The Practice Lab

A lab manual for the gap between practice and learning

Most practice advice comes as slogans. Put in your 10,000 hours. Practice makes perfect. The research behind those lines is more interesting, and far more useful.

The Practice Lab rests on one sentence from that research: a good practice session often feels worse than a bad one. In a 2001 keypad study, repeating one pattern over and over made practice look better and the next-day test worse. The learners still bet on the repetition.

Each chapter opens with an adult stuck on a skill: a pianist with a spreadsheet of hours, a pickleball player whose drops sail long, a grandmother learning sign language in one long Sunday session. Then it explains what the research found, including the parts that did not hold up. Then it hands you two drills to try at your next session, usually with a pen, a timer and the thing you are practicing.

Thirty drills, and an honest count

Every drill carries a badge. SOLID means it was tested on people more than once, or a review that pools many studies supports it. PROMISING means real evidence that is thin, small, indirect or mixed. STORY ONLY means a sensible, widely taught practice that has never had a proper test.

The count is 5 SOLID, 23 PROMISING and 2 STORY ONLY. That may look stingy. The book explains why: several famous findings were checked with better methods, and they shrank. A 2022 analysis found no significant effect from cutting back on feedback. A 2024 reanalysis found the benefit of focusing on a movement's effect "small to nil" once publication bias was corrected. A 2015 review concluded that sleep does not enhance motor learning, though it may help you keep what you practiced.

Even the five SOLID drills come with modest effects, and the book says so. Mental practice, for example, showed "a small but significant positive effect" once bias was checked.

Start where you are stuck

You can read it straight through, or take the fast path through Chapters 2, 7, 9 and 14. If you want to try the approach first, our free guides use the same drills and badges:

• Is the 10,000-hour rule true? What the violin study really found, and what to count instead.
• Practiced it perfectly, then messed it up? The Next-Day Test.
• Blocked vs random practice Why mixing wins in the lab and barely shows up outside it.
• How long should a practice session be? The typing study and the Practice Week Map.
• Does mental practice work? What three reviews found, and how to add imagined reps.
• Too old to learn an instrument? What a 2008 review found about older learners.
• Recital or match tomorrow? How to spend the night before.

Buying it for someone who just took up an instrument or a sport? Start with our gift page.

If you are also studying for a course or memorizing words, the companion book Stop Rereading covers knowledge: retrieval, spacing and remembering what you read.

Who it is for, and who it is not

It suits you if you are picking up a skill or coming back to one, like piano, golf, pickleball, drawing or a language you speak. It suits you if you get something right at home and it falls apart when it counts, or if you practice a lot and still feel stuck at the same level. It also suits anyone who wants drills with the evidence behind them, not slogans.

It is not for you if you are studying for an exam or trying to remember facts; Stop Rereading covers that. It is not for practice that hurts. Pain is not part of any drill. See a teacher, coach, doctor or physical therapist. The book is general education about practice methods, not medical, physical therapy or coaching advice.