{"id":2721,"date":"2014-07-13T08:43:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T07:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2721"},"modified":"2014-07-11T21:47:47","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T20:47:47","slug":"rehearsing-your-presentation-pah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/rehearsing-your-presentation-pah\/","title":{"rendered":"Rehearsing your presentation? Pah! ;)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t suppose the lovely Beyonce goes on stage without rehearsing<\/strong>… oh no… but there’s some interesting stuff about how useful it is to practice, just here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.spring.org.uk\/2014\/07\/the-10000-hours-myth-practice-predicts-only-12-of-performance.php<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are a lot of myths around making presentations and similar things. You\u2019ve only got to look at the nonsense of Prof Mehrabian’s 7% to know that. One of the bigger ones, that\u2019s been around for a while, is the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve \u2018mastery\u2019 of something and – according to some people putting in 10,000 hours will allow you to master anything.<\/p>\n

Such as presenting.<\/p>\n

Much of the idea (if not all) can be traced back to Malcolm Gladwell and his book \u201cOutliers\u201d. It\u2019s important here to remember that Gladwell is a journalist, not a researcher, so perhaps we should forgive him for his over-simplifications. You can see a nice summary of his stuff at\u00a0http:\/\/www.wisdomgroup.com\/blog\/10000-hours-of-practice\/.<\/span><\/span>
\nMore recently however, psyblog (http:\/\/www.spring.org.uk\/2014\/07\/the-10000-hours-myth-practice-predicts-only-12-of-performance.php<\/span><\/span>)\u00a0reports some meta research that tells a different story. (Meta-research\u00a0puts lots of other bits of research together to look at the pattern, not just the individual outcomes of different experiments.) \u00a0The abstract for the research itself is here:\u00a0http:\/\/pss.sagepub.com\/content\/early\/2014\/06\/30\/0956797614535810<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In short, the research suggests that practice is important (obviously) – but it\u2019s not as important as some of the more extreme claims. The amount of \u2018stuff explained\u2019 by practice is different for different things, as you\u2019d expect, with games top of the list. 26% of variance is associated with \u2018deliberate practice for games\u2019. Music follow closely at 21%. Sport is 18%.<\/p>\n

Way down\u2026 way, way down, however, are education at 4% and a mere 1% for professions!<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right\u2026 for a mix of professional activities, how much you practice accounts for only 1% of the difference between the best people and those at the other end of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

FLYS IN THE FACE OF WALT DISNEY\u2019S APHORISM \u201cIF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT”<\/p>\n

Think about that for a second and you realise that\u2019s not the same as saying that only one percent of how good you are is explained by practice, but even so, it\u2019s a starling small amount.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve not yet had chance to read the full text of the research paper so I don\u2019t know all the ins-and-outs, but I\u2019m prepared to make a couple of guesses here. \u00a0Firstly, there\u2019s some variation around those figures, because everyone is different and those figures are averages.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A sigmoid curve graph<\/p><\/div>\n

Secondly, I\u2019m going to stick my neck out and say there\u2019s not a linear relationship between practice and performance. (A linear relationship is one where the two variables involved go up in such a way as to create a straight line on a graph.) Instead, I\u2019ll bet there\u2019s what scientists call a \u2018sigmoid curve\u2019 response. A sigmoid curve is commonly referred to as an S curve.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you draw a graph of input (practice) against output (performance), you\u2019ll start off not getting very much improvement for your effort – then things will fall into place a bit and for each bit of practice you do you\u2019ll get quite a lot of improvement. Finally, diminishing marginal returns will set in and for each bit of extra practice you do, you\u2019ll get a smaller and smaller amount of improvement.<\/p>\n

Of course, I\u2019m guessing at this point and it\u2019s easy to imagine a set of sigmoid curves sitting on top of each other as you make a set of breakthroughs in your practice but you get the point – there\u2019s no point in doing only a tiny bit of practice and there\u2019s no point in doing a huuuuuge amount of practice.<\/p>\n

Sure, the professionals amongst us should practice and practice and practice, but for the rest of us, those living in the normal world where presentations are a means to and end and now what we do for a living, there comes a point where the trade-off of time and effort for an improved quality of presentation isn\u2019t worth it.<\/p>\n

Oh.. wait\u2026 Stop! Please… just stop!<\/p>\n

I can see it now\u2026 millions of people all over the planet using this as an excuse not to put the hours in preparing their presentations\u2026 that\u2019s not what I mean\u2026 to late\u2026 they\u2019ve stopped reading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t suppose the lovely Beyonce goes on stage without rehearsing… oh no… but there’s some interesting stuff about how useful it is to practice, just here: http:\/\/www.spring.org.uk\/2014\/07\/the-10000-hours-myth-practice-predicts-only-12-of-performance.php There are a lot of myths around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2721"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2728,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions\/2728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}