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.....