Larry's Book Club
My kindle Highlights: 25. Per Amazon 1,361 most highlighted book.
Mathew Syed references the following creed which must be signed by every participant of the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida:
“Every endeavor pursued with passion produces a successful outcome regardless of the result. For it is not about winning or losing—rather, the effort put forth in producing the outcome. The best way to predict the future is to create it—therefore, we believe we have the best training methods to help each athlete achieve their dreams and goals and ultimately reach their ability level in the arena of sports and life.”
This represents a pretty succinct summary of a very interesting and insightful read. Syed, a British journalist and sportscaster is a former table tennis champion and a two time Olympian. While on a journey to debunk the justification of his own rise to the top of the ping pong world, he became heavily influenced by evidence which shows that the notion of raw talent, genetic predisposition, and chosen prodigy are essentially myths. To that end, Syed’s book is quite the combination of Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, Mindset by Carolyn Dweck, and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin (ironically the first two books were reviewed in Larry’s Book Club). In fact, he quotes from them extensively. Affirmation and repetition are not a bad thing and in the case of eradicating certain sports success myths probably very useful and when taken as the critical lessons from this book probably very purposeful.
Syed explores quite a comprehensive list of topics including practice, the productive use of prayer, conviction, doublethink, choking, failure as a means of success, focus, perception, anticlimactic emotions after winning, motivation, fixed vs. growth mindset, and race as a success factor in running.
My top takeaways:
-Expert practice means purposeful practice. Repetition and sustained effort towards progress in a continual way towards breaching what appears to be insurmountable. And then do it again towards the next level of achievement. The 10,000 hour rule is a consistent factor in success which often is a function of being in the right place with the right coaches and having the right opportunity rather than any sense of talent encoding or being an innate child prodigy.
-As counterintuitive as it appears, the best fail more than anybody else. Failure has to be embraced as a part of success. Shizuka Arakaway fell down more than 20,0000 times on her way to becoming an Olympic champion.
-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 best teachers and coaches provide the best feedback which is in the form of promoting a “growth” mindset. Praise effort not talent.
-Choking in a competition is essentially too much focus which causes a neural glitch whereby mechanics become to intentional rather than on auto pilot.
-Mark Bawden, the sports psychologist “In order to make all the sacrifices necessary to reach world-class levels of performance, an athlete has to believe that performing well means everything. They have to cleave to the belief that winning an Olympic gold is of life-changing significance. “But that is precisely the belief that is most likely to trigger a choking response. So, the key psychological skill for someone with a tendency to choke is to ditch that belief in the minutes before competition and to replace it with the belief that the race does not really matter. It is a form of psychological manipulation, and it takes a lot of work to master.”
-Rituals and routines work because they were used at some point of success. Nothing wrong with maintaining these superstitious beliefs and in fact they should be encouraged.
-Regardless of religious beliefs, prayer or some form of meditation play a powerful and effective role in sports performance.
If you are looking for a good overall summary the integration of scientific evidence into success, particularly performance you will be well satisfied in your read of Bounce.
To purposeful practice,
