Bounce

by Matthew Syed

Purposeful practice was the only factor distinguishing the best from the rest.

It is the quality and quantity of practice, not genes, that is driving progress. And if that is true of society, why not accept that it is also true of individuals?

he wouldn’t be able to provide any insight into the mechanics of the movements that made the stroke possible. Why? Because Federer has practised for so long that the movement has been encoded in implicit rather than explicit memory. This is what psychologists call expert-induced amnesia.

it is practice, not talent, that holds the key to success.

Think, for example, of the damage done to the governance of Britain by the tradition of moving ministers – the most powerful men and women in the country – from department to department without giving them the opportunity to develop an adequate knowledge base in any of them. It is estimated that the average tenure of a ministerial post in recent years in Britain has been 1.7 years. John Reid, the long-serving member of Tony Blair’s government, was moved from department to department no less than seven times in seven years.

an emphasis on hard work rather than talent could transform the education system if given half a chance.

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 along on autopilot.

Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.

the practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: progress.

world-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached.

Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavour, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance.

circumstance and opportunity are deeply and inevitably implicated in the success of every high achiever.

‘If you don’t know what you are doing wrong, you can never know what you are doing right.’

Feedback is, in effect, the rocket fuel that propels the acquisition of knowledge, and without it no amount of practice is going to get you there.

the application of purposeful practice, even in a modest way, can enable countless individuals to realize untapped potential.

everyone has the capacity for excellence, with the right opportunities and training.

You work hard now. You don’t wait. If you’re lazy or you sit back and you don’t want to excel, you’ll get nothing.

learning was not laborious but liberating.

I was no longer studying because my parents wanted me to or because my teacher had threatened to keep me behind after school, but because I wanted to. Because the material was relevant, urgent, even exciting.

a key factor driving success and failure is to be found within the realm of motivation.

Failure was not something that sapped her energy and vitality, but something that provided her with an opportunity to learn, develop, and adapt.

Think of life having two paths: one leading to mediocrity, the other to excellence. What do we know about the path to mediocrity? Well, we know it is flat and straight. We know that it is possible to cruise along on autopilot with a nice, smooth, steady, almost effortless progression. We know, above all, that you can reach the destination without stumbling and falling over.

But the path to excellence could not be more different. It is steep, gruelling, and arduous. It is inordinately lengthy, requiring a minimum of ten thousand hours of lung-busting effort to get to the summit. And, most importantly of all, it forces voyagers to stumble and fall on every single stretch of the journey.

Excellence is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again. The paradox of excellence is that it is built upon the foundations of necessary failure.

intelligence-based praise orientates its receivers towards the fixed mindset; it suggests to them that intelligence is of primary importance rather than the effort through which intelligence can be transformed; and it teaches them to pursue easy challenges at the expense of real learning.

That we should praise effort, not talent; that we should emphasize how abilities can be transformed through application; that we should teach others and ourselves to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; that we should interpret failure not as an indictment but as an opportunity.

he does not regard failure in his students as either good or bad, but as an opportunity to improve.

It’s not the mistakes; it’s how you respond to them.

We know that people with the fixed mindset do not admit and correct their deficiencies.

Believing in something beyond the self can have a hugely beneficial psychological impact, even if the belief is fallacious.

Karl Marx called religion the ‘opium of the masses’. He was almost right: religion is the sugar pill of the masses.

Progress is made by ignoring the evidence; it is about creating a mindset that is immune to doubt and uncertainty.

To win, one must surgically remove doubt – rational and irrational – from the mind.

What is it about certain people – top sportsmen in particular – that makes them so relentless? What causes them to set their eyes on the next summit so soon after scaling the last one? Why are they so driven? So unsated by success?

At one time the answer seemed to be inexplicable, lost in the unfathomable mysteries of the human psyche. But we can now see that the answer may hinge on something far simpler: an evolved capacity to experience anticlimax faster, sharper, and deeper than the rest of us. After all, anticlimax is something we have all experienced, but it is striking just how quickly top performers come down to earth after winning a major title; remarkable how rapidly they emotionally disengage from a goal they may have spent years striving for.

The problem with unenforceable rules is that they reward cheats and penalize the honest.

It would seem that the notion of race is so deeply embedded within the human psyche that there is a collective blind spot when it comes to its use and meaning. We automatically put people of dark skin in a box marked ‘black’, and assume that any trait shared by some (even a tiny minority) is shared by all.

Genetic diseases are not racial per se. Many other so-called black diseases are in fact diseases of poverty with well-established environmental causes.

The reason why racial scientists are able to get away with statistically flawed generalizations is because they tally with our natural inclination to regard ‘black’ as a biological type distinct from ‘white’ or ‘yellow’ or ‘red’. Indeed, this inclination is so powerful that it requires an effort of will to free oneself from its clutches.

It’s only because we see the world through race-tinted glasses that we’re inclined to describe all sorts of things – and not just running prowess – as having a racial basis.

Is it any wonder that black children fail at school, given that success is often ignored by employers?

employers tend to discriminate against applicants with ‘black’-sounding names. Now we can see why: it is because they are likely to perceive a black applicant as less intellectually qualified for the job, even with an identical CV to the successful candidate. This discrimination may occur at a subconscious level, but the consequences are very real. Remember that ‘black’-sounding applicants were 50 per cent less likely to be invited to an interview than whites with precisely the same CVs.

If we could only ditch our race-tinted spectacles, the world would not only look very different, it would soon become very different, too.