Quotes About Growth

When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of varied reps, and on getting clear feedback. Don't worry too much about making errors—the important thing is to explore. Soft skills are often more fun to practice, but they're also tougher because they demand that you coach yourself. After each session ask yourself, What worked? What didn't? And why?

If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens. If you don't have early success, don't quit. Instead, treat your early efforts as experiments, not as verdicts. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

We're prewired to imitate," Anders Ericsson says. "When you put yourself in the same situation as an outstanding person and attack a task that they took on, it has a big effect on your skill.

Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

One of the best measures of any group's culture is its learning velocity—how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.

As Albert Einstein said, "One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts.

We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it's really a terrible way to learn

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter. Or

is for amateurs.

This is not to say that being born late into a big family automatically makes someone fast, any more than having a parent die early in life automatically makes one prime minister of England. But it does say that being fast, like any talent, involves a confluence of factors that go beyond genes and that are directly related to the intense, subconscious reaction to motivational signals that provide the energy to practice deeply and thus grow myelin.

What is one thing that I currently do that you'd like me to continue to do? What is one thing that I don't currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often? • What can I do to make you more effective?

We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it's really a terrible way to learn," said Robert Bjork

Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is

Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

As Wooden also said, "Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.

The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn't help. Reaching does.

Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals.

Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective? A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement. Q: Why are passion and persistence key ingredients of talent? A: Because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don't love it, you'll never work hard enough to be great.

Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions. Pick a target. Reach for it. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach. Return to step one. Judging

She's really listening, hearing what you said and asking what it means, digging deeper," says Nili Metuki, design researcher. "She doesn't let things stay unclear, even when they're uncomfortable. Especially when they're uncomfortable

they suck, and it's also where they start to not suck.

We are myelin beings," Bartzokis says finally. "It's the way we're built. You can't avoid it.

Building habits of group vulnerability is like building a muscle. It takes time, repetition, and the willingness to feel pain in order to achieve gains. And as with building muscle, the first key is to approach the process with a plan.

Laszlo Bock, former head of People Analytics at Google, recommends that leaders ask their people three questions: What is one thing that I currently do that you'd like me to continue to do? What is one thing that I don't currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often? What can I do to make you more effective?