Book Titles

You can work on technique all you like, but if you can’t use the effects, two things will happen: You won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring.

Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it ‘deliberate,’ as distinct from mindless playing…

If the activities that lead to greatness were easy and fun, then everyone would do them and they would not distinguish the best from the rest.

The reality that deliberate practice 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.

Even if [an annual performance review] is well done, it cannot be very effective. Telling someone what he did well or poorly on a task he completed eleven months ago is just not helpful.

Feedback? At most companies this is a travesty, consisting of an annual performance review dreaded by the person delivering it and the one receiving it.

When we learn to do anything new… we go through three stages. In the third stage… It’s automatic. And with that our improvement… slows dramatically, eventually stopping completely.

…great performers never allow themselves to reach the automatic, arrested-development stage in their chosen field. This is the effect of continual deliberate practice – avoiding automaticity.

Avoiding automaticity through continual practice is another way of saying that great performers are always getting better. This is why the most devoted can stay at the top of their field far longer than most people would think possible.

…the most important effect of practice in great performers is that it takes them beyond, or, more precisely, around – the limitations that most of us think of as critical.