Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career

by Scott H. Young

Feedback features prominently in the research on deliberate practice, a scientific theory of the acquisition of expertise initiated by K. Anders Ericsson and other psychologists. In his studies, Ericsson has found that the ability to gain immediate feedback on one’s performance is an essential ingredient in reaching expert levels of performance. No feedback, and the result is often stagnation—long periods of time when you continue to use a skill but don’t get any better at it. Sometimes the lack of feedback can even result in declining abilities. Many medical practitioners get worse with more experience as their accumulated knowledge from medical school begins to fade and the accuracy of their diagnoses is not given the rapid feedback that would normally promote further learning.2