pickIt tells you how people reach at an Expert Level Performance and also discusses about innate talent and those skills that can be developed with practice even if you don't have innate talent.
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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise | 
pickIt tells you how people reach at an Expert Level Performance and also discusses about innate talent and those skills that can be developed with practice even if you don't have innate talent.
As a professional musician with a background in neuroscience, I am annoyed that his story about perfect pitch in the introduction is factually incorrect! Those kids did not develop perfect pitch through the training he describes. They developed what scientists who study perfect pitch call “heightened tonal memory.“ A totally different thing than perfect pitch.
Even the most motivated and intelligent student will advance more quickly under the tutelage of someone who knows the best order in which to learn things, who understands and can demonstrate the proper way to perform various skills, who can provide useful feedback, and who can devise practice activities designed to overcome particular weaknesses.
So here we have purposeful practice in a nutshell: Get outside your comfort zone but do it in a focused way, with clear goals, a plan for reaching those goals, and a way to monitor your progress. Oh, and figure out a way to maintain your motivation.
This is a fundamental truth about any sort of practice: If you never push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will never improve.
Learning isn‘t a way of reaching one‘s potential but rather a way of developing it.
pickAn interesting read. Highly recommend it to people interested in how the brain works. It does get a bit repetitive regarding ideas but the anecdotes remain interesting
Heading into the last chapter of this book, lots of very interesting ideas!
Anyone interested in the brain must read this! It is blowing my mind on a chapter by chapter basis
Some recommended reading from my singing teacher
If you stop believing that you can reach a goal, either because you've regressed or you've plateaued, don't quit. Make an agreement with yourself that you will do what it takes to get back to where you were or to get beyond the plateau, and then you can quit. You probably won't.
"The most important gifts we can give our children are confidence in their ability to remake themselves again and again and the tools with which to do that job."
That's what's wrong with everything. It's the mad who are in charge. Who decided that was a good idea? The gods I suppose, but they're madder than all the rest. We live under the jumpy heel of insanity, is what we do, and is it any wonder we drink, and worse?
