A Simple Way to Learn Complex Skills

Some skills are hard to learn because you can't  break them apart into smaller pieces. A skill like brewing a cup of tea involves a discrete  set of steps that can each be practiced alone: pick up the kettle, pour the water, put the kettle  down. You could practice each part separately and then put them together without too much  difficulty.

But many skills involve interdependent parts. Playing Starcraft, for instance, involves  a bunch of different skills that all depend on each other. You have to collect resources, build  buildings and units, scout your opponent, attack, defend, retreat, and overall respond organically  to what your opponent is doing.

Your overall skill level depends on the interaction of all  these different component skills. But you can't really practice them separately either. So how  do you get practice at a highly interdependent skill like this?

There are many ways you might  go about it but a very simple and effective way is just to change what you pay attention to.  An old study on a video game that I guarantee you have never played before called Space Fortress  illustrates this idea pretty well. Not this one.

. . not this one.

. . that's the one!

Space Fortress,  like Starcraft, involves a lot of interacting parts. The researchers split learners into four  different groups. The control group played the game for about six and a half hours over the  course of 10 different practice sessions.

The other three groups played the game for the same  amount of time over the same number of sessions, but the researchers gave some special instructions  to these groups. Researchers instructed group 2 to pay attention to the ship controls over the  first six sessions and the last four sessions they just played the game just like they control did.  Controlling the ship is pretty critical to doing well in the game.

Researchers told group 3 to pay  attention to the placement of mines around their ship. Mine placement is also apparently another  important aspect of doing well at the game. And the fourth group was instructed to pay attention  to ship control for the first three sessions, mine placement for the next three  sessions, and then, like the other groups, the last four sessions are the same as the control  - they're not told to pay attention to anything in particular.

Notice that if you were just to look  at this from the outside, every group seems to be doing the exact same thing for the same amount of  time. The only difference is what the groups are paying attention to. In the beginning, the groups  started out basically the same, but over time, as the power of attention began to take hold,  group differences started to emerge.

After six sessions, the control group - which had just  played the game, but didn't have any particular instructions about what to pay attention to -  they were scoring about a 1000 points. The two groups who had focused on one aspect of the game  for those first six sessions were scoring about 1500 points per game. And the fourth group  - who had focused on two different aspects of the game during those first six sessions -was  scoring about 2000 points per game.

After that, all groups continued to play the game like normal  for the next four sessions. But that didn't stop group four. They continued to learn more than  groups 1, 2, and 3 over the next four sessions.

This is a finding that has been replicated in  various other contexts as well. Paying attention to just one aspect of the skill helps our brain  to create meaningful building blocks for the more complex skill. We can pay less attention  to the other parts, build the pieces we need, and then integrate them together over time.

Ao the  next time you are faced with learning a complex, interdependent skill, try this method out. Just  pay attention to one aspect of the skill for a little while, then pay attention to another  aspect of a skill, then maybe another aspect of the skill, then come back to that original thing  that you worked on again. I'm willing to bet that you would get greater learning gains that way than  if you were to just practice while trying to pay attention to everything equally all at once. 

For more on how attention influences learning, I've got this lovely video right over here for  you. Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time.