How to Master Anything. Part One

Until recently the prevailing view on developing skill in an activity such as music, math, art, or, what's this blog about again, oh yeah, chess was that you'd better have talent. What's that? You say you weren't born humming Broadway tunes? Oh well, no musical career for you. You weren't doing calculus in preschool? Give it up kid. But hey, Mc'Donalds is hiring. You weren't playing master level chess by twelve? No hope for you.

Starting in the 1970's Professor Anders Ericcsson began to question that model. After all, no one has ever identified a "music gene" or a "math gene". As far as anyone can tell we are in no way pre programmed to perform some random, human created activity. On the other hand it is clear that some people reach astounding heights. How do they do it? Well, I'm sure that you've heard the old story where the tourist asks the street musician,

 "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

 "Practice man. Practice."

 Professor Ericsson postulates that it takes 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" As the link explains, deliberate practice isn't just going out and hitting a few buckets of golf balls on the range or playing a few casual games of blitz and calling it practice. No, deliberate practice is the process of pushing yourself to the limit, getting feedback from failure and correcting constantly.  Its hard and exhausting.  That makes sense though, if it were easy we'd all be world class. These ideas were popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller "Outliers" as well as books such as "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin and "The Talent Code" by Daniel Coyle. Below is a video profile of Coyle that explains the concept well:

So, this all constitutes a leap forward in the understanding of how we learn, but there is one catch. What if you're all grown up in your 30's or 40's and just finding this out now?  You don't have time to spend 10 years learning something and "everyone knows" that kids learn things faster than adults. Right?  Welll.....

What if I told you that there's at least one pretty successful person out there who thinks that you can cut that time down to a fraction of what most people think that you need?   What if I told you that he believes that you can reach an extremely high level in as little as six months in disciplines as varied as speaking Spanish, doing the tango, or learning to cook like a gourmet? Does that sound like something that you would like to hear about?  Well, than you had better book mark this blog and keep checking back because we are going to find out how to master anything quickly in part 2.

To Be Continued.....

Beer, Pizza,...and Chess?

Okay, so hopefully some of my facebook friends followed the link over here to check this out. Most of my friends will know that I'm a chess player. I love chess kind of like how the pope digs prayer. I've played for years in various tournaments large and small and own a large collection of chess literature. You would think, after all of this time, that I might be pretty good at the game. Sadly, the truth is, I suck. However, that is about to change.


I've created a six month challenge. For those of you who don't know,a chess players strength is measured by a numerical rating system. The higher the rating, the better. My current rating on the site chess.com is 1430. By the end of August, 2013 I will have that rating up to 1800. I'll be using this blog to track my progress, write about things that I've been studying and learning about chess as well as writing about the learning process in general.


But wait! You are all saying, "I clicked on this link for pizza and beer. Where the hell is the PIZZA and BEER?"


Here's the deal. At the end of August, I'm going to throw a bash with pizza and beer at a location to be determined. I'm buying the pizza and at least the first couple of rounds of beverages. All any of you have to do to get invited to this fabulous happening is to check this blog out and leave some comments on a somewhat regular basis. If you are a fellow chess player (you know who you are) by all means feel free to offer advice. If your not a chess player, just say hi, tell me to go jump in a lake, post a link back to your site. Whatever. I just want to make sure I'm not doing this in a vacuum. For those of you who aren't in Alaska and can't join in on the festivities, well I can't airmail pizza and beer but I'll be posting videos, links to cool sites, funny pictures and anything else that I can do in order to make me your favorite attention whore.


I'll be back in a day or so with more details and some cool links but I've typed too much. We need some kittens and music.


Chess cat photo by Jim Duyn, Oakland California


Source: http://www.ibabuzz.com/garybogue/2008/11/14/whos-smarter-humans-or-cats-and-the-winner-is/

Of course, we have to have this: