原文书摘

- What makes a talented people is not their experience, not specific inborn abilities, neither general abilities such as intelligence and memory.

- We see everywhere that years of hard work do not make most people great at what they do. On the other hand, we see repeatedly that the people who have worked the hardest.

- The problem, observed the researchers, is that "the current definition of practice is vague." Their framework is not based on simplistic "practice makes perfect" observation. Rather, it is based on their highly specific concept of "deliberate practice."

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; it's highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual physical; and it isn't much fun.

- Frequently when we see great performers doing what they do, it strikes us that they've practiced for so long, and done it so many times, they can just do it automatically. But in fact, what they have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically.
 
- The essence of practice, which is constantly trying to do the things one cannot do comfortably, makes automatic behaviour impossible.

- Ultimately the performance is always conscious and controlled, not automatic.

- Indeed, the most important effect of practice in great performers is that it takes them beyond - or, more precisely, around - the limitations that most of us think of as critical. It enables them to perceive more, to know more and to remember more than most people.

1. Perceiving More

The superior perception of top performers extends beyond the sense of sight. They hear more when they listen and feel more when they touch.
- When excellent performers look further ahead than average performers do, they are literally looking into their own future. Knowing what lies ahead for them, they prepare for it and thus perform better. They may be looking only one second ahead, but for them that extra moment makes all the difference.
- Much of the power of looking further ahead comes from the simple act of raising one's gaze and getting a new perspective, and doing it not once or occasionally, but using practice principles to do it often and get better at it.

2. Knowing More

Top performers in a wide range of fields have better organized and consolidated their knowledge, enabling them to approach problems in fundamentally different and more useful ways.
- Building and developing knowledge is one of the things that deliberate practice accomplishes.
- Constantly trying to extend one's abilities in a field requires amassing additional knowledge, and staying at it for years develops the critical connections that organize all that knowledge and make it useful.

3. Remembering More

All these people have developed what we might call a memory skill, a special ability to get at long-term memory in a fast, reliable way.
- Top performers understand their field at a higher level than average performers do, and thus have a superior stricture for remembering information about it.
- Practice exerts an additional, overarching influence that in a way is even more impressive: It can actually alter the physical nature of a person's brain and body.
- Great performers really are fundamentally different. Their bodies and brains are actually different form ours in a profound way. But we're wrong in thinking, as many do, that the exceptional nature of great performers is some kind of eternal mystery or preordained outcome. It is, rather, the result of a process, the general elements of which are clear.

Applying the principles in our lives - Knowing what you want to do.
 
Designing a system of deliberate practice is identifying the immediate next steps.
Simple steps are easy while advanced steps might need a mentors.
- From this perspective we can see mentors in a new way - not just as wise people to whom we turn for guidance, but as experienced masters in our field who can advise us on the skills and abilities we need to acquire next and can give us feedback on how we're doing.

The skills and abilities one can choose to develop are infinite, but the opportunities to practice directly and the opportunities to practice as part of the work itself.

1. Practice Directly

1.1 Conditioning in business means getting stronger with the underlying cognitive skills that you probably already have. It can mean reviewing the fundamental skills that underlie your work.

1.2 Specific skill development is based on focused simulation, and that concept can be applied widely in business. Try to improve a specific aspect of your performance, achieve high repetition and get immediate feedback.

2. Practicing the Work

2.1 Self-regulation begins with setting goals. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome. The next prework step is planning how to reach the goal. The best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. The best performers also go into their work with a powerful belief in their ability to perform.

2.2 Self-observation. They are effect able to step outside themselves, monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it's going. (Metacognition - knowledge about your won knowledge, thinking about your own thinking.)

 - The practice opportunities that we find in work won't do any good if we don't evaluate them afterward.

- Excellent performers judge themselves differently form the way other people do. They're more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies.

Rich Mental Models

1. A mental model forms the framework on which you hang your growing knowledge of your domain.
2. A mental model helps you distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information.
3. Most important, a mental model enables you to project what will happen next.

Performing Great at Innovation

- They spent many years in intensive preparation before making any kind of creative breakthrough.
- The most eminent creators are consistently those who have immersed themselves utterly in their chosen field, have devoted their lives to it, amassed tremendous knowledge of it, and continually pushed themselves to the front of it.

Great Performance in Youth and Age

- Reality creates another advantage to starting early. In any field where people can start early, starting late may put one in an eternal and possibly hopeless quest to catch up.

If it's all about the punishing demands of deliberate practice, the continual, painful pushing beyond what's comfortable, then why does anyone do it?

The Multiplier Effect

- A very small advantage in some field can speak a series of events that produce far larger advantages. This multiplier effect accounts not just for improvement of skills over time but also for the motivation that drives the improvement.

Childhood may be especially important in how the drives development gets started.

Step 1: What do you really want?

What you want - really, deeply want - is fundamental because deliberate practice is heavy investment. What would you want so much that you'd commit yourself to the necessary hard, endless work, giving up relationships and other interests, so that you might eventually get it? Whatever it is that the greatest performers want, that's how much they must want it.

Step 2: And what do you really believe?

Belief is tragically constraining. Everyone who has achieved exceptional performance has encountered terrible difficulties along the way.
- What you really believe about the source of great performance becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve. Regardless of where our beliefs in this matter originated, we all have the opportunity to base them on the evidence of reality.
- The price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high.