introduction.
A human who reassembles small pieces

Chapter 1.
Practice 'properly'
Chapter 2.
Dan's Plan and Mastery in Adulthood - Case Study 1
Chapter 3.
Human life and creativity
Chapter 4.
The Tennis Serve as an Emergent Function - Case Study 2
Chapter 5.
Developmental processes during childhood and adolescence
Chapter 6.
Tom Bayer and Small Ball Therapy - Case Study 3
Chapter 7.
The possibility of reading and recognizing
Chapter 8.
Goodall and Newsom's Sensorimotor Solution - Case Study 4
Chapter 9.
The arduous journey of language acquisition after adulthood
Chapter 10.
Barty, Tennis, and Cricket - Case Study 5
Chapter 11.
Genes don't work alone.
Chapter 12.
Identical Twins Are Never Identical - Case Study 6
Chapter 13.
Our Two Selves
Chapter 14.
Older Athletes and the Changing Environment - Case Study 7
Chapter 15.
Evolution, Revolution, and Mastery
Chapter 16.
The Teachings of Money Notes: Creativity and Improvement - Case Study 8

Conclusion: Five Principles of Mastery
References
Source of the illustration
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Is it necessary to train from childhood to become an expert?

Can you achieve expert-level success in an unfamiliar field as an adult? This question plagues anyone who seeks to pioneer new areas of learning, create a turning point in their lives, or hone their skills to achieve greater success.
It's hard not to wonder when you see young children absorbing new skills like sponges, whether it's language or sports, and growing at an astonishing rate.
After such a bright and energetic period, isn't it too late to begin learning? Is the gap in skill between us and those who have been trained since childhood so large that we shouldn't even think about catching up? Author Arturo E., a psychologist who has studied the neuroscientific basis of learning and an avid tennis player, asks.
Hernandez says no.

The author introduces the case of Dan McLaughlin, who embarked on an experiment to dispel his doubts about learning after adulthood.
Originally a photographer, he first encountered golf at the age of thirty and began training with the goal of reaching the level of a professional player in a short period of time.
I carefully planned and practiced with a professional coach, receiving advice directly from psychologist Anders Ericsson, who is famous for suggesting the '10,000-hour rule', and aimed to complete 10,000 hours of practice.
As he continued to practice systematically, his golf skills actually improved surprisingly quickly.
I was able to improve my skills from a beginner who had never played a similar sport before to a level that was acknowledged by all the learning experts and golfers around me in less than 5 years.
It was a remarkable achievement considering that most professional athletes train for at least 10 years.

McLaughlin's experiment was eventually halted after he had completed over 6,000 hours of practice due to a somewhat demanding schedule and a back injury, but it served as a glimpse into the boundless potential of human acquired learning.
Even if you start something after becoming an adult, you can still improve your skills through systematic planning and 'proper' practice.

Guided by the author, a professor of psychology at the University of Houston and a tennis player.
The shortest path to skill improvement

Dan McLaughlin's remarkable level of skill improvement was not achieved simply through consistent practice over long periods of time, but through his active use of effective learning techniques based on psychological theory.
The most important of these is deliberate practice.
This is also a concept proposed by Anders Ericsson along with the 10,000-hour rule, and is characterized by clear goals, challenging tasks, maintaining focus through continuous feedback, and mastering existing skills by breaking them down into small steps.
It is a practice method to reach expertise by raising the level of skill with maximum efficiency without wasting time on mechanical and blind repetition with the brain switched off.
In McLaughlin's case, under the supervision of Eriksson and a professional coach, he divided the golf club swing motion into several sections and practiced by intensively repeating each section.
Through him, I was able to create a perfect swing and improve my performance at a rapid pace.

However, the author explains that McLaughlin had to stop practicing before reaching his final goal because he had set an unreasonable plan to improve his skills too quickly.
In doing so, he points out one thing that Ericsson and McLaughlin failed to consider.
The point is that human learning and skill improvement do not occur in a single, upward-sloping straight line, but rather in a non-linear manner, as various other activities and pieces of previously acquired skills are mixed together to form a new mass.
Just as children absorb and develop knowledge and skills by exploring a variety of activities rather than focusing on one goal for a long period of time.
This ability to take existing small pieces and form a new whole is the uniquely human talent, creativity, that the author emphasizes along with conscious practice.


The two key words, conscious practice and creativity, are obviously not limited to sports, including golf.
The same principles apply whether you're honing your sports skills, learning to play an instrument, or learning a new language.
The author examines research conducted across a wide range of fields, from the training of youth soccer players to the language learning methods of multilinguals to the differences in memory between world chess champions and ordinary people, demonstrating the human potential of deliberate practice and creativity.
Moreover, the author vividly shares his own experiences, such as how he received guidance from several experts and utilized various practice methods to improve his tennis serve, and how he struggled to learn German after suddenly moving to Germany. This not only evokes empathy from readers but also helps them more easily understand the mechanisms of learning and training.

From cognitive psychology and neuroscience to education, biology, and exercise physiology
Scientific learning and training strategies revealed through cutting-edge theories and case studies.

In this book, the author organizes the process of finding the optimal path to mastery into 16 chapters.
First, starting with the author's own theory, which naturally led to academic inquiry from his experience of being exposed to multiple languages ​​throughout his life, we will examine the theories, key concepts, and experimental results of world-renowned scholars who have explored the neuroscientific basis of learning and improvement across the ages, such as psychologist Anders Ericsson, who is widely known for his research on skill learning as mentioned earlier; philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who explored the creativity of the natural world and humans; and cognitive scientist Sian Beylock, who illuminated the pressure and changes in performance felt by athletes competing in important games.

After explaining the theoretical framework, we present various real-world examples that can be analyzed based on the content.
Eight case studies, including Dan McLaughlin's golf practice plan, Joseph Conrad, who wrote masterpieces despite not being a native English speaker, tennis player Ashleigh Barty, who achieved the highest ranking of her career after a year off, identical twins Esther and Shuangjie, who were separated at birth and grew up in different environments before being reunited, and American football player Tom Brady, who maintained top-level skills even at age 43, appear alternately with theoretical parts to add interest and persuasiveness.
And in the conclusion, by condensing numerous theories and cases examined across time and fields, five principles are presented as milestones on the path to mastery.

Dreaming of a better life, a different me from yesterday
A Guide for Those Embarking on a Pilgrimage of Practice and Mastery

Humans strive for improvement and growth.
Even if your goals aren't necessarily grandiose, like achieving professional-level athletic prowess or creating a work of art that will go down in history.
Planning an overseas trip can help you brush up on those foreign language skills you've lost since middle or high school, or you can research information to improve your performance in a sport you enjoy as a hobby.
You might want to get a higher score on a test than before, or perhaps you're thinking about how to coach others to improve their skills.
In any field, to any degree, everyone dreams of improving their skills to create a better life and become a different person than they were yesterday.
But not everyone can achieve such improvement and growth.
As the author continues to emphasize, without the right kind of practice, there are so many obstacles to reaching your desired level of skill.

“I suffered,” says author Hernandez, describing his experience of having to learn German suddenly in his mid-30s after receiving an invitation from a German research institute.
As a trilingual, I knew English, Spanish, and Portuguese, but the Latin background knowledge I had gained through these three languages ​​was completely incompatible with German.
Because the etymologies of the words were completely different, it was impossible to deduce the meaning of even simple everyday expressions, and when I was having a conversation, I couldn't quite get my thoughts out, even though they were flooding in.
After six months of torture, when I finally started speaking, people around me asked me how I improved my German skills.
Then he answered.
“Ich habe gelittet”, which means ‘I suffered’.


The process of entering a new field and building your skills is not without its challenges.
This is true even if you have experience in other fields and even if you have expert knowledge of learning and brain function, like Hernandez.
What is clear, however, is that by cleverly utilizing the mechanisms of development and learning presented in this book, we can achieve results that exceed our expectations while minimizing unnecessary suffering.
Whatever you want to practice, there is a path to mastery.
This book, which focuses on the process by which small fragments of experience and memory combine to blossom into new skills, will serve as your running mate as it extracts the optimal path through cognitive science exploration to help you reach your destination.