This is a really good question and I’m not qualified to answer it, other than to say “it can be done!” Alan Kay is an example of someone who has a great intuition for answering this kind of question.

My general opinion is that a great coach/mentor can “see” your errors and doesn’t just know what you’re doing wrong but what the best next step is from where you are, to learn the thing that is holding you back.

Deliberate practice never feels easy. You’re always pushing the boundary of what you’re capable of. And you keep going back for more.

Where there are a lot of different styles of doing a thing “well” (e.g. first class lawyer, teaching, writing, 99% of things ) you’ll need to progress through a wider series of different mentors/coaches, sort of “earning” the mentorship of a “better” coach is a good goal in any field.

In fields like you describe it’s not a simple ladder, more like a branching tree of ladders. You’re goal is not just higher and higher but learning (by climbing) where and who is a mentor for you.

I agree with you but then I don't think you can call this deliberate practice, deliberate practice is not just sitting down and pushing boundaries, it's also having a clear path. In programming (since you said Alan Kay) sitting down and knowing precisely what you need to do in order to get good is very rare. Here everything is displaced - once you know what is good, everything is downhill. The problem is always overcoming X - that place where you don't know where you are, you don't know where you are going and you somehow need to get to your destination.

>But how does one become say, a first class lawyer, or a teacher, or any of the 99% of human skills that do not have easy performance metrics?

Presumably you break the job down into the various parts and then focus on training those parts. Like lawyering and teaching involve a lot of public speaking, which can be practiced and improved.

This is one of those cases where finding someone that already _is_ what you're looking for and get (meaningful) mentorship from them can shortcut your progress.

You can most definitely figure out the path yourself, find out what practice exercises and knowledge are required and then go for it and adjust as necessary. However this is much more labor and time intensive than having someone highly skilled, that has essentially already been there, point out your weak points.

Music as you mention is very stereotypical in this, where a good instructor can quickly point out the exercises you need for your specific style and instrument, however very rarely does this apply to full professions and careers, where you know from the get go what you want to be a Lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions of overseas companies in the chip manufacturing industry.

> This is one of those cases where finding someone that already _is_ what you're looking for and get (meaningful) mentorship from them can shortcut your progress.

And at that point deliberate practice isn't really the focus anymore, but identifying and acquiring tacit knowledge. Which is fiendishly hard to do in practice.

Chess and music are the gold standard for deliberate practice because they have been around for hundreds of years and have been studied long enough to have clear paths, techniques, and metrics to getting to certain levels of skill.

That said, even something like being a “first class lawyer” can be broken down into a collection of very specific skills that can be learned and practiced deliberately to improve one’s performance. And the early stages of learning in any field likely have many of these specific sub-skills that are obvious and not particularly difficult to learn.

For example, if you’re an aspiring trial lawyer, one very specific sub-skill to learn and practice deliberately is vocal intonation and projection in a courtroom environment. This is a basic, fundamental skill for that goal, and getting good at it by practicing deliberately will move you towards that goal.

Another, totally different, specific sub-skill to develop towards that goal might be learning and practicing how specifically to organize your reference material in such a way that you can access it within, say 10 seconds in front of the judge and jury. Another might be writing effective briefs and/or motions.

Even these examples can be broken down further into very specific sub-skills that can be deliberately practiced. After many, many years, you could have a collection of skills that make you a “first class trial lawyer”, similar to how had to learn and practice very specific sub-skills such as openings, end games, and effective use of each specific chess piece.

At the end of the day, each field consists of a large number of specific sub-skills that each contribute to the overall performance level of the individual.

> or example, if you’re an aspiring trial lawyer, one very specific sub-skill to learn and practice deliberately is vocal intonation and projection in a courtroom environment.

Which, if true, on itself says something very bad about how trials are run and how unfair they likely are.

You have a very valid point; chess or music benefit from structured/known/repetitive learning and those techniques don't work as well on more chaotic environments.

Chess and music are the gold standard for deliberate practice because they have been around for hundreds of years and have been studied long enough to have clear paths, techniques, and metrics to getting to certain levels of skill.

That said, even something like being a “first class lawyer” can be broken down into a collection of very specific skills that can be learned and practiced deliberately to improve one’s performance. And the early stages of learning in any field likely have many of these specific sub-skills that are obvious and not particularly difficult to learn.

For example, if you’re an aspiring trial lawyer, one very specific sub-skill to learn and practice deliberately is vocal intonation and projection in a courtroom environment. This is a basic, fundamental skill for that goal, and getting good at it by practicing deliberately will move you towards that goal.

Another, totally different, specific sub-skill to develop towards that goal might be learning and practicing how specifically to organize your reference material in such a way that you can access it within, say 10 seconds in front of the judge and jury. Another might be writing effective briefs and/or motions.

Even these examples can be broken down further into very specific sub-skills that can be deliberately practiced. After many, many years, you could have a collection of skills that make you a “first class trial lawyer”, similar to how had to learn and practice very specific sub-skills such as openings, end games, and effective use of each specific chess piece.

At the end of the day, each field consists of a large number of specific sub-skills that each contribute to the overall performance level of the individual.