Month: January 2016

Ten Years In The Tub

Farnam Street reviewed Nick Hornby’s Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books. I haven’t read it yet, but definitely will–just read this paragraph cited in FS’s review!

Francis Wheen’s book and Paul Collins’ Not Even Wrong were advance reading copies that arrived through the post. I’m never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because quite clearly there’s nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one’s otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. I had no idea I wanted to read Wheen’s book until it arrived, and it was because of Wheen that I read Lewis, and then Not Even Wrong turned up and I wanted to read that too, and Buchan’s Greenmantle got put to one side, I suspect forever. Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have the agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path. 

I already know I like the guy. Check out Farnam Street for the full review.

Don’t read this blog.

If you want to maximize your learning-per-reading-time, you should probably forget about my blog and read Farnam Street. I like learning about cognition, learning, and productivity; Shane Parrish at Farnam Street seems to live a life immersed in such learning, and does a great job of boiling it down for brief presentation. If you must stick around here, though, my WordPress stats will be thrilled–believe me, every page view shows up as a substantial percentage!

Scott H. Young and Cal Newport also will often be worth your time to read.

Mini-review: Bounce, by Matthew Syed

I just finished reading Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success, by Matthew Syed. Syed is a journalist and a several-time Olympic competitor in table tennis. In this book, he makes a great case that practice is what builds skill, with “talent” or “aptitude” often being mostly fiction. I recommend the book–the content is valuable, and it’s an enjoyable read.

Syed offers a number of interesting case studies. A few among them:

  • His own experience–in retrospect, he wasn’t exceptionally talented, but had the right opportunities for a lot of coaching and practice.
  • “Clusters” of elite runners–determined not by genetics, but by environment and experience.
  • An educational psychologist who set out to prove that training, not talent, determines chess skill. Before he was even married, he proposed to train his children to elite levels of skill. Two of his daughters held the top two rankings of female chess players in the world.

Syed also offers some other great nuggets. Among them, he looks into why high-level athletes “choke”, apparently losing all ability to play, and why athletic skill isn’t necessarily transferable across sports. In a great anecdote, he describes deploying his table-tennis reaction times against a tennis player’s famous high-speed serve. The results…well…didn’t convince him to switch sports.

Bounce echoes themes of psychologist Carol Dweck’s research, much of which is presented in her book Mindset. I highly recommend Dweck’s book as well (despite a fair amount of “fluff”), both for personal growth and parenting. I expect there’s also a fair amount of overlap with Geoff Colvin’s The Talent Code, but haven’t yet read Colvin’s book.