Debunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hours Rule: What It Actually Takes to Reach Genius-Level Excellence by Maria Popova How top-down attention, feedback loops, and daydreaming play into the science of success. The question of what it takes to excel — to reach genius-level acumen at a chosen endeavor — has occupied psychologists for decades and philosophers for centuries. Groundbreaking research has pointed to “grit” as a better predictor of success than IQ, while psychologists have admonished against the dangers of slipping into autopilot in the quest for skill improvement. The “10,000-hour rule” — that this level of practice holds the secret to great success in any field — has become sacrosanct gospel, echoed on websites and recited as litany in high-performance workshops. Illustration by Vladimir Radunsky from Mark Twain's 'Advice to Little Girls.' The secret to continued improvement, it turns out, isn’t the amount of time invested but the quality of that time. Hours and hours of practice are necessary for great performance, but not sufficient. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
The Ultimate Guide to Learning Anything Faster “If only I learned about investing when I was still in my early twenties…” If only. For many of us, there are more things we want to learn than we have time for. And as information becomes more readily accessible online, the number of things we want to learn has only increased. Related: 6 Practical Steps to Learning How to Build a Startup Shortening the learning curve is a topic that’s been studied for many years, and this guide will cover the fundamental core principles of learning faster. So, here are those principles: 1. Why reinvent a wheel that’s already been created? Think back to a time when you first learned how to speak a new language or obtain a new skill. In order to achieve mastery faster, our first step should be to consult the top players in the field, and model the path they have already carved out for us. "It doesn’t matter what your age, gender or background is," Robbins continues. To quote yet another wise individual, this time Pablo Picasso: "Good artists copy. 2. 3. 4.
Visual book review: The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything… Fast (Josh Kaufman) – The idea of learning a new skill can be overwhelming. If you break the skill down into specific things you can learn, it becomes much more manageable. Tim Ferris used this to hack cooking (video) by dissociating it from shopping for groceries or cleaning up. Josh Kaufman’s new book The First 20 Hours fleshes out how to rapidly learn, illustrating it with stories, examples, and practical tips for a wide range of skills. Feel free to share this visual book review! The biggest new thing that I don’t yet intrinsically enjoy is strength training, which (as the name indicates) is probably more about training – my body has to adapt to it, and that takes time. So, let’s pick another skill. Creating animated videos (and not cheesy fake-written ones, either)Programming speech recognition macros (NatLink)Visualizing data with D3.js or other visualization libraries Of the three, I think visualizing data with D3.js will be the most fun for me. I’m also interested in writing more effectively.