The 6 Keys To Being Awesome At Everything
I've been playing tennis for nearly
five decades. I love the game and I hit the ball well, but I'm far
from the player I wish I were.
I've been thinking about this a lot the past couple of weeks, because
I've taken the opportunity, for the first time in many years, to play
tennis nearly every day. My game has gotten progressively stronger.
I've had a number of rapturous moments during which I've played like
the player I long to be.
And almost certainly could be, even though I'm 58 years old. Until
recently, I never believed that was possible. For most of my adult life,
I've accepted the incredibly durable myth that some people are born
with special talents and gifts, and that the potential to truly excel
in any given pursuit is largely determined by our genetic inheritance.
During the past year, I've read no fewer than five books — and a raft
of scientific research — which powerfully challenge that assumption
(see below for a list). I've also written one,
The Way We're Working Isn't Working,
which lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance,
to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally,
mentally, and spiritually.
We've found, in our work with executives at dozens of organizations,
that it's possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same
systematic way we do a muscle: push past your comfort zone, and then
rest. Aristotle had it exactly right 2000 years ago: "
We are what we repeatedly do."
By relying on highly specific practices, we've seen our clients
dramatically improve skills ranging from empathy, to focus, to
creativity, to summoning positive emotions, to deeply relaxing.
Like everyone who studies performance, I'm indebted to the
extraordinary Anders Ericsson, arguably the world's leading researcher
into high performance. For more than two decades, Ericsson has been
making the case that it's not inherited talent which determines how good
we become at something, but rather
how hard we're willing to work — something he calls "
deliberate practice." Numerous researchers now agree that
10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain.
There is something wonderfully empowering about this. It suggests we
have remarkable capacity to influence our own outcomes. But that's
also daunting. One of Ericsson's central findings is that practice is
not only the most important ingredient in achieving excellence, but
also the most difficult and the least intrinsically enjoyable.
If you want to be really good at something, it's going to involve
relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration,
struggle, setbacks and failures. That's true as long as you want to
continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The
reward is that being really good at something you've earned through your
own hard work can be immensely satisfying.
This blog was originally posted at HBR.org and is republished here with permission.
Pursue what you love
Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
Do the hardest work first
We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain.
Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found,
delay gratification and
take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they
do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the
fewest distractions.
Practice Intensely
Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break.
Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can
bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence
is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½
hours a day.
Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses
The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments.
Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
Take regular renewal breaks
Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning.
It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
Ritualize practice
Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher
Roy Baumeister has found,
none of us have very much of it.
The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to
ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them,
so that over time you do them without having to squander energy
thinking about them.
It takes several hours of daily practice to achieve excellence, so prioritize
I
have practiced tennis deliberately over the years, but never for the
several hours a day required to achieve a truly high level of
excellence. What's changed is that I don't berate myself any longer for
falling short. I know exactly what it would take to get to that level.
I've got too many other higher priorities to give tennis that
attention right now. But I find it incredibly exciting to know that I'm
still capable of getting far better at tennis — or at anything else —
and so are you.
Tired of being a boring, replica of everyone else? If you are, here's how to be different, yet awesome. 
