“Can you putt in golf?”
Neither my husband nor I play golf but my husband wanted to share a learning technique he had just read about. He asked how I would go about it? He said that when people are learning to putt in golf, they often start hitting the ball towards the hole again and again. That sounded like common sense to me.
He explained that when learning to putt, golf teachers taught students to break it down into smaller tasks. I didn’t even think that would be possible.
First, they draw a horizontal line where the hole is and practice hitting the ball up to the line. It doesn’t matter where the ball lands along the line, getting the ball up to the line is the point.
Then they draw a vertical line from where they are and practice hitting along the line. This time it doesn’t matter how far along the vertical line the ball goes, this time the aim is to have the ball run along the line.
Once these two areas have been practiced, then it’s time to put it together and start practicing with a crosshair, putting both the horizontal and the vertical lines together.
It helped me see that it is possible to break a task down even further than we expect, to the basic components, and then put them all together again.
What task could you break down even further?