Performance – Talent vs Practice

My daughter started surfing this holiday. She completed her first 15 hours of practice and the improvement was huge.

Working with people as I have for 30 year, I have learnt to recognise many factors in the way people perform. I have had arguments with parents about their children when they believe that their talent will get them through, I have seen some highly skilled individuals rely on their attributes and receive praise only to end up failing and not understanding why. And I have seen child prodigies who, by the time they reach 18, are no different from their peers.

I have, however, seen one common factor in high performance or excellence and that is dedicated and meaningful practice and lots of it. Only then and without exception did I see true success.

Over my vacation I read Matthew Sayed’s book “Bounce.” All I can say is that if you want success or want your children to succeed, or become expert in any field the evidence is right there in the book…. Its a must read. Talent or Skill on its own means nothing. Purposeful practice aiming for the 10,000 hours means everything. And this goes for anything you choose to do. The book shows how people in their daily jobs become expert after many years.

You can glance the book here http://amzn.to/mRI2n0  Order it.

I have coached and worked with people for a minimum of 20,000 hours in my life. I worked this out recently for fun. I was amazed. I am now working out how many hours I have photographed!