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Deliberate practice is all well and good for simple things, like learning how to play a musical instrument or learning how to master a sport.
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But what about something complex like psychological therapy?
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When we think of our sporting or musical examples, it's easy to imagine David Beckham kicking the same ball a hundred times over and over again and honing his craft.
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It's just as easy to imagine Leonard Cohen struggling over hallelujah over the course of 20 years with that level of perfectionistic reiteration.
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But how do you do that for something that goes on for an entire hour and when often the feedback isn't known for at least a week?
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The answer is simulation.
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The closest that I've managed to find to psychological therapy in the deliberate practice research is actually American presidential debate preparation.
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And I saw this interview recently with the man who prepared Kamala Harris for his debate with Donald Trump.
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Just have a look at what he's got to say.
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So tell me, take me through the prep.
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First of all, what was your approach in that prep to playing Trump?
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And what are the kind of signature things he does in debates that you were doing?
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And then how was that kind of gamed out and prepared for?
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From my perspective, you just want the candidate to get used to what they're going to see and hear and experience.
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Did you do off the rails as him?
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You do everything.
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I mean, you do I'm the ball machine in my mind.
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You know, you get a good tennis player who wants to get better.
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Um I have friends who are obsessed with tennis.
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They get a tennis pro.
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You want to test your backhand, you set the ball machine to test your backhand.
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You want to do your forehand.
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If you want to use the ball machine as a target for your serve, great.
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Um it's really it's simulation.
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It's I think any kind of prep, whether it's congressional prep, deposition prep, or any kind of interview, you want people to have thought things through.
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It's not like you're sitting around saying, okay, here is a good line, memorize it.
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Right.
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So although we often think of role plays as being artificial and not truly representative of what's going on in the psychology room, actually they are an effective simulation that lets people practice something over and over again, as he said, setting the ball machine and practicing the same skill until you do it in a way that you're actually happy with.