Bounce: The of Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

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There's another very interesting chapter which has some new ways to think about performance enhancing substances and methods. People who engage in long-term practice can nevertheless make large strides (pardon the pun), as anyone who has trained for the marathon will attest.

Bounce looks at big questions – such as the real nature of talent, what kind of practice actually works, how to achieve motivation, drugs in both sport and life, and whether black people really are faster runners. Although the last three chapters - sports psychology, East Germany's state-sanctioned doping, and the question of whether blacks are inherenty better runners - were interesting, they seemed to be extraneously tucked onto the book and didn't cohere all that well with the main subject of the book.I have just touched the surface of the numerous aspects of sports psychology and training that are discussed in this book. This book is saddled by an annoying undercurrent, one that detracts from the author’s central thesis: Syed’s inability, even in passing, to acknowledge that ineffable ‘something’ which is inseparable from world class achievement; the talent, the gift, the genetic fortuitousness that must be present for practice to feast upon. In Bounce Matthew Syed – an award-winning Times columnist and three-time Commonwealth table-tennis champion – reveals what really lies behind world-beating achievement in sport, and other walks of life besides.

By exploring these other factors, I hoped to re-evaluate how success happens, and address many of the dangers that attach to the overestimation of talent. For instance one chapter examines the myth of 'race' versus the scientific proof of the non-existance of race.

What he states is that what you tend to do for 10,000 hours with total dedication and excellence is what you will be good at – and it could be anything. It got reworked along the way so it applies now to life in general, with the title getting dressed up rather late in the process. See here for a superb paper on how the genetic influence on IQ has been misconceived for decades: Innovation in the Collective Brain. He combines his own experience in his climb to champion status with the experiences of other champion sportsmen and celebrities, to come to some very interesting conclusions about what allows someone to excel to the top in a field.

Seyd does go into some topics that his predecessors didn't, such as placebo effect--in other words--the power of belief. The key focal point that made this book stand out was the biographical summary he was able to provide of champions and what made them that way. Not because the book demands or merits superabundance of personal thought, but because it touched on a few topics which I spend a great deal of thought on anyways.My team and I have created a diagnostic tool that measures mindset and produces a report to increase self-awareness – Mindset Advantage. He builds a compelling argument that then branches out into other areas - why are Kenyans such great distance runners? The book argues that we hugely overestimate the significance of talent in the construction of success. It encourages us to step onto the path of deliberate practice, unleashing our inner capacities and crafting our own journey towards excellence.

The small few vying for glory, the stars we cheer on Centre Court, represent the shattered dreams of thousands.

The essential problem regarding the attainment of excellence is that expert knowledge simply cannot be taught in the classroom over the course of a rainy afternoon, or indeed a thousand rainy afternoons”. But isn’t there a danger that people in a growth mindset will keep persevering on futile challenges? Most of the concepts in this book have been borrowed from best sellers like The Outliers, the Talent Code, or Talent is Overrated, which he explicitly and often acknowledges.