In PTWS #4 I mentioned Geoff Colvin’s book Talent Is Overrated. In Chapter 5 Colvin introduces the important concept of identifying specific areas that need improvement, isolating those areas and practicing them until the desired improvement is made and then moving on to the next skill to be improved.
In passing, he mentions a three zone model of learning to help identify these practice areas to target.
This three zone model was introduced to Colvin by Professor Noel Tichy. And can be summarized like this:
Draw three concentric circles.
The diameter of the middle circle should be fractionally larger than the inner circle.
The inner circle represents your ‘comfort zone.’ This is all the skills you currently possess that you can do.
The middle circle represents your ‘learning zone.’ These are skills that you can’t currently do, but can conceive of doing with training and practice.
The outer circle represents the ‘panic zone.’ Panic zone activities are ‘so hard, that (you) don’t even know how to approach them.’
If you google this concept you’ll find a bunch of images that people have created in the years since Talent Is Overrated was published (2008). Most of them get it wrong…and show the circles of similar diameter. Here’s what this three zone concept should look like:
Colvin invests less than 100 words of his book on this…and that’s it.
The three zone learning concept is much more valuable than that. If you want to improve in any discipline you can use the three zone model to help guide practice that is specifically designed for improvement.
Let’s get started with the basic unit of practice….a practice repetition and how it feeds into Tichy’s three zone model of learning.
#1. Practice Repetitions And The Three Zone Model
Everyone knows what a practice repetition is.
If you’re a tennis player, every time you practice a forehand groundstroke with top spin that’s a single practice repetition. And you’d practice that stroke multiple times.
If you’re a golfer, each drive with a specific club is a practice repetition.
For my bass students wanting to learn the language of bass, I’ve created a series of 12 bar exercises called ‘Origin Exercises.’ Each one of those 12 bar exercises is a practice repetition.
To get better at anything you need to put in practice repetitions.
The reasons (without getting deep into the weeds of neuroscience):
The first practice repetition starts the process of creating a neural path in your brain that’s associated with that skill.
Each subsequent practice repetition improves the neural pathways in your brain associated with the performance of that specific skill.
Over time, and with multiple practice repetitions, the brain generates a substance called myelin - which acts in a similar manner to insulation, and makes the transference of synapses along the neural pathway faster. The specific skill becomes easier. Almost second nature.
Here’s how those practice repetitions align with the three zone model:
When you’re first practicing something new, you’re in the learning zone. It’s something that you can’t currently do, but that you can conceive of doing with instruction and repetition. (Note: one of the key practice fundamentals when you’re starting out is that you’re performing those early repetitions as perfectly as possibly.)
As you do more practice repetitions the practice activity will get easier. That’s explained below.
More practice repetitions will then move the skill towards what’s often referred to as ‘unconscious competence.’ This means you can perform the skill without thinking about the different elements involved in the skill. It’s like you’ve created a program in your brain, and when you trigger it, your brain has automated the process and your body executes it. There are multiple ‘skills’ in your daily life that you execute in exactly this fashion: talking, writing, typing, driving, eating, walking. And so on.
When you reach this stage, by definition this practice repetition is now a comfort zone activity.
Let’s dive into that last point.
#2. The Three Zone Model Of Learning Is Dynamic….Not Static
I’ve created three graphics to give a visual representation of this. This first graphic shows what a three zone model for a beginner student (in any discipline) might look like:
In this diagram the inner circle - shaded grey - represents the comfort zone of the beginner student. The next circle is the learning zone, and note how it is only slightly bigger than the comfort zone. This is because the definition of learning zone activities is: activities that you can visualize being able to do with practice and instruction.
The outer circle not only represents all the domain activities that are beyond the beginner student, but the outer line represents all the domain knowledge for the discipline being studied.
Once the beginner student has undertaken learning along with practice, their comfort zone (and learning zone) expands outwards. Their diagram might look like this:
Note that for this student that because they have learned more, their ‘panic zone’ has shrunk. You can think of the panic zone as the complete domain knowledge minus the domain activities that the student is comfortable with. Note that the learning zone is still only fractionally larger than the comfort zone.
This relationship is maintained even for advanced students:
Understanding that the three zone model is dynamic is integral to a major practice flaw that students in many disciplines succumb to. It’s prevalant in a lot of the kind of writing advice you see online and in interviews too.
What’s that flaw?
#3 Understanding The Repetition Paradox
Here’s this major learning paradox in easy to consume/easy to understand bullet points:
In order to learn anything, a student needs to perform practice repetitions.
At first these practice repetitions are difficult.
But multiple repetitions make it easier…
…Until those practice repetitions can be performed with unconscious competence. At this point, any further repetitions are comfort zone activities (by definition).
When you’re practicing comfort zone activities, you’re not learning. Remember: learning zone activities are defined as activities you can’t currently do, but can visualize yourself doing with instruction and practice.
So practice repetitions are a vital ingredient of learning.
Until they’re not.
When you put in practice repetitions of activities that are already in your comfort zone, your practice is no longer leading to improvement. It becomes maintenance practice.
That’s The Repetition Paradox.
#4 How To Avoid The Repetition Paradox
Being aware that practice repetitions will at some stage lead to comfort zone practice is the first step in avoiding this problem.
There are two concrete steps you can take to keep this kind of comfort zone practice out of your practice plan:
When you set up a new practice activity, as well as designing exercises to acquire a new skill, you can design those exercises so that they have sequential difficulties built into them. If we use the example of the tennis player who wants to hit a top spin forehand, that player starts out hitting the shot and paying attention to the correct swing of the racket, the correct placement of legs, the correct weight tranference as the shot is made. And hitting the shot so that it lands within the court. The next stage is accuracy of the shot….hitting them down the line and then cross court. The next stage is more control, setting up zones within the court to land the ball in. And so on.
The end point of your sequential series of exercises should also be built into your practice plan. There’s a way to use the three zone learning model on a micro level that focuses your practice so that when you reach the end point for a practice activity it’s clear and obvious. That will be covered in PTWS Issue #7 (in two weeks).
#5 An Example Of Three Zone Learning In Your Life
To round out PTWS #6 there’s an activity that most people go through and illustrates the three zone learning model in action - and also illustrates that the ‘doing’ of something doesn’t lead to improving proficiency.
That activity is driving.
Here’s the bullet point version:
When you start learning to drive, everything is either learning zone or panic zone. There’s no comfort zone to call on because you’ve never done this activity before so you’ve got no practice repetitions to draw on.
The first lessons are uncomfortable as you learn how to move the car through the gears, how to steer at the same time as you drive plus fundamental safety concepts like emergency braking and mirror-signal-manoeuvre.
Note that immediate feedback is built into the process - an instructor is present with you at all time. So if you do something wrong, the correction is immediate.
Sidebar: my first mentor (Sean D’Souza/psychotactics.com) teaches that the acquisition of talent is as much about eliminating mistakes as it is about learning new things.
After the first 10 hours, the mechanics of driving (changing gear, steering, braking, knowing where the indications are, etc) start to become natural. That’s because they’ve been practiced and have become ‘comfort zone’ activities. The instructor then moves on to harder activities than just driving the car. E.g. hill starts, reversing round a corner, reversing into a parking space. And so on.
To acquire the skills to safely (and legally) drive a car takes around 20 to 30 hours. Though there’s the test to prove your competence that needs to be passed.
The important part of the driving analogy: once you’ve passed and can legally drive on your own the majority of your driving is a comfort zone activity. You can drive for three hours a day for the next ten years (which equates to the mythical 10,000 hours of ‘practice’) and you won’t get any better at driving. Those 10 years/10,000 hours of driving don’t magically teach skills like threshold braking, skid recovery, high speed cornering, high speed steering and so on. The only way to learn these activities is by study.
Scientific research has shown that ‘doing’ your activity actually leads to a reduction in skill levels. And to maintain skill levels requires ongoing professional training. (Though there is also research that shows while your skill levels may diminish, your ‘domain knowledge/mental representations’ increase. That’s the subject for a future issue.)
To reiterate the importance of this section: when you see writing advice like this (screencaptured from a ‘to remain anonymous’ Twitter writing ‘guru)….
…treat it with an enormous pinch of salt.
Writing more doesn’t lead to writing better.
In any activity, doing more of the complete activity doesn’t lead to improved proficiency. If you want to write better….you need to practice (not write). And practice for improvement.
More about that in PTWS Issue #6.
#6 The Ride Out
The three zone theory of learning is simple but not simplistic. It allows you to ensure that your practice is aimed at areas where improvements will accure from the practice. It can also be used to monitor that practice when used at a micro level. More about that in Issue #7.
What I want you to take from this issue is that when you see ‘a writing guru’ say that if you want to get better you have to write, that advice is wrong. If you want to improve your writing what you need to do is:
Identify specific areas where you have a weakness.
Devise a sequential practice plan that allows you to put in practice repetitions working on that specific area.
Execute that plan and audit for when exercises become ‘comfortable.’ When that happens - i.e. comfort zone practice - either make the exercises harder so that you’re learning, or move to another area.
Even 20 minutes of targeted practice will compound over time and make a difference to the quality of your writing.
Practicing The Write Stuff Issue #6
In Issue #6 of PTWS, we’re going to talk about the three different types of practice you can use in your learning activities. And Part 2 of The Three Zone Model will feature in Issue #7.