

Keys to Being Excellent at Anything - dyc
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/08/six_keys_to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+harvardbusiness+(HBR.org)

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jiganti
I dropped everything and went to a tennis academy for high school when I
realized I was lucky enough to live have the family to support me financially,
and where I lived wasn't a great place to achieve whatever potential I had.

After going to the academy for two years and getting consistently better, I
started hearing more and more from people about my "potential", although I
wasn't one of the "stars" who would go on to make great money playing
professional tennis.

I had finished high school that year, and instead of going to college I
decided to take a year off and continue playing international tournaments on
the junior circuit. I had done decent and was in the top 1000 worldwide, but
wanted to really see how I could do. I had the rest of the year in eligibility
(it was June when I graduated, and you can play until the year you turned 19,
which started the next January), so I packed my bags and played something like
25 tournaments that fall in a number of different countries.

I did poorly. I made it inside the top 650 or so, far from my goal or
realizing any potential I thought I had. It seemed that I just didn't have
quite the talent necessary to make it, nor do anything noteworthy with my
tennis.

This was disheartening, but I had six more months before I would have to go
off to college while keeping full eligibility, so it seemed like my best bet
was to practice- with a new perspective that I didn't quite have years
earlier.

So this time I got a private coach along with the normal academy practices.
Every afternoon when everyone else was in school, we'd keep working. I figured
that even though I wasn't a natural talent like some of those guys, a few
hours' edge on them every day would help my case. My coach was great, super
intense and helped push me when I was tired. I hit my physical capacity a few
times and had to take a day or afternoon off every once in a while, but the
fact that I was doing more than those supposedly untouchable _natural talents_
was ACTUALLY working. I was noticeably better, a "friggin' moose on the court"
as my coach would say, and I started really competing with and even beating
some of the guys ranked in the top 100.

I think too few people really work very, very hard, which is what's required
to make up for natural talent. This causes the huge amount of naysayers, who
never see anyone with little talent exceed expectation. Because of that, too
few of the untalented work hard. It's a vicious cycle.

~~~
eitally
We're fortunate enough in first world countries to have the luxury of having
forgotten what hard work really means, and most people are too lazy to really
dedicate themselves to _anything_.

------
lars512
Getting to the bottom, he describes how he no longer beats himself up about
not being better at tennis since he knows he could be better if he was willing
to invest the time in it.

The same realization about foreign languages is what caused me to gradually
stop studying them. The value in being near-fluent in something is pretty
clear, but the value of being sub-conversational is usually not. Once I
realized I was unlikely to travel and live in the countries whose languages I
was studying, it made more sense to give them up.

The whole 10000 hour thing is both exciting and depressing. Exciting because
it means you can do anything ("any (one) thing") you dedicate yourself to.
Depressing because it suggests limits to how many areas you can reasonably
excel at.

~~~
carbocation
I read your comment from my iPhone while stuffing my face with cookies.
Reading from the iPhone implies zooming in heavily if I want to upvote. Eating
cookies implies having one hand covered in crumbs. Thus, I had to finish my
current cookie, clean my cookie hand, and then zoom in before being able to
upvote your comment. However, I found your comment worthwhile enough to do
so—thank you!

~~~
lars512
The cookie monster reads Hacker News! (and has an iPhone) =)

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luu
Steps 1-3 and 5-6 are "easy", but how do you step 4?

 _4\. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses_

It would be great if my company did code reviews on everything a la Google,
but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I code in my spare time, but
what expert is going to want to check out my spare time projects, project
euler solutions, or what have you, and give feedback? So, how do I go about
getting expert feedback?

~~~
mian2zi3
I think you might be surprised. I'm not sure where you'd go to find these
people, however. Is there something like stackoverflow for code reviews? I
just posted a related Ask HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632965>

but sadly got no responses. I just procrastinated half an hour reading HN. I
probably would have preferred to review some young, eager programmer's code.

~~~
gridspy
It is as hard to find great students as it is to find great masters.

~~~
limist
Yes, as the Asian proverb goes:

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

------
aresant
Just out of User Interface curiosity how many other people immediately
scrolled down to the six bullet points and ignored the rest?

~~~
studer
Flow:

1\. While the page is loading, look at the utm_source crap in the URL and
wonder why the submitter couldn't be bothered to clean that up.

2\. Read the first sentence and identify this as a writer of the "I should
start with a personal anecdote to make people like me" school of writing (a US
thing? not sure), and start skimming for the actual content.

3\. Slow down when the "Anders Ericsson" anchor appears, and wait for the
mandatory "10,000 hours" reference.

4\. Skim the six points, and realize that there's nothing new here -- you've
read the same article before, only written by someone else.

(yeah, yeah, I'll log off now.)

~~~
btilly
Flow:

1\. Decide to read comments before the article.

2\. Read your comment.

3\. Decide I don't need to read this again.

4\. Decide to leave a thank you before going elsewhere.

Thank you for your informative summary.

~~~
InfinityX0
Flow:

1\. Read article, throw up.

2\. Read comments, then realize that the comments made this substandard post
worthwhile.

3\. Upvote many comments.

4\. Return to regularly scheduled programming.

~~~
ruang
Thanks for pointing out the comments. I was about to dismiss the article as
well but there are some great contrarian comments as you pointed out. My
favorites:

-Innate talent > Practice. Painful to admit, but better if you can own up to your weaknesses early on and focus things you are better at.

-Extensive practice only applies to single tasks, not complex activities such as business which requires being good at multiple disciplines plus coordinating and understanding the interaction between those disciplines

------
bosch
This is true, but no matter how much he wants to a 5'5 guy is not going to be
the heavyweight champion of the world. Hard work can certainly get people
beyond their limits, but people born with a special talent in one area can
push that boundary even farther just by working as hard as everyone else.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
No, but he could be excellent in his weight class.

~~~
dejb
I think basketball would have been a better example but the point stands. If
you are 5'5 and really good at sports you should play soccer instead of
basketball if you want to reach the highest levels.

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Jkeg
This is a motivational article. And a good one with great specific tips on how
to optimize your workload. But obviously wrong in that natural talent has
little to no effect on skill. But of course you have to say that in a
motivational "working hard gets results" gist type article.

------
T_S_
If you spend 10,000 hours playing Trivial Pursuit it's called cheating.

------
sunkencity
Great... but don't forget key number 7. - Don't give up too early.

~~~
klbarry
This! I once gave up a business after thinking it wasn't any good. A year
later I checked the analytics (after I removed the front page and let the
domain expire) I found that traffic picked up from articles I wrote earlier,
and had been high for over right months. Of course, with no site there, they
all bounced right off. D'oh!

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limist
Once can combine numbers 2 (hard work first), 3 (intense practice), and 6
(regular/ritualized practice) by doing some "deliberate" and challenging study
first thing every morning. For example, find a true classic in the field of
interest, and consume it for 1-2 hours immediately after waking up.

I've been doing that with SICP and it's been an immensely rewarding
experience.

------
jdc
Relevant:

The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

-Psychological Review

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

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stretchwithme
Inspirational. Thanks for posting this.

------
stickhandle
summary:: loop(time)

    
    
        if(good_time_of_day)
          practice_what_u_like_to_do;
        else
          do_other_stuff;
    

end-loop;

