A little
while back I talked about an interview between Bryan Elliot and Gary Vaynerchuk. If you follow Gary Vee, at all, one of the main takeaways
is the importance of good, old-fashioned, hard work. In fact, here is the interview clip so you can listen to it yourself.
The
three main lessons, from that video, are: commit, work hard, make lots of
mistakes, and talent is overrated. Keep doing it, keep getting
better. Act, adjust, act, adjust, act, adjust. In a word, iterate.
I do
follow Mr. Vaynerchuk but I think he makes one critical mistake. Gary
talks a lot about passion, the importance of passion. And, I think he
misses the bull's eye.
The more
I pay attention to Gary Vee the more I believe he is passionate about
success. And, being that hard work is the prerequisite for success,
Gary is very passionate about hard work.
I have
heard Vaynerchuk say that he works, every weekday, from 7am to
midnight. If you watched the clip above you can hear Gary say, in no
uncertain terms, that he outworks people.
In an
effective, capitalist system, like the United States, we do not
really have the option of either working smart or
working hard. To get to the top we have to do both. Read this post.
Regardless
of whether you chose to work smart and/or hard, one thing you might
notice is that talent is not really part of the equation. This is a
message that a lot of people have been eating up lately. The idea I speak of is the idea that Talent is Overrated, which is the title of a book
written by Geoff Colvin.
America
is the quintessential egalitarian society. We believe in a level
playing field. We believe in equality of opportunity. I realize that
the idea that talent is overrated feeds into this notion of
egalitarianism. For this reason, I am a bit reticent to buy-in.
But,
this notion of talent not being all that important is rooted in
scientist. The world's expert on expert performance is a gentleman
names K Anders Ericsson. Ericsson is a professor of psychology at
Florida State University.
It is
Ericsson's work that was explained in Colvin's book. The professor was also
covered in the more popular book, by Malcolm Gladwell, titled
Outliers. And, of course, the idea that talent is overrated, is
brought up in Gary Vee's video, when he mentions LeBron James and
Kobe Bryant.
Forget
about LeBron and Kobe. Everybody seems to agree that the greatest
basketball player of all time is Michael Jordan. So, if you still
think talent is critically important, think about this: Jordan was
cut from his high school basketball team.
Again,
the option is not to either work smart or work hard.
The imperative is to do both. Embrace the genius of “and” like Imentioned in a previous post.
One
activity which ties together smart and hard work is deliberate practice.
This is one of the main findings from Anders Ericsson's work. What
separates the people that make it to the top from everybody else is
this activity that has come to be called “deliberate practice.”
You
would have to agree that practicing is a smart idea. But, we cannot
just practice things we are already good at. We also have to make
sure that the practice is difficult. That is to say, practice needs to truly stretch us and make us grow.
Deliberate
practice is the embodiment of working hard and working smart. And,
there are six elements, pf deliberate practice to take into
consideration. If you wish to reach your full potential, you will
need to implement deliberate practice.
Here are
the six elements of deliberate practice:
1. It is
designed to improve performance
2. It is
repeated a lot
3.
Feedback on results is continuously available
4. It is
highly demanding mentally
5. It is
hard
6. It
requires (good) goals
This is
a subject I will revisit often. For now, I just wanted to pass along
the six elements so that you can get started today. Do not wait until
you are good to start. You must start if you are ever to get good.
This blog is a great example. I know I am not a great blogger...yet.
And that is why I do it. Get it?
