As most parents are aware, one of my favourite topics when talking to students is about putting in the time and effort, to whatever they want to achieve. Needless to say, I sometimes get blank looks when I say this, but I was pleased to read an article recently that confirmed what I have been encouraging our students to do. So what does it take to be great?
“Success is all in the mind”, an article in the Weekend Australia, last weekend highlighted the work of Florida State University, Anders Ericsson, who is best known for his research on the topic of expertise. Ericsson is a professor of psychology, who has spent countless hours, well for that matter, years, researching top performers in a diverse range of fields – medicine, athletics, chess and music.
What will surprise many students and many parents too, is that we are not born with natural gifts that ensure greatness or expertise. The bottom line is that all so called ‘experts’ have achieved greatness through plain hard work.
Forget the “if I could, I would” excuse. The only way to gain the expertise and potential greatness is through ‘deliberate practice’. Just like a certain brand name advertisement states: “Just do it!”. This is the only way to the elite level. Greatness, it seems in spite of our misguided notion of ‘born to greatness’, simply requires a lot of hard work.
In an article from Fortune, Ericsson makes the point that not any kind of practice will produce expertise. Deliberate practice requires consistency and specific repetition. For example, hitting a bucket of balls in golf is not deliberate practice. Hitting an eight iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball a metre from the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing the results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day is deliberate practice.
If we apply the same principles to school work, homework and study and all other pursuits, then the following will provide some pointers, from Ericsson on how to be the best you can and perhaps the greatest:
practice the most (good performers practice only 20 % of the time that top performers do, regardless of talent or ability).
refine your performance and do this gradually
get regular and immediate feedback from your teacher or coach (don’t wait for advice – ask for advice if you are not given it)
spend extensive time on your practice (10,000 hours of solitary practice spent before the age of 20 is characteristic of expert performers)
set strategic goals for self-improvement (expert performers note exactly how they are different from other top performers)
Ericsson and his colleagues did a study of 20 year old violinists and found that the very best group averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next best averaged 7,500 hours and the next, 5000. This proved to be the case in many other fields too – surgery, sales, and most sports.
So the message at the start of another school year is simple. If you want to be great and if you want to be the best at what you want to do, then you have to put in lots and lots of time and effort. As Ericsson says:
It’s nice to believe that if find 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 .
Passion is the motivator to practicing rigorously. The lesson here is to do what you love and pursue it with all of your might. Passion comes from doing what you love.
If you would like to read more about Professor Ericsson and deliberate practice and applications to leadership and other topics, then follow these url links:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html
http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2006/11/01/passion-and-deliberate-practice-results-in-great-leadership/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391794/index.htm
