Bounce: The of Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

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Bounce” is a book specifically written for – and about – you. It analyzes genius performances in fields as different as sports, music and math, so as to prove to you that talent is a myth. And that you need to start practicing right away! About Matthew Syed In a nutshell, when chess masters look at the positions of the pieces on a board, they see the equivalent of a word. Their long experience of playing chess enables them to “chunk” the pattern with a limited number of visual fixations in the same way that our familiarity with language enables us to chunk the letters constituting a familiar word. It is a skill derived from years of familiarity with the right “language”, not talent. (p. 24)

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice Kindle

If you compare him to someone twice his age who has spent the same amount of time practicing – his technique isn’t all exceptional! And, sometimes, motivation is a strange thing. For example, there are many Brazilian soccer greats, mainly because there were always many before them! If you don’t believe that, take for example the phenomenon of female K-golfers dominating the sport. Until 1998, when Se-ri Pak became the first South Korean golfer to win the U.S. Women’s Open – there was basically none!And Matthew Syed was able to learn this best from a direct competitor: Desmond Douglas. Even though tests proved that he was one of the table-tennis players with the slowest reaction times, he was lightning fast on the field!

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

When we listen to a conversation in our own language, we hear a series of distinct words separated by tiny gap of silence. But no such silence actually exists. It is our knowledge of the grammatical structure of our language that enables us to retouch the acoustic information so that we hear it in a neatly structured form. And the difference between the best and the good is not only in the amount of time they spend practicing, but also the way they test themselves after they don’t need to anymore!Mozart was able to be so good not merely because he spent so much time practicing – but because he found the motivation to do this! To be successful, a chess player must cut down on the computational load by ignoring moves unlikely to result in a favorable outcome and concentrating on those with greater promise. Kasparov is able to do this by understanding the meaning of game situations. Deep Blue (the chess computer) is not. We do our jobs, but often with our minds absent – partially or wholly – from what we are doing. We go through the motions. This is why length of time in many occupations is only weakly related to performance. Mere experience, if it is not matched by deep concentration, does not translate into excellence. “I have not improved in five years. Why? Because I have been cruising on autopilot”.

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice Kindle Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice Kindle

From the author of You Are Awesome: Find Your Confidence and Dare to be Brilliant at (Almost) Anything A young performer has a sizeable head start on anybody who commences their training a few years later. Talent is overrated! Practice can’t be! You Need Motivation to Succeed – and Sometimes It Can Be Something TrivialAnticlimax: we might feel miserable after a triumph. This is so that we are able to disengage from our triumph, enabling us to focus on the next challenge. If goal fulfillment induced indefinite periods of contentment, we would be robbed of all future motivation. For an award-winning writer, it is the melancholy that provides the creative impetus for the next literary adventure. Child prodigies amaze us because we compare them not with other performers who have practiced for the same length of time, but with children of the same age who have not dedicated their lives in the same way. Transformational moment: Shaq O’Neill was about to quite basket, telling his mom that he could do it later. His mom responded: Later doesn’t always come to everybody. A key aspect of brain transformation is myelin, a substance that wraps around the nerve fibers and that can dramatically increase the speed with which signals pass through the brain. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.