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

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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! A very interesting read, that, as I said at the start, helped confirm some ideas I have about how life works, while challenging others I've held. It is also worth noting that the development of motor expertise (skilled movement) is inseparable from the development of perceptual expertise (chunking patterns)”. Purposeful practice 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”. Talent] cannot be taught in a classroom; it is not something you are born with; it must be lived and learned. To put it another way, it emerges through practice”.

Although we tend to think of genius as something akin to magic, a kind of short-cut to mastery of the elements, it is nothing of the sort. A proper investigation of the careers of the supreme achievers, whether in sport or other fields, reveals that they are based above all on monomaniacal diligence and concentration. Constant struggle, in other words. Seen in this light, we might define genius as talent multiplied by effort." – Dominic Lawson, The Independent And for undergraduates in a simple experiment – it was sharing the birthday with someone who had successfully solved the assignment they were about to! Every second of every minute of every hour, the goal [of purposeful practice] is to extend one’s mind and body, to push oneself beyond the outer limits of one’s capacities, to engage so deeply in the task that one leaves the training session, literally, a changed person”.Different things motivate different people, but the best part of it is – some of them are even trivial. For example, for Mia Hamm, that something was her coach telling her to “switch on.” For South Korean female golfers, it was Se-ri Pak winning the U.S. Open at the age of 20.

Through his experience as an international tennis table champion, Matthew Syed looks at what it takes to become the best; and debunks some cherished myths of innate talent along the way. Bounce is a compelling argument that champions are not born, they are made – and their success is down to two important things: opportunity and practice. Who is it for? For such a short & fast read, I have a lot to say about this book. Not because the book demands or merits superabundance of personal thought, but because it touched on a few topics which I spend a great deal of thought on anyways. Once we’ve finished reading a book, we share the headlines and then pass it on to anyone who wants to read it – just send us a message and we’ll pop it in the post. Once you’re done with it, you can either let it live forever on your shelf or share it with someone new. Within a month, another guy did it. Over the next 4 years, 20 more people broke the barrier, bringing the record all the way down to 3:56. There is an amazing story about Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian educational psychologist. He was an early advocate of the practice theory of expertise. His central thesis was that areas of expertise can be open to all, and not just to people with special talents. He was not believed, so he devised an experiment with his yet unborn daughters. He would train his children to play chess, a game where he was not an expert. He took care to allow his three daughters to become internally motivated to love the game, and to practice it frequently. Polgar himself was not a good chess player, but he thought that the international rating system would help to objectively quantify the level that his children would ultimately attain. To make a long story short, each of his three daughters became world-class chess players.

When I first read the title ‘Bounce’ by Matthew Syed, I was more intrigued with the name of the author than on what the book was about. It focuses on the topic of sports without delving deep into the fascinating topic of deliberate practice and its applications in wider areas. Because he’s seen so many balls fly towards him in so many different ways, his brain can easily estimate even the most complex trajectories and give him more time to react than other players with less practice. Or at least that’s what Matthew Syed arguments so forcefully about in “ Bounce.” Who Should Read “Bounce”? And Why? The book is really very good. I've long had the opinion that genius is developed rather than born, in spite of being preached the 'talent' myth by my parents.