Barry's Blog

So are super-high achievers naturally endowed, or is there something else that places them at the pinnacle of their particular world? A recent article by John Paul Newport, who regularly writes a golf column for The Wall Street Journal, provided some interesting insight into this age-old question. He begins his article, "Mastery, Just 10,000 Hours Away," by observing that most golfers believe (though they may not admit it to anyone else) that they are better than their scores indicate, and that all we need to do is devote a little more time to practice, and a few more rounds of play, and we would reach our intended goal. Newport calls this "Golf's Grand Illusion," in that if we only practiced a little more, draining those long putts and chipping shots for tap-ins would become a normative part of our game.

Newport suggests that we should think again about what it takes to reach success, citing two recent business books, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, and Talent Is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin. The premise of both books is that super-high achievers are not so fundamentally different from you and me, they just work harder and smarter.

Concerning the child-prodigy Mozart, Newport writes: "Both books, for instance, debunk the myth that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a born supernatural. The musical works he composed as a child were not particularly good (and were suspiciously written in the hand of his father, Leopold, a well-known composer). Most of them, even into his late teens, were rearrangements of other composers' pieces. As for his precocious skills on stage, modern musicologists estimate that his abilities were actually only about half as advanced as those of a run-of-the-mill prodigy today...So why the reputation as a boy genius? Because he did start early, at 3, under the expert tutelage of a father who was not only a gifted musician but also a specialist in the education of young talent. Leopold Mozart pushed his son to practice and perform nonstop, even though it was mostly drudgery, and gave him constant reliable feedback, as did audiences. By 21 Wolfgang was composing works that will live forever, but by that age he had been working diligently at the task for 18 years."

He makes the same observation concerning Tiger Woods (as both authors do), substituting Earl Woods for Leopold Mozart, and voila! Almost identical results. Sure, Tiger was a golf marvel at age 5, appearing on The Mike Douglas Show, but he was still only beating other kids.

Newport mentions that both Gladwell and Colvin utilize the formative research work of Florida State University Professor Anders Ericsson and colleagues to account for the development of extraordinary talent. Their work suggests that the threshold for worldclass expertise in any discipline, whether it be sports, music, science, business management, etc., is about 10 years, or 10,000 hours, or persistent, focused training and experience.

While Gladwell's book goes on to examine other factors (such as obscure circumstances from a high-achiever's early life) to account for their tremendous success, Colvin's work, Newport suggests, drills down into the minutia of the data to uncover the most productive components that lead to high achievement. And the most successful performers in any area, Colvin suggests, engage in what he calls "deliberate practice." This is an activity that is specifically designed by an expert teacher to improve the performance of a person's current comfort and ability level, and are repeatable, provide clear feedback, and are highly demanding mentally. In an interview on the difficulty and unpleasantness of "deliberate practice," Mr. Newport reported that Colvin, a Fortune Magazine columnist observed: "It has to be. Otherwise everyone would be an expert."

Let's not kid ourselves. While natural and God-given abilities (is there really any difference? See Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 4: 7-8) play a significant part in the success of any man's achievements, there is no substitute for hard work.

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910