a habit of slopping my way through things, leaving the residue of careless missteps to be cleaned up later – being too intent on achieving my objective. An example would be spilling flour on the floor on my way to the mixing bowl. I end up tracking the flour all over and making the cleanup more complicated than it would have been if I’d stopped and cleaned it up immediately.
Using the sweet spot approach, I’ve been focusing on stopping what I’m doing and fixing missteps right away – ‘no, do it now’ – and this is leaving me feeling much more appropriate, more like I’m achieving what Buddha described as ‘right action’. The author spends more time on improving one's skill in physical activities like tennis or golf, but I’m thinking pursuing the sweet spot can apply to many aspects of daily living. Like yoga.
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I'm reading Daniel Coyle's Little Book of Talent. He writes,
“There is a place, right on the edge of your ability, where you learn best and fastest. It’s called the sweet spot. Here’s how to find it.
Comfort Zone. Sensations: Ease, effortlessness. You’re working, but not reaching or struggling. Percentage of Successful Attempts: 80% and above.
Sweet Spot. Sensations: Frustration, difficulty, alertness to errors. You’re fully engaged in an intense struggle – as if you’re stretching with all your might for a nearly unreachable goal, brushing it with your fingertips, then reaching again. Percentage of Successful Attempts: 50-80%.
Survival Zone. Sensations: Confusion, desperation. You’re overmatched: scrambling, thrashing, and guessing. You guess right sometimes, but it’s mostly luck. Percentage of Successful Attempts: Below 50%.
To illustrate the importance of the sweet spot, the author presents the example of a student clarinet player who was part of a study, who accomplished a month’s worth of practice in five minutes. While she played, whenever she made a mistake, she stopped dead, made corrective moves (which he elaborates on) started again, got a bit further, made another mistake, stopped again, and went back to the start. In this fashion, working instinctively, she learned the song. They calculated that she learned more in that span of five minutes than she would have learned in an entire month practicing her normal way, in which she played songs straight through, ignoring any mistakes. Each time she made a mistake, she was 1)sensing it and 2)fixing it, welding the right connection in her brain. She was not just practicing. She was building her brain. She was in the sweet spot.
He writes, Seek out ways to stretch yourself. Play on the edges of your competence. Albert Einstein said, ‘One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.’”
I have a habit of slopping my way through things, leaving the residue of careless missteps to be cleaned up later – being too intent on achieving my objective. An example would be spilling flour on the floor on my way to the mixing bowl. I end up tracking the flour all over and making the cleanup more complicated than it would have been if I’d stopped and cleaned it up immediately.
Using the sweet spot approach, I’ve been focusing on stopping what I’m doing and fixing missteps right away – ‘no, do it now’ – and this is leaving me feeling much more appropriate, more like I’m achieving what Buddha described as ‘right action’. The author spends more time on improving one's skill in physical activities like tennis or golf, but I’m thinking pursuing the sweet spot can apply to many aspects of daily living. Like yoga.
