What it takes to be great

What It Takes to Be Great (Excerpt= s from ‘Why Talent Is Overrated’)

What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Warren Buffett the world's premier inve= stor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. Well, it's not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don't exist. Nobody is a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster.

So if specific, inborn talent doesn't explain high achievement, what does? Researchers have converged on an answer.

You will achieve greatness only through an enormous am= ount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard wor= k, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful. It's something they call "deliberate practice," but watch out - it isn't what most of us t= hink of as practice, nor does it boil down to a simplistic practice-makes-perfect explanation.

To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, mo= st people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.

The irresistible question - the "fundamental challenge" for researchers in this field, says the most prominent of them, professor K. An= ders Ericsson of Florida State University - is, Why? Why are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.

It turns out that the best p= eople in any field are those who devote the most hours to “deliberate practice”. It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical s= ize and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn't do more than what he does; a five-footer will never be an NFL linem= an, and a seven-footer will never be an Olympic gymnast. Even those restrictions are less severe than you'd expect: Ericsson notes, "Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s." The more research that's done, the more solid the deliberate-practice model becomes.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of golf balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get much better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the = pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice.

#1 -- Deliberate practice is designed specifically = to improve performance.

The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching an individu= al just beyond his or her current abilities. That may sound obvious, but most o= f us don't do it in the activities we think of as practice. At the driving range= or at the piano, most of us are just doing what we've done before and hoping to maintain the level of performance that we probably reached long ago.

By contrast, deliberate practice requires that one identify certain shar= ply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work int= ently on them. Tiger Woods - intensely applying this principle, which is no secret among pro golfers - has been seen to drop golf balls into a sand trap and s= tep on them, then practice shots from that near-impossible lie.

#2 -- Deliberate practice must be repeated= … A LOT.

High repetition is the most important difference between deliberate prac= tice of a task and performing the task for real, when it counts. Tiger Woods may face that buried lie in the sand only two or three times in a season, and if those were his only opportunities to work on that shot, he'd blow it just a= s most golfers do.

Repeating a specific activity over and over is what people usually mean = by practice, yet it isn't especially effective. Two points distinguish deliberate practice from what most= of us actually do. One is the choice of a properly demanding activity just bey= ond our current abilities. The other is the amount of repetition.

…nobody is great without work. It's nice to believe that if you fi= nd the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great from day one, but = it doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.

Top performers repeat their practice activities to a stultifying extent.= Ted Williams, baseball's greatest hitter, would practice hitting until his hands bled. Pete Maravich, whose college basketball r= ecords still stand after more than 30 years, would go to the gym when it opened in= the morning and shoot baskets until it closed at night.

Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the mo= st accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.

So greatness isn't handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn't enough, since many people work hard for decades without approach= ing greatness or even getting significantly better. What's missing?

#3 -- It's highly demand= ing mentally.

Deliberate practice is above= all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it "deliberate," as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in. Continually seeking exa= ctly those elements of performance that are unsatisfactory and then trying one's= hardest to make them better places enormous strains on anyone's mental abilities. The work is so great that it seems= no one can sustain it for very long.

Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. = For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as = fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it's the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.

Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem. Yet most people don't seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won't come.

#4 – It’s HARD.

This follows inescapably from the other characteristics of deliberate practice, which could be described as a recipe for not having fun. Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite= of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we're good at, = we insistently seek out what we're not good at.

Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us bet= ter and do those things over and over. After each repetition, we force ourselve= s to see - or get others to tell us - exactly what still isn't right so we can repeat the most painful and difficult parts of what we've just done. We continue that process until we're mentally exhausted.

For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done. That's the way it must be. If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone woul= d do them and no one could distinguish the best from the rest. The reality that deliberate practi= ce is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won't do it. = So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.

Consistency is crucial. As Ericsson notes, "Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the sa= me amount every day, including wee= kends."

Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond= the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he'd have been = cut from his high school team.) In football, Hall of Fame receiver Jerry Rice - passed up in the draft by 15 t= eams because they considered him too slow - practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.

Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It's the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performan= ce. Tons of it equals great performance.

Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what this research shows. Because h= is father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively and deliberately, Woods had racked u= p at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to condition= ing and practice, even tearing apart and remaking his swing twice because that's what it took to get even better.

HOW DO YOU DO THIS?<= /b>

Before the work…<= /b>

Self-regulation begins with setting goals - not big, life-directing goal= s, but more immediate goals for what you're going to be doing today. In the research, the poorest performers don't set goals at all; they just slog thr= ough their work. Mediocre performers set goals that are general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome – win, etc. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the ou= tcome.

With a goal set, the next step is planning how to reach it. Again, the b= est performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. They're thinki= ng exactly, not vaguely, of how to get where they're going.

During the work…<= /b>

The most important self-regulatory skill that top performers in every fi= eld use during their work is self-observation. For example, ordinary endurance runners in a race tend to think about anything other than what they're doin= g; it's hard, after all, and they want to take their minds off it. Elite runne= rs, by contrast, focus intensely on themselves. Among other things, they count their breaths and simultaneously count their strides in order to maintain certain ratios in order for them to maintain their pace and get the proper effect from their workouts.

Even in purely mental work, the best performers observe themselves close= ly. They are able to monitor what is happening in their own minds and ask how i= t's going. Researchers call this metacognition - knowledge about your own knowledge, thinking about your own thinking. Top performers do this much more systematically than others do; it's an establi= shed part of their routine.

After the work…<= /b>

Practice activities are worthless without useful feedback about the resu= lts. These must be self-evaluations; since the practice activities took place in= our own minds, only we can know fully what we were attempting or judge how it turned out. Excellent performers judge themselves differently than most peo= ple do. They're more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strateg= ies. Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great or po= orly or okay and often are not honest with themselves about their performance. <= /p>
By contrast, the best performers judge themselves against a standard tha= t's relevant for what they're trying to achieve. Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best; sometimes they compare it with the performance of competitors they're facing or expect to face; sometimes they compare it with the best known performance by anyone in the field.

Any of those can make sense; the key, as in all deliberate practice, is = to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits. Research confirms what common sense tells us, that too high a standard is discouraging and not very instructive, while too low a standard produces no advancement.

Odds are strong that the experience wasn't perfect; in fact, parts of it= may have been unpleasant. In those cases, excellent performers respond by adapt= ing the way they act, while average and poor performers respond by avoiding tho= se situations in the future. That stands to reason. Since excellent performers went through a sharply different process from the beginning, they can make = good guesses about how to adapt. That is, their ideas for how to perform better = next time are likely to work. So it's hardly surprising that they are more likely than average performers to repeat the experience rather than avoid it.

But where does the cycle start? Why do certain people put themselves thr= ough the years of intensive daily work that eventually makes them world-class gr= eat? This is the deepest question about great performance, and the researchers do not offer us a complete answer. We've reached the point where we must proce= ed by looking in the only place we have left: within ourselves. The answers depend on your response t= o two basic questions: What do you really want? And what do you really believe?

What you want - really, deeply = want - is fundamental because deliberate practice is an investment: The costs co= me now, the benefits later. The more you want something, the easier it will be= for you to sustain the needed effort until the payoff starts to arrive. But if you're pursuing something that you don't truly want and are competing again= st others whose desire is deep, you can guess the outcome.

The second question is more profound. What do you really believe? Do you believe that you have a choice in this matter? Do you believe that if you do the work, and do it with intense focus for years on end, your performance w= ill eventually reach the highest levels? If you believe that, then there's a ch= ance you will do the work and achieve great performance. But if you believe that your performance is forever limited by your lack of a specific innate gift, then there's no chance at all that you will do the work. What you really believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve.

Such beliefs can be extremely deep-seated. Regardless of where our belie= fs in this matter originated, however, we all have the opportunity to base them on the evidence of reality. The evidence offers no easy assurances. It shows t= hat the price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high. Maybe it's inevitable that not many people will choose to pay it. But the evidence sho= ws also that by understanding how a few become great, all can become better.
Which leads to possibly the deepest question about greatness. While experts understand an enormous amount about the behavior that produces great performance, they understand very little about where that behavior comes from.

The authors of one study conclude, "We still do not know which fact= ors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice." Or as University of Michigan business school professor= Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, "Some people are much more motivated than others, and that's the existential question I cannot answer - why."

The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life's inevitable bumps in the road, th= ey conclude that they just aren't gifted and give up.