Perform — for skills and behaviors#

The set of techniques described in this section specifically help you learn skills and behaviors. Let’s look at these in summary before going into more detail.

Three-stage skill learning is the normal way of learning most skills. To learn complex skills, it’s usually helpful to break the skill down into parts. This is “part task training.”

You can improve your skill learning by deliberately introducing task variation and task interference into your training, as long as it’s “in context.” You can also improve retention of skills via a technique called Overlearning.

Sometimes you need to change an already learned behavior. This is not as easy as it might seem. You need to follow some specific steps to “shunt” from one response to another. Lastly, you can heighten your overall performance by modeling and anchoring.

This section covers all these techniques in further detail. Read on to find out more.

Note that if you take on a pre-designed training program for complex skills, it’s likely the course designers incorporated many of these techniques into your lessons. There is usually still room for you to apply these techniques yourself. If your training program lacks these techniques, you can benefit from adding these techniques yourself.

Contents in the book include:

Three Stage Skill Acquisition #

An outline of the process of learning of a new skill, including the cognitive stage (a declarative or verbal representation of rules), the associative stage (turning those procedures and rules into implicit behaviors), to the autonomous stage (automatic performance of the skill).
Tips on how to apply this theory with practical examples. When to rely on memory techniques, and when to reduce that reliance.

Part Task Training: Divide and Conquer #

How to learn more complex skills using part task training. Provides the basic concepts behind this technique.
The three general steps to follow when using part task training. Details on how to decompose the task into manageable subtasks, practice each of those subtasks, and then recombine the subtasks to perform the overall task.
How to decompose tasks based on complexity or difficulty of the task, as well as the level of integration with other tasks.
How you can use timing or location to help decompose sequence based tasks. You may also be able to split it by cognitive processes such as concept learning, perceptual detection, motor coordination, rule following, and problem solving.
When decomposing tasks is not effective, eg due to timing or overlap.
Describes three approaches for practicing the various components — simplifying, fractionating, and segmenting. Simplifying describes how to modify or eliminate certain task demands, fractionating describes separate practice on task components, and segmenting describes splitting tasks into temporal or spatial components.
Describes four approaches for recombining subtasks into performance of the overall task. These are pure part, progressive part, repetitive part, and backward chaining.

Performance Variation: Use Contextual Variety and Interference #

Describes how you can increase your performance and aid longer term retention of material using task variation and task interference techniques.
Explains how to use context to ensure optimum use of these techniques.
Includes some comments on the effect of these techniques on performance during training as well as the longer term.

Overlearning: Go beyond standard performance #

How to improve your retention by what is called overlearning — learning material past the point of general understanding or standard performance.
Can you apply this technique to theoretical knowledge as well as practical skills?
General tips for applying overlearning.

Shunt: Changing Habits and Behaviors #

Describes a powerful technique for changing established habits or behaviors.
Describes the five steps of the shunt technique — inspection, comparison, correction, pre-correction, and reinforcement.
Includes a worked example for a common bad habit — chipping or biting fingernails.

Enhancing skills and behaviors using state #

How tasks and procedures you do are influenced by your mental state at the time, and how to change your state to provide optimum performance.
Describes two common techniques for managing the state you are in during task performance — anchoring and modeling.
Anchoring description includes examples of what you can model (confidence, peak performance, strength, happiness etc), as well as comments on when modeling doesn’t work that well. Includes specific steps for creating an anchor, as well as examples of usage (such as public speaking, dealing with the opposite sex, overcoming past issues, and before and after exams. Also includes comments on anchoring during performance, as well as the use of pre-performance patterns or rituals.
Modeling description includes when and how to use modeling and specific steps (such as finding an expert, eliciting their strategy, modeling it yourself, testing it etc). Includes examples of what to elicit and model, including breathing (including rate, volume and pauses), heart rate, posture, muscular tension, eye movements, voice, body language, general movement, level and focus of attention, relaxation, awareness, reaction time, mental steps and processes, etc
Includes a specific example contrasting the state of a student pilot versus an instructor.