Researchers have discovered a much faster way to learn new skills

Christopher Ingraham:

If you’re trying to improve your golf swing or master that tricky guitar chord progression, here’s some good news from researchers at Johns Hopkins University: You may be able to double how quickly you learn skills like these by introducing subtle variations into your practice routine.

The received wisdom on learning motor skills goes something like this: You need to build up “muscle memory” in order to perform mechanical tasks, like playing musical instruments or sports, quickly and efficiently. And the way you do that is via rote repetition — return hundreds of tennis serves, play that F major scale over and over until your fingers bleed, etc.