In Issue #5 of PTWS the Three Zone Model Of Learning was introduced. The problem with the model as such is that’s easy to view it on just a macro level where it functions as a generalization that’s not useful for day to day practice.
Viewing it on a micro level however, which I’ve never seen taught, makes the Three Zone Model much more useful. Especially in disciplines with a more physical component where practice repetitions are timed or counted and there’s specific goals to aim at.
We’ll start there, and then look at how the micro version of The Three Zone Model Of Learning can be applied to disciplines with soft skills, like improving your writing.
#1. The Three Zone Model Of Learning - The Macro View
As a reminder, here’s what the Three Zone model looks like:
Remember that the inner, shaded area represents your comfort zone. That means all of the activities you can do with unconscious competence. The outer zone is your panic zone. This is the rest of the activities in your domain, and these are activities you can’t do and can’t even visualize how to do.
The middle circle, the one with a circumference slightly greater than the comfort zone, is the learning zone. This represents activities that you can’t currently do, but can envisage doing with training and practice.
That’s the macro view. And it’s interesting but mostly used in a learning environment to illustrate the point that if you practice what you are comfortable with then you are not learning, and that to improve you have to practice in the learning zone.
While that’s true, it doesn’t help with specific and focused practice.
#2. The Three Zone Model Of Learning - The Micro View
I developed the micro version of the Three Zone model when I was
struggling with a technique issue with my bass playing. And it was inspired by the sub-section on Homeostatis in Section 2 of Peak by Anders Ericsson.
For physical tasks - weight lifting is a good example - to improve performance over time requires pushing the limit of what you can lift over time. The time part of the equation is needed to let the body adapt to training by developing new muscle fibres and capillaries and so on.
My technique issue related to the speed I could play using just one finger of my plucking hand. And I wanted a training model that incorporated not only a target tempo but also highlighted exactly where I was at.
So I created a micro version of the Three Zone Model by doing the following things:
Creating a Three Zone Model for this specific technique challenge.
Making the outer perimeter of the diagram equal the goal target which in this case was to play the technique exercise at a speed of 100 BPMs. (BPM is a musical acronym short for ‘beats per minute’ - so 60 BPMs would be one beat every second. And 120 BPMs is two beats every second.)
Creating inner concentric circles at 10 BPM intervals - so 50 BPM to 100 BPM.
The Three Zone diagram now looks like this:
The first task to complete was to identify what tempo level equated to my comfort zone, and where the learning zone started. To do this I set up an exercise that took me through an 8 bar exercise that increased by 1 BPM in tempo with every 8 bar cycle.
What I was looking for was two tempo indicators:
The tempo level where the exercise started to feel hard.
The tempo level where the exercise could not be played.
68 BPM turned out to be the tempo were the exercise started to feel hard. And 72 or 73 BPM was the second tempo level.
So now I can shade in at 68 BPM - and that represents my comfort zone with this exercise. Visually that looks like this:
If required I could also plot the 72/73 BPM circle - and that would give me the perimeter of my learning zone.
At this point you might be thinking....
What’s The Big Deal?
There are two ‘big deals’ here.
First, with 15 to 20 minutes of testing I’ve discovered both the point where playing this technique exercise starts to get hard and the point where it breaks apart.
Second, because I’ve identified those points I can now focus my technique practice on exactly where it needs to be.
Here’s how that practice schedule could look like - and note that ‘1 Rep’ equals one complete (and perfect) playthrough of the 8 bar technique
exercise:
63 BPM - 1 REP
64 BPM - 1 REP
65 BPM - 1 REP
66 BPM - 2 REPS
67 BPM - 2 REPS
68 BPM - 3 REPS
69 BPM - 3 REPS
70 BPM - 3 REPS
And so on until I reach a point where I can no longer play the exercise because my technique breaks down.
Note that the first exercises (63 to 65 BPM) serve as warm up exercises. And as I started to move towards the end of the previously identified comfort zone, the practice exercises stepped up in repetitions.
As I hit the point where it starts to feel hard (68 BPM) the number of repetitions increases again.
This is deliberate.
Remember though that the Comfort Zone and Learning Zones are dynamic and increase in diameter with practice and learning.
After only two practice sessions the tempo where I started to feel difficulty increased by 2 BPMs to 70 BPM, and 75 BPM was the tempo where my technique started to break down. So I adjusted the above series of exercises in the ‘technique improvement routine’ by that 2 BPM figure.
And continued.
Each time the figures moved upwards I printed out another Three Zone chart and shaded it accordingly. So my practice folder contains a visual representation every time my practice tempos go up.
After six weeks of this practice regime, my comfort zone tempo had
increased to 89 BPM. I’ve no doubt that with continued practice I would have hit the 100 BPM mark at some point...but life intervened and my goals changed.
If you practice in any discipline where the practice goals can be measured in this way, then you can use your own Three Zone Micro Model. And remember, this is for specific and individual practice elements. Some examples from various domains:
Free Throws in Basketball. You can measure how many successful free throws you make with every 10 throws. (But see Section ‘3’ below.)
Golf. Hit 50 balls at the same yard marker with the same club. How many land within 10 yards of the marker? Make a note and try and beat that next time.
Weight Lifting. The routine above was based on reading about how body builders approach improving their biggest lifts.
Any kind of physio/cardio training. The increments you can use are time. Add 30 seconds to your routine. Or even 10. But maintain intensity. Over time fitness/cardio improves.
These type of practice activities are what Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code and The Little Book Of Talent, calls hard skills:
Before we talk about hard skills and writing, I just want to detour and share one of the most perfect deliberate practice exercises I’ve ever encountered. It’s not writing related, it’s basketball related. The purpose of sharing this exercise is to make you think. If you can work out how to apply this kind of exercise to your endeavours...all you have to do to make improvements is actually show up and run the exercises day after day.
#3 A (Near Perfect) Deliberate Practice Exercise
Five years ago my eldest son was part of a regional basketball program here in the UK. To help him out I took a coaching course and qualified as a Level 2 Basketball Coach. One of the core skill elements for basketball, and it’s definitely a hard skill, is shooting.
Twice a week we used to spend an hour at our club’s gym just shooting. I found the following exercise on YouTube and adapted it. Here are the core elements of the exercise:
Create 5 shooting ‘lines.’ One straight out from the basket. One line to each corner. And one line at 45 degrees either side of the basket.
Starting at 2m from the hoop, a series of shooting spots were placed on the floor. Each shooting spot was about a metre from the previous spot.
Starting from the first shooting spot, the goal was to make three shots out of 5 in order to move to the next shooting spot further away from the basket.
That process repeated until more than 2 misses in a set of 5 were made. When that happened, the shooter had to go to the next shooting spot towards the basket.
And that’s it.
Sounds simple, right?
Here are all the deliberate practice elements in this exercise:
A clear and defined goal: make 3 shots out of 5 attempts.Isolating and practicing a specific skill - in this case shooting from 5 different positions in front and to each side of the hoop.
The 80-20 Principle and Deliberate Practice - shooting is one of the most important basketball skills to possess.
Instant feedback: did the ball go in the hoop or did it miss. Over time we set up codes for the reasons why the ball had not made the basket. E.g. “legs” means there’s not enough legs in the shot, so it doesn’t have the required arc and height. “Left’ meant aim was off. And so on. So the feedback was not only whether the ball had gone in the hoop but if it didn’t, why. So that could be corrected.
Progressive series of exercises. The shooting spots closer to the hoop are easier. As you move away from the hoop, it gets harder.
Identification of the outer limits of repeatable ability. Over time, a common pattern occurred. My son would move out quickly to a specific spot, and then not make his 3 shots. So he’d move back in and need to make three more closer to the basket, before moving back to the shooting spot where he’d initially failed. The bulk of the 12 minute session on each shooting line would be spent moving backwards and forwards around the same two or three shooting spots.
Over time the sweet spot at the edge of his shooting range moved outwards.
As he got better at the drill, we changed the goal and made it 3 out of 4 attempts. We were closing in on switching to making it 3 in a row when covid hit with gym closures, lockdowns, etc.
#4 Hard Skills And Writing
Here’s how Daniel Coyle defines soft skills:
You might think that writing is more about soft skills than hard skills. From a big picture viewpoint that’s true.
But while any kind of long form writing is a ‘soft skill,’ it’s built on a bedrock of hard skills in the same way that a how a basketball players makes decisions on a court and then decides whether to pass, shoot or dribble is a soft skill the specific actions taken (pass, shoot, dribble) are all hard skills.
So when thinking about working on improvement in your writing, ask yourself what are the hard skills for your kind of writing. If you’re a fiction writer the hard skills are different than if you’re a non-fiction writer. Or if you’re an email ghost writer the hard skills are different than if you’re a long form sales letter writer.
There will be hard skills that all writers need. But focus on the requirements of the specific area you plan to write in. And then identify areas that you need to improve and create drills/exercises that use the principles of deliberate practice to hone those skills.
If you can create a logical learning sequence for the hard skills you are planning to work on, then you can create a 3 Zone Model and use it as visual representation for your practice.
For example, let’s say you are working on a foundational hard skill like writing in the active voice. Here’s a learning sequence you could use to guide your practice to create this hard skill (but bear in mind you need
hundreds of examples to work on to create the practice repetitions needed) :
Identify if a sentence is written in passive voice or active voice.
Rewrite simple sentences written in passive voice into active voice sentences.
Rewrite simple paragraphs where one sentence is written in passive voice into active voice.
Rewrite more complex paragraphs where one or more sentences are written in passive voice into active voice.
Write simple sentences in active voice from sentence fragments.
Write complex sentences in active voice from sentence fragments.
You could go further. But if the Three Zone Diagram was adapted for Passive Voice/Active Voice, you could create a sub-circle for each of these layers and use it to identify your current ‘Comfort Zone’ level, and to identify exactly what you need to work on.
The key point for this section is that writing can be practiced by identifying the foundational elements that you need to master, isolating them, setting up deliberate practice based exercises to drill them.
And then do the work.
#5 The Ride Out
The Three Zone Model of Learning can be used at a macro level or a micro level.
The macro view isn’t of much practical use other than inspiration unless the domain your attempting to build skill in can be reduced to a small number of skills to be mastered.
But for learning hard skills, using the micro version of The Three Zone Model is a great way to identify exactly where your comfort zone is and exactly what you need to practice.
And if you’re using the micro version correctly - and I like to print my versions out and shade them in my weekly practice reviews - the comfort zone will expand outwards. As will the learning zone. Both of those movements correlate to growth in skills and development in what you’re trying to learn.
The micro version of the Three Zone model works best with hard skills. Although writing is more of a soft skill activity, there is a bedrock of hard skills that can be worked on using the micro version.
Sidebar: deliberate practice can be applied to the learning of anything. From language to sports. From music to writing. So while this newsletter is based around writing, you can use the ideas to make improvement in other areas of your life too.
Practicing The Write Stuff Issue #8
There are two elements I’ve been wanting to add to my music book listings on Amazon for a while to see if they have any impact on sales. But I haven’t made the time to implement them.
In my morning journalling - and I’ll have an issue on that at some stage - the suggestion cropped up this week that if I write an issue on creating these elements, then I’ll have to do them.
So in Issue#8 I’ll talk about adding Series Pages and A+ Content to my listings/account. If there is any return on investment in terms of increased sales, I don’t expect that to be immediate. But there’s no detailed guide that I’ve seen to really help self published authors get started with this. So I’ll take a first stab at creating one for Issue #8.