After 15 years of practice..
sivers.org
sivers.org
And there is some truth to this. You are born a good jocky, most people couldn't train hard to be that small.
I wrote about this a few years ago:
http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mind...
I think it applies to many things, and too few people are aware of the distinction.
Basketball is such a bastardised sport that height and speed are the dominant skills at play in the sport. No accuracy is required when the majority of your goals are scored by (using a soccer term) walking it into the goal. It's pathetic and boring.
The entire point of the sport is that the goal is high to challenge players to exhibit accuracy that is rarely routinely (and especially not consistently) required in other sports. Yet that doesn't exist any more in the NBA it's circus freaks putting balls through a hole instead of sportsmen exhibiting great accuracy like an archer.
Even 7 foot guys like Rasheed Wallace and Kevin Garnett take 40% or more of their shots from 3 point territory. Wallace shoots 35% on three pointers (30% is the "he's a good three point shooter" threshold). The real three point shooters make half of their shots... a feat of accuracy which is really fucking hard, even more so considering they also have to get to the shot and deal with defense. There is no question most basketball players are genetic freaks but anyone playing in the NBA these days is also scarily accurate.
I hate to agree that I now find the NBA kinda boring... but it's not because it's a circus act (circuses are pretty interesting, actually.) The NBA is boring because almost every player is now so superhumanly good that it's hard to imagine how difficult what they are doing really is.
You cite zone defense as though it's drastically changed the NBA - but it's rarely deployed.
You say most shots taken in games are three pointers, but they actually make up 18-22% (over the last decade) of them.
And you say KG and Rasheed take over 40% of their shots from three. Kevin Garnett takes 3.3% of his shots from downtown. For Rasheed it's just under 25%. Both are career stats....
But, threes are up like 40% over the past 10 years. Over the past 5 years the games have been more shooting oriented than ever before. The WSJ had an article a while back suggesting that the real reason is because the league hasn't been doing that great financially, and it's cheaper for teams to get a set of 3 point shooters vs. one LeBron or KG.
The people at the top of any field combine hard work with genetic predisposition. You need both because you will be competing with people with both.
Our field is not a competition. There is plenty of room for a bunch of great programmers.
Especially in certain fields — music, design, and programming all fit I think — there is a huge amount that many people just seem to get or not.
I have a degree in music, so I've seen a lot while I was in school. Yes, some people can work really hard and eventually get it, but I don't think that's everyone.
Especially when it comes to ear training, I know a lot of people who have tried really, really hard, but can't seem to develop the skills. I've seen this in many people, even with great teachers, resources, and tons of practice. I think some people have a fundamental difference in how their minds understand music.
I think this can be seen in the idea that certain programmers are 10x more productive than others, and that most "programmers" can't really program at all, even after years of school.
It is true to some extent, however there is one big caveat.
You have to do some of that practice at the right age.
What is the right age? For most skills/professions/hobbies it is under age of 20 and the most critical is age 12-16 or so.
Thus, Derek got some of that singing practice at the right age and got the basics. Unfortunately, he will be disappointed at the progress he can make at programming, because brain is not good at making new pathways at 30 compared to 15.
I am speaking from experience, I did not do enough programming in my teen years and it has definitely hurt my progress after age 30.
Even with today's title inflation, I am yet to find a chess grandmaster who started after age 30. Sure, someone can probably reach a low expert/master, but even those are not common.
On the other hand, I have known quite a few people with the disposable income AND time, who tried to get better at chess and managed at most 100-200 ELO point increase.
Some people need less work than others because they learn faster.
However, more often than not, people who are very good at something threw an incredible amount of time at it. An amount far greater than anybody is willing to spare.
You're gifted when you reach levels that only few other human beings can.
When you "suck" at something, you're just not trying hard enough.
1) This sounds a lot like the "Deliberate Practice" espoused by the (imho excellent) Study hacks blog http://calnewport.com/blog/?s=deliberate+practice
2) Also similar to Steve Yegge's recommended approach to learning to type. (another great read)
3) Is it just me or is the silvers.org site a gold mine of great ideas?
Like this, for example:
My vision of the road to mastery:
- start with the fundamentals
- get a solid foundation fueled by the understanding of
the principles of your discipline
- expand and refine your repertoire, guided by your
individual predispositions
- while keeping in touch, however abstractly, with what
you feel to be the essential core of the art
What results is a network of deeply internalized,
interconnected knowledge that expands from a central,
personal locus point.
When everyone at a high level has a huge amount of
(technical) understanding, much of what separates the
great from the very good is deep presence, relaxation of
the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow
unhindered.
Writing good essays/articles is something else I really aspire to, and definitely put a lot of work into. I've been studying my favorite essays by Paul Graham, Harry Beckwith, Seth Godin, and even Robert Fulghum. Those are the tops I've found in this short-form blog-length (under 2-minutes read-time) format that I like.
No other motive than the feeling of wanting to share everything I've learned before I die.
http://sivers.org/mp3/DEREK_SIVERS-Ready_to_Live-1997-01.mp3
My bad.
I find it interesting that Derek downplays the role of his teachers. He mentions he took lessons with several teachers, but neglects to tell us anything about them. I could not begin to describe my development as a singer without discussing my teachers.
Yes, it takes practice to become a good singer, but any number of hours of practicing poor technique won't do much good.
Follow the links! http://sivers.org/more-than-one
To be clear, I'm not criticizing him or his teachers. I'm just more interested in their role in his development as a singer than his practicing.
Yes, this is true and oft-repeated mantra on YC News. But it begs the question, how does one practice the "proper" technique (I mean after all, doesn't everyone want to follow the correct form of shooting hoops/strumming a guitar chord, but most people don't have a dedicated shooting coach/guitar teacher to watch their every move or they do know the right technique by heart in theory but can't carry it out in practice for various reasons).
The best protip I've received in learning an instrument (and actually doing anything) is when you are stuck at a particular exercise, move onto the next hardest exercise anyways. When you stumble upon the simplest guitar lick on the first page of a guitar book,you might say "are you crazy? I can't even play the first exercise." But if you play the next hardest lick and stumble upon it for a couple of days, then try to play a third lick even harder than the second lick for a couple of days, and then go back to the very first lick. You might find that you can now play it pretty well, or suck much less than before.
Yes, practicing is all about hard work and all that, but it is also about momentum and keeping things fresh and new. If it's not fun, you are doing something wrong.
When I'm practicing, sometimes I'm just doing something wrong. If I can't fix it or I can't even figure out what it is, but I know it doesn't feel right, sometimes I just stop that practice session. That's when I know I'll be practicing improper technique. I'll try again next time and remember to ask my teacher about it in my next lesson.
Also, it seems that there is disagreement as to whether the use really was incorrect or not. Modern usage and all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Either way, I just learned something new.
Extremely focused, repeated work with a tape recorder will bridge the gap between perception and reality in a hurry.
Now I try to focus on each note and listen to the tone I'm actually singing and that corrects the whole thing. I also pull myself into a kind of a mode where I hit the notes.
But I'm still not good, but at least my pitch has changed dramatically in the last couple of years or so.
http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...
There's also something to be said for picking something you're naturally good at an running with that. I, for example, had perfect pitch as a kid and with no practice managed to find myself in the church choir doing solos. I suspect that had I decided to follow up on it, I would have had an easier time than the author making it into a career.
In contrast, I can't dance. And it's not from lack of trying. I've taken classes (like college classes even), salsa lessons, you name it and I still just plain suck. Like the author says, I'm sure I could stick with it for 15 years and get good, but shy of that I'm always going to suck at it.
Other datapoints for me include rock climbing (naturally good), surfing (naturally bad, but on the 15 year path), basketball (naturally bad and gave up early), and computer programming (naturally good and making a career of it).
If you pick something you're naturally OK at and choose that as your focus, I think you'll get a lot faster results than the author.
but still, better than I would have expected someone with no original talent in singing to be able to achieve.
It's suprising how often years of hard work is trivialized as "luck" or "inherent ability".
Interestingly these people rarely, if ever, start taking cancer drugs in a church.
I've never met a great programmer who couldn't grok something like pointers to pointers with just a few exposures. Your mind is either wired that way or it isn't. No amount of practicing is going to rewire it, no matter how hard (or long) you try.
But, once you do pass the baseline - absolutely, practice does make perfect.
But there's no substitute for talent. Best of all is talent + training. Humans are not _tabulae_ _rasae_ onto which anything may be written: they have significant genetic differences which are expressed as different talents/abilities. As a young boy, I could listen to music and extract and replicate melodies and chords easily (learn "by ear"), something my sister desired but could not do without a decade of intense music instruction and practice.
In high school, I remember how many students asked me for help with specific challenges, and I was happy to help for free. I remember discussing with my fellow nerds doing experiments at home that easily exceeded what the school taught.
None of these memories will surprise the audience here. Or that so many people over my life have told me how lucky I am to just be born smart. But the lesson it took me the longest to learn was to value my thinking skills and ignore those who make less of them. And to charge for their use, of course. Just because it come easily to me now, doesn't make it worthless.
But this is a really bad example. I promise i'm not trolling. I actually went to his archives and listened to his music. I hate to say this, but the guy can't sing. On top of that, the improvement from as he says his "early days" to the latest stuff (1999), is marginal.
I think his point still stands. He just uses a bad example.
I mean once I decided to start singing Dean Martin songs during a game of Halo 3 online... and the people on my team kept saying it was brilliant and insisted I continue. (in real life i'm an awful singer, although pitch is not a problem)
"""A while ago, we wrote a New York Times Magazine column about talent — what it is, how it’s acquired, etc. The gist of the column was that “raw talent,” as it’s often called, is vastly overrated, and that people who become very good at something, whether it’s sports, music, or medicine, generally do so through a great deal of “deliberate practice,” a phrase used by the Florida State psychologist Anders Ericsson and his merry band of fellow scholars who study expert performers in many fields.
As we wrote, there are at least three key elements to deliberate practice:
1. Setting specific goals. 2. Obtaining immediate feedback. 3. Concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.""""
Many people I know have talked the talk but then never really had the motivation to walk the walk and put in the effort.
Any ideas on what gives people the internal motivation and strength to follow through with practice in the first place?
My thing is bowling. I've been doing it since I was 6 (I'm 26 now). I went to the bowling alley as often as possible, I'd ride my bike down after school whenever I had money. In high school, I bought monthly memberships and would bowl 10-15 games a day, every day. I just couldn't get enough of it.
The past few years I've been averaging in the 220s, which is great, but not professional great yet. In the next few years, when I'm more financially stable, I'm going to try out the PBA Tour, if for nothing else but the experience.
I bowl so much that I developed bone spurs in my elbow that I had surgically removed a couple of weeks ago. I haven't bowled now for over 4 months, which is the longest break I've ever taken.
Moral of the story is, you don't decide to practice something, you do it because you can't imagine not doing it.
For example, a lucky streak or parental encouragement might have led you to make "I'm awesome at bowling" part of your identity, creating a virtuous circle of getting better and being proud and wanting to get even better.
If you had a friend or older brothre that had been doing it for 6 months that was with you when you first tried bowling, you might have decided that you simply weren't any good at it, and therefore why waste your time practising something you're clearly no good at?
I wonder how much of what we all decide to dedicate our lives to is simply down to random initial conditions.
Can't say it wasn't fun, and it definitely pays the bills now. But I would trade it all to be in a mediocre rock band that plays crappy hole-in-the-wall clubs in tiny godforsaken midwest US towns on Tuesday with a midnight time slot. But I was never good at guitar.
(No, karaoke is straight out. Compared to me, Fran Drescher is the Queen of the Night. I think I actually sounded better while my voice was breaking.)
I included my negatives so I could conclude: it's easy to criticize, but hard to make people dance.
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is there nothing human beings can't do? yes, but that's why we make machines