In the world we’re living in, if you don’t get something made and in front of an audience there [is] finally no one else to blame but the person in the mirror. If you’re talented, don’t wait for someone else to tell you so. Go out there, find your own audience.

—Fred Seibert

Warren Buffett on hiring smart(er) people.

I am not good at tech matters but I have got a lot of people who are. I don’t have to be smart about everything; I didn’t deliver my wife’s baby! So, I believe in using people who are smarter than I am and it is not very hard to find the number that are and certainly in the tech field. I just don’t have that ability but I am reasonably good at spotting the people who do have that ability. We get the best people, and when you get the best people and you let them go, you get the best result.

There are two kinds of geniuses: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians’. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they’ve done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark.

—Mark Kac

The Art of Manliness has a great write-up about deliberate practice. If you don’t want to read any of the links I’ve posted or any of the books referenced, I’d read this. If you’re interested in improving at a skill, deliberate practice (in conjunction with constant feedback) is the surest way to do so.

Deliberate practice, on the other hand, is designed with clear objectives and goals.  When top performers practice, they break down their skill into sharply defined elements. After breaking down a skill into parts, a top performer will work intently on the element they need to improve most. During the entire practice, they focus solely on that one aspect.

I really like how Seth Godin describes sprezzatura.

This is an archaic Italian word for being able to do your craft without a lot of visible effort. It’s a combination of elan and grace and class

Sprezzatura in anything is attractive.

From David Halberstam’s book A March to Madness: A View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference:

Every team needs a motherfucker, someone who is tough and mean and willing to do anything to win. That can mean getting in the other team’s face or getting in the face of a teammate if necessary. Michael Jordan was a motherfucker, even if his college coach wouldn’t use the term.

Drew Brees is/was quite the athlete. Brees held a 3-1 record against Andy Roddick in tennis as youngsters. Pair that with Brees 3-handicap on the golf course (started playing in college), his high school basketball and baseball skills (Brees thought baseball was his best chance at playing pro) and his Super Bowl ring and he’s a pretty good athlete.

I never can decide if I love reading about these natural athletes or if it makes me sick that they get all the talent in ALL sports. And reading this explains where he gets some of his natural talent.

Shouldn’t we all try to be The Guy?

A kick-ass dude, a nail-eatin’, nut-crushin’ decision maker, a competitor with killer instincts. Someone who attracts and hires A’s, unafraid to hire above himself. A player. A hitter.

Watching this Merlin Mann video last night, he referenced second-order ignorance (or incompetence) from Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt.

a novice at a particular skill is so unskilled that they don’t even realize how unskilled they really are. This leads beginners to greatly overestimate their own ability. In many cases, it can lead a beginner to be more confident in their own skill than an expert.

I think this happens a lot, especially to me. Merlin continues in the video talking about advanced-beginners and subtly touches on how wikipedia and the internet can make us all advanced-beginners rather quickly. It’s pretty fascinating stuff and tangentially relates to all the natural talent/deliberate practice/relaxed concentration talk.

I’ve touched on deliberate practice before, but I finally got around to reading the article that (apparently) kicked off the question of “when someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him good“. In the article is a great definition of deliberate practice:

Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

And, to touch on something I firmly believe in with work: you can only succeed (work-wise) if you care about what you’re working on.

Ericsson’s research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don’t love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don’t like to do things they aren’t “good” at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don’t possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.