4. Andre Agassiâs Father Believed in Math
⢠My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day,
Iâll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of
one year Iâll have hit nearly one million balls
⢠A child who hits one million balls each year will
be unbeatable
⢠(From Andre Agassiâs Autobiography âOpenâ)
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5. ButâŚ
⢠Does it work? Really?
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6. The 10,000 Hours Rule
⢠From the book âOutliersâ By Malcolm
Gladwell
⢠Gladwell claims that greatness requires
enormous time, roughly 10,000 hours of
practice
⢠Examples:
â Bill Gates
â Beatles
â Mozart (Child Prodigy, huh?)
â Sachin Tendulkar
â ⌠(fill it yourself)
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7. Another Book
⢠Bounce By Matthew Syed
⢠Quotes Malcolm Gladwellâs 10,000 hour rule and
extends it with many more examples, mainly
from sports (Matthew Syed used to be an
international table tennis player, by the way)
⢠This book adds an interesting twist to the tale
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8. Importance of Practice
⢠Three groups of violinists
â Grade A, B, C
⢠Check History - How many hours they practice in a
week?
â Group A: Roughly 4 hours a day
â Group B: Roughly 2 hours a day
â Group C: Less than an hour a day
⢠Important: There were no exceptions to this rule, both
ways
â Nobody who practiced 4+ hours a day went to B / C
â Nobody in A practiced < 4 hours a day
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9. But, Is Practice Enough?
⢠Car Driving for more than 10,000 hours is not
equal to Cricket practice for more than 10,000
hours
⢠Why?
â Autopilot mode
⢠OK Plateau
â Once you get there, you canât come back
â This term comes from Joshua Foer's book, âMoon
Walking With Einstein"
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10. How To Come Out Of OK Plateau
⢠3 Stages of learning:
â Cognitive
â Associative
â Autonomous
⢠But Experts manage this differently
â They are always looking for higher goals
â They develop strategies for keeping out of autonomous stage
⢠Example: Practicing something you already mastered
Vs Practicing something where you fail often
â Donât confuse âHitting the ballâ with practice
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11. Purposeful Practice
⢠Matthew Syed uses the
example of Roger
Federer to explain this
â You can imagine any
sportsman you prefer
â They make it look so easy,
How?
â Response Time â How do
they get those precious
extra milliseconds?
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12. Purposeful Practice (Contd)
⢠Peripheral knowledge Vs Strong Experience in a
domain
â It comes only with purposeful practice
⢠10,000 hours of purposeful practice seems to be
the magic formula
⢠Going back to Agassi Example
â If he was hitting the ball 1 Million times a year in the
same manner again and again (auto pilot), we
wouldnât be talking about him today
â He has seen 1 Million opportunities to understand
how to handle a ball
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13. Few Questions
⢠What is our 10,000 hour practice field (Domain)?
â Personal
â Professional
⢠Where are we, in terms of the 10,000 hour goal?
⢠Our Strengths / weaknesses?
⢠Are those weaknesses because of âOK Plateauâ? If yes,
how can we break away from the Autonomous mode?
⢠Are we doing purposeful practice in our field? For how
long, when will we hit our 10,000 hour mark?
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14. Image / Video Credits
⢠http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Outliers.png
⢠http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malcolmgladwell.jpg
⢠http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joshua-foer-2007.png
⢠http://www.openclipart.org/detail/147121/tennis-ball-by-
netalloy
⢠http://www.openclipart.org/detail/38197/-by-rejon-38197
⢠http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqOLYE9aWg
⢠http://www.andreagassi.com/
⢠http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/matthew-syed-author-of-
bounce/
⢠http://collider.com/columbia-moonwalking-with-einstein/80897/
⢠http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/08/open-
autobiography-andre-agassi
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15. Thank You
⢠And, Good Luck!
⢠Books Mentioned In This Presentation:
â Open: http://goo.gl/1PBq4
â Outliers: http://goo.gl/2IcIG
â Bounce: http://goo.gl/ZQ5f2
â Moon Walking With Einstein: http://goo.gl/oW0LQ
⢠Psst: There is something common between these three authors, guess what?
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