Bounce

Matthew Syed
The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

What's it about?
ScienceMotivation & InspirationCareer & Success
In Bounce (2011), Matthew Syed explores the origins of
outstanding achievements in fields like sports, mathematics and
music. He argues that it is intensive training, not natural ability
that determines our success, and people who attribute great
performances to natural gifts will probably miss their own chance
to succeed due to lack of practice.
About the author
Matthew Syed is an award-winning sports journalist who writes
columns for The Times and also works as a commentator for BBC
Sports. As a table tennis player, Syed was the English number one
for almost ten years and played in two Olympic Games.

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Learn what really separates the

winners from the rest of us.

“You’re so talented!” is a common exclamation of praise in our

culture. But is it really accurate?

Bounce looks at the science of attaining high performance, and

the steps needed to get there. You’ll find out, for example, why at
the end of the day Mozart wasn’t all that special.

You’ll also understand how even trivial things, like sharing a

birthday with someone successful, can inspire you to succeed.

Finally, you’ll also come to understand that most dreaded of

occurrences: choking when the stakes are highest, despite
thorough preparation. Thankfully, you’ll also learn about tools to
avoid it happening to you.

Key idea 1

If you want to excel, 10,000 hours of training will take you

much further than your natural abilities.

Mozart is considered by many to have been the greatest

composer who ever lived. Traditionally, most people would
assume outstanding achievements like his are due to natural
abilities, or even divine inspiration or fate. This assumption holds
especially true for child prodigies like Mozart who already had the
world mesmerized with his musical talent at the age of six.

But looking more closely at the phenomenon of child prodigies,

we find that in fact they had to practice for thousands of hours
before showing their so-called prodigious talent. In fact, scientists
studying the phenomenon have found that typically a prodigy’s
training begins at a very early age and that they compress
endless hours of practice into their young lives.

For example, when the six-year-old Mozart toured Europe to

display his precocious piano skills, he had already undergone
3,500 hours of musical training. If you compare this to other
pianists who have practiced for as long, Mozart’s performance
wasn’t all that exceptional.

It seems then, that outstanding abilities come from vast amounts

of rigorous practice rather than natural talents.

This is illustrated by a study of young violinists’ concerts, where

the only factor directly linked to the students’ level of
achievement was the amount of time they had spent practicing
seriously: while the star performers had practiced for an average
of 10,000 hours, the least skilled students only had 4,000 hours
under their belts. What’s even more telling is that there were no
exceptions: all of the best-performing students had devoted great
efforts to practicing, and all of the students who had practiced for
10,000 hours belonged to the best-performing group.

It seems that no prodigious talent can exist without thorough

practice.

Key idea 2

To master new skills, keep challenging yourself and try to

learn from your failures.

Imagine a child pianist practicing to play her favorite songs by

ear. She may spend many afternoons practicing at the piano, but
it’s likely that as soon as she gets close to the original, she’ll work
less and less hard to improve further as her performance is
already good enough.

This is actually typical for most people: they don’t practice

purposefully after a certain point. When we try to pick up a new
skill, we only work on improving our performance until a certain
point. That point could be the level of our peers, a requirement
set by a piano teacher or simply the level where we’re good
enough to derive pleasure from our performance.

After this point, we tend to simply keep practicing what we

already know, without challenging ourselves further. In essence,
we switch to autopilot, and though we may continue practicing,
we actually improve very little.

Top performers, however, differ in this aspect. They aren’t

content with performing tasks they have already mastered, but
instead strive to constantly improve and develop skills beyond
their current level. Such attempts to perform tasks that are out of
their reach force them to focus intently, and also send strong
signals to their brains and bodies that they need to adapt.

So how can you practice so that you keep improving and striving
for new skills? One way is to accept failure and learn from it.

Naturally, learning any task that’s out of your current reach will
entail failure. However, this is not a bad thing, as failure provides
you with feedback. It teaches you which skills you need to master
the task, and shows you which skills you have at your disposal:
your strengths and weaknesses. This information allows you to
adapt your training regimen.

To become a champion, you must keep striving for skills that are
out of your reach, accepting and learning from failures. It’s this
kind of training that will transform you.

Key idea 3

Intensive practice changes the way your brain works,

making it more effective.

One of the most convincing manifestations of the power of

practice can be seen in table tennis player Desmond Douglas. For
a long time, he was the top player in the UK, famous for his
lightning-fast reactions. Yet, when scientists ran tests on the
reaction speeds of all the English national team players, Douglas
turned out to be the slowest. So how can someone with long
reaction times in general react quickly when it comes to ping-
pong?

The answer lies in the two changes that intensive practice brings
about in the way your brain handles a specific task.

First, after years of experience in a field, an expert’s brain has

learned to “read” complex situations typical for that field. It has
been primed to quickly extract the relevant bits of information
from this familiar setting.

Therefore when playing table tennis, Douglas’ brain could

instantly spot the relevant visual cues to predict the ball’s
trajectory. This left him with more time to react than a less
experienced player.

Second, an expert uses different parts of the brain to perform a

task than a novice does. This is because when you learn a new
skill like table tennis, you need your conscious mind to monitor
your every move in an unfamiliar setting. Thus a part of the brain
called the prefrontal cortex, responsible for conscious control, is
very active.

Once you’ve mastered the skill, conscious control is no longer

required as the various actions have become automated. This
means that in your brain, control of the movements has been
turned over to other areas.

In the realm of table tennis, this would mean that when a player
has mastered the wrist movements necessary for forehand
topspin, his mind is free to concentrate on things like legwork or
tactical considerations.

Now we understand how Douglas became a fast player with slow

reactions: intensive practice changed the way his brain functioned
in table tennis.

Next, let’s look at how your own attitude and state of mind can
have an impact on your chances of success.

Key idea 4
If you believe success is determined by your innate
talents, you will fail to strive for glory.

Imagine a top-notch marathon runner, who always finishes her

races in the top ten. If you had to explain her success, would you
say it was due to her being a natural runner? Or is it because she
has practiced unwaveringly for years?

If you’d opt for the first explanation, psychologists would say you
probably have a fixed mindset, meaning you believe success
depends on something you can’t change, like genetics. This kind
of mindset is very harmful.

If someone with such a fixed mindset is ever labeled as

“ungifted,” they will no longer bother to practice or try to
improve. They will feel that since they obviously lack the talent to
succeed, there’s no point in wasting time on arduous practice.

On the other hand, if someone with a fixed mindset believes that

they are “gifted,” they still won’t bother to take the necessary
steps to truly excel, because they feel they will succeed anyway
thanks to their innate abilities.

Consider Darius Knight, a promising table tennis player who was

praised so much for his extraordinary talent that he reduced his
training intensity. The consequence? His results plummeted until
a new coach got him to focus on working harder.

A fixed mindset can also make people give up too easily when
learning something new, because they take even small setbacks
as evidence that they’re not suited to the task.

This was demonstrated by a study where children had to solve

puzzles of increasing difficulty. When the children who had a fixed
mindset encountered the first difficulties, they began to doubt
their intelligence and eventually gave up entirely. At the same
time, the other children rose to the challenge – they tried harder
and became better solvers when the puzzles became more
demanding.
It seems clear then that children should be praised for their
commitment, stamina and enthusiasm rather than their talents,
for the latter can lead to a fixed mindset.

Key idea 5

Great ambition to succeed can be sparked by the most

trivial of circumstances.

When it comes to the world of professional golf, for a long time

South Korea was not really on the map. However, after South
Korean golfer Se Ri Pak won the LPGA Championship in 1998, the
number of South Koreans on the LPGA tour multiplied. This is not
a coincidence.

When people find a similarity – even a trivial one – to a successful

person, it increases their confidence in their own chances of
success and motivates them to try harder. In this case, South
Korean golfers were inspired by their compatriot’s success. This
phenomenon is called motivation by association.

This effect follows from the very basic human desire to belong,
which makes us identify with people even if there is just a random
similarity between us and them.

This was illustrated by an experiment where undergraduates had

to work on unsolvable math puzzles. Before the task though, the
students had to read a report written by a fictional but supposedly
successful mathematics graduate. When the graduate’s birthday
on the report was tweaked so that it matched the birthday of the
student reading it, it resulted in those students persevering on
the puzzle some 65% longer than their peers. This trivial similarity
was enough to make them believe in their mathematical abilities
more, and try harder.

Other trivial things can spark our motivation too, and they need
not be similarities to successful people. Many highly successful
people have, in retrospect, found that a trivial incident ignited
their desire to excel – for example, an insult or a seemingly
meaningless assignment. For professional football player Mia
Hamm, that incident came when her coach told her that she had
to mentally “switch on” her motivation to strive for the top every
day, and demonstrated this point by turning off a light switch in
the room.

Key idea 6

If you’re not convinced you’ll win a competition, you won’t

be able to put in your maximum performance.

Right before a competition, top athletes go to great lengths to

convince themselves that they will win. This is true even if the
athlete in question has just suffered a string of defeats.

To an external observer, this kind of conviction may seem

irrational. But in fact the point of this conviction is not its veracity.

You see, in a competition, even the slightest shadow of a doubt in

your ability to win will make you more likely to fail. This is
because doubts make you nervous and can cause your muscles to
quiver or tighten, which could cause a golfer to miss a crucial putt
or a gymnast to lose his balance.

Doubts will also distract you when you should be concentrating on

your performance. Thus, for example, a football player riddled
with doubts will be less likely to spot important cues and signals
from teammates.

Finally, doubts can also cause you to be so nervous that your

mind “draws a blank,” meaning that you temporarily forget
something crucial. This phenomenon is familiar to many people
in, for example, public speaking.

To perform optimally, you must first get into the right mindset,
because your mind can greatly influence your physical state. A
good example of this is the placebo effect, where people
experience an improvement in health that cannot be explained by
the medical procedure they underwent. For example, when
severely injured soldiers were injected with saline solution, their
pain subsided as long as they thought they were getting
morphine.

For top athletes, the mere belief that they are in unbeatable form
focuses their mind and allows their body to perform better. It
improves their concentration, helps them remain calm under
stress and enhance their motor control.

Next, let’s look at why some people choke when under pressure,
and what can be done about it.

Key idea 7

When we are under pressure and don’t want to fail, our

brains make us act cautiously and deliberately.

Imagine you’re at a party, holding a glass of red wine filled to the

brim. To your horror, you realize that to greet the host you have
to cross an extremely expensive white carpet. So what do you do?
Probably, you’ll slow down and focus on each and every step. But
why?

It’s important to understand that the brain is made up of two

systems:

The first is called the explicit brain system. It is rather slow, and it
is activated when we try to consciously control our movements,
for example, when we are performing a tap dancing routine for
the first time and need to memorize the steps and control each
movement of our feet.

The other system is called the implicit brain system, and it is

active when we perform tasks automatically, without
concentrating on what we’re doing. It allows us to control our
movements quickly and fluently, and it can even process multiple
tasks simultaneously.
Once someone has mastered a task, that task is taken over by
the implicit brain system, meaning that they are then free to
focus on other tasks.

But when people are under pressure, they often revert to the
explicit brain system and begin to monitor every single
movement they make.

Of course, important tasks are prone to inducing pressure,

especially if failure in them would cause unpleasant
consequences. This is why people sometimes behave strangely
when they’re doing something very important; they are afraid of
failing.

For example, as you carry that wine glass across the precious
carpet, you’re afraid of spilling it and angering your host, so you
revert to the explicit brain system that you normally only use
when learning completely new skills, and hence walk very slowly
and deliberately.

Key idea 8

Avoid choking under pressure by convincing yourself that

an event isn’t important.

Many top athletes have been in this nightmare scenario: They are
facing a career-defining contest or competition, and are
extremely well-prepared, but at some point in the event, their
performance deteriorates to that of a beginner. But why does this
occur?

Thousands of hours of training and practice has prepared these

experts to perform complex tasks. In fact, the tasks have long
since been handled by their implicit brain system, so they are
done automatically and can be performed simultaneously.

The phenomenon of failure when the stakes are highest is

called choking, and it occurs when the expert has to perform a
complex but familiar task under great pressure. This happens
because as you know, under pressure the brain transfers control
of any task to the explicit brain system, which unfortunately
cannot do many things at once. Thus the expert is no longer able
to perform complex tasks, and chokes.

To avoid choking, athletes have to convince themselves that the

competition is irrelevant, as this will lower the amount of pressure
they feel.

The author, for example, before facing a big competition, tries to

put things in perspective by thinking of things much more
important than the contest, like his relationships, health or his
family. This helps him feel less pressure, which allows him to use
his implicit brain to perform the tasks.

Therefore it seems that in order to excel, top athletes must

practice as though their chosen sport was the most important
thing in the world, but then downplay this importance when the
stakes are highest.