How to Give the Perfect Holiday Gift – 5 Tips Backed by Science
Holiday season is upon us and it’s time to consider what gifts to give to your loved-ones. While you may dread the process and want to get it over with quickly, keep in mind that the point of gifts is to strengthen relationships. Picking the right gift can increase feelings of appreciation and connection between people. It […]
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“The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills” by Daniel Coyle (Book Summary)
Daniel Coyle is the author of The Talent Code, in which he explains how talent is made. The short story: talent is the result of practice + motivation + having a great coach. It’s not about innate traits; it’s all about (the right kind of!) practice, practice, practice. Coyle arrived at this conclusion after visiting nine so-called […]
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“The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown.” by Daniel Coyle (Book Summary)
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle takes a look at extraordinary performers and describes how they became so extraordinary in the first place. Over the course of 18 months, Coyle visited nine so-called talent hotbeds – places that produce Everest-size amounts of talent. When he investigated those hotbeds in detail, he found that they all shared […]
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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson (Book Summary)
Anders Ericsson is the world’s leading scientist on elite performance and deliberate practice. His research involves finding expert performers who can reliably do things that others can’t, and then figuring out how they’re able to do it. Peak is the result of more than three decades of research. The book is packed with fascinating studies, eye-opening facts, […]
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10 Things Elite Athletes, Musicians, and Intellectuals Do Differently
Expert performance guru Anders Ericsson has made a career studying star athletes, memory mavens, violin virtuosos, and chess champions. His work involves identifying people who can do something better than their peers and then figuring out why they are able to do that. In his decades of research, Ericsson has identified a core set of principles […]
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How to Succeed at Anything You Want, Using the Principles of Deliberate Practice
Is there any skill you would like to improve? Public speaking? Writing? Reading? Dancing? Singing? Cooking? Playing tennis? Meeting new people? Making better decisions? Well, you can. As our recent discussions on expert performance have shown, humans possess the capacity to improve their performance in any area of life if they train in the right way. The most advanced […]
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14 Real World Examples of Deliberate Practice in Action
As discussed in our latest article, deliberate practice is the most effective method for developing and improving skills rapidly. Unfortunately, despite reading multiple books and scientific papers on the topic, I have found it difficult to fully grasp what deliberate practice looks like in the real world. In an attempt to better understand the nuances of […]
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The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Deliberate Practice
Benjamin Franklin is widely regarded as the most accomplished man of his time. He was a diplomat, inventor, scientist, and writer whose words are still read to this day. One could assume Franklin was naturally gifted at the intellectual skills that made him as successful as he was. However, that would be far from the […]
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The Myth of Natural Talent: Prodigies, Savants, and the Real Role Inborn Qualities Play in Elite Performance
Sam Snead was one of the greatest golf players of all time. His success was attributed to natural talent; people literally called him the best natural player ever. Snead himself didn’t agree. In an interview with Golf Digest, he said, “People always said I had a natural swing. They thought I wasn’t a hard worker. But […]
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The Road to Greatness: 3 Steps from Child to Best in the World
Greatness isn’t born. It’s made. It’s the story of practice, not talent. That’s what we concluded in our previous article, in which we looked at the differences between elite performers and the rest. Decades of research concluded it all came down to one thing: the amount of quality practice an individual had accumulated over their lifetime. The Greats […]
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