Daniel Anderson posted a quote from Daniel J. Levitin’s text, This is Your Brain On Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, which I’m clipping part of below:

The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert— in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.

Dan wonders what might be gained by aiming for engagement rather than mastery.

I wonder how this might connect with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on Flow. In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, MC states, “Even the simplest physical act becomes enjoyable when it is transformed so as to produce flow” (97). Paraphrased steps in this process are:

1. set goal and subgoals
2. measure progress to goals
3. focus on goals and make fine-tuning adjustments
4. develop skills to match opportunities
5. adjust goals when boredom hits

Do we need to change the language we use when we write assignments? Rather than say something on the order of: For this assignment, you must write an argument that…, would we be better off to say: For this assignment, you need to set a goal and subgoals for this project…, identify the skills you will learn… Would students understand/relate/engage more with ‘goal’ language?