Purposeful practice is focused. Unlike the music student that Oare described, Steve Faloon was focused on his task from the very beginning, and his focus grew as the experiment went along and he was memorizing longer and longer strings of digits. You can get a sense of this focus by listening to the tape of session 115, which came about halfway through the study. Steve had regularly been remembering strings of close to forty digits, but forty itself was not something he could yet do with any consistency, and he really wanted to reach forty regularly on this day. We began with thirty-five digits, which was easy for him, and he started pumping himself up as the strings increased in length.
Before I read the thirty-nine-digit string, he gave himself an excited pep talk, seemingly conscious of nothing but the approaching task: “We have a big day here! . . . I haven’t missed one yet, have I? No! . . . This will be a banner day!” He was silent during the forty seconds it took me to read out the numbers, but then, as he carefully went over the digits in his head, remembering various groups of them and the order in which they appeared, he could barely contain himself. He hit the table loudly a number of times, and he clapped a lot, apparently in celebration of remembering this or that group of digits or where they went in the string.
Once he blurted out, “Absolutely right! I’m certain!” And when he finally spit the digits back at me, he was indeed right, so we moved on to forty. Again, the pep talk: “Now this is the big one! If I get past this one, it’s all over! I have to get past this one!” Again the silence as I read the digits, and then the excited noises and exclamations as he cogitated. “Wow! . . . Come on now! . . . All right! . . . Go!” He got that one right as well, and the session indeed became one in which he regularly hit forty digits, although no more.
Now, not everyone will focus by hollering and pounding on a table, but Steve’s performance illustrates a key insight from the study of effective practice: You seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention.
词汇
1）string n. 串，绳子
2）consistency n. 连贯，符合，前后一致;
3）pump oneself up 给…打气，为…加油
4）pep talk 鼓舞士气的讲话
5）conscious of 意识到…注意到
6）barely adv. 刚刚；勉强；仅仅
7）contain v. 克制，控制，包含
8）clap v. 拍手，鼓掌
9）blurt out 脱口而出
10）spit v. 吐，吐出
11）exclamation v. 呼喊，惊叫
12）cogitate v. 认真思考，深思熟虑
13）holler v. 叫喊
14）insight n. 领悟，洞察力，见解
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