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Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success

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Matthew Syed's Bounce has an interesting thesis. In the vain of Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success and Colvin's Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, Syed attempts to argue against the idea or 'raw talent.' A former table-tennis champion, Syed wants to show us that excellence - particularly of the sporting and artistic variety - is a better predictor of success than innate talent.

Syed presents three lines of data to bolster his argument: personal anecdote from his sporting days, knowledge he has gained about athelets and their backgrounds he has gained from being a sports writer, and summaries of studies done by psychologists (many of the same ones appearing in the two above-cited books). The first chapter is largely Syed's retelling of his own ascent to the top of table-tennis, where he points out that the fact that his town produced quite a few table-tennis stars is enough to at least call into question the 'talent myth.' Later, he goes into some histories of great artists and sports stars - Mozart, Federer, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, the chess champion Polgar sisters - to show that it was not so much raw talent, but extraordinary dedication and deep practice that helped them succeed. By way of studies, Syed cites several by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson whose work suggests that the difference between 'good' and 'great' is better predicted by practice than most any other factor.

As a former high-school teacher, the second section of the book was equally interesting and encouraging: the thesis here is that belief in oneself and desire to keep practicing is is a key contribution to success at a domain. Natural talent, in other words, goes only a small way: it is whether that talent leads one to practice voraciously or sit on one's laurels that really matters. Syed discusses an oft cited study by Carol Dweck (and colleagues): Dweck and company gave two groups of elementary students the same (fairly easy) test. One group got their tests back with praise of their talent ("You are so talented at this,") and the other group got the tests back with praise of their effort ("You must have studied and practiced a lot,"). Students were offered to take either a test of the same ease or a harder test. Unequivocally, students in the first group chose the easy test while those in the latter group chose the hard test. Message: effort gets us way farther than talent because it pushes us.

Two things I did not like about Syed's book. First, much of the information is the same info in the two above-cited books, and Syed even cites those books to excess. Truth be told: the three books are quite interchangeable and it is a bit disappointing to see the same data repackaged like this.

Next, I don't think Syed really dealt with counter-evidence much. There is a decent amount of studies and books demonstrating that genetics may be more important than Syed's work implies. Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders: How Your Genes Affect Your Work Life, Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality and others describe interesting research into genetics' effect on our interests, innate talents, and - here's the kicker - work ethic. So, Syed's thesis can be complexified a bit: it is very strongly possible that one's ethic toward practice, and one's interest in certain subjects to the degree that one would practice obsessively, have a strong correlation with genetics. Certainly, it is not all "nature," but it is not really all "nurture" as Syed seems to imply either.

All in all, though, this is a really well-written and quite interesting book. I simply wish that Syed would have (a) come up with a bit more original data that hasn't been discussed in popular literature before, and (b) devoted a piece of the book to objections and challenges to the thesis.

As you probably already know, the main message/goal of Matthew Syed's book Bounce is to discredit the established notion that success in highly complex tasks (athletics in this case) is entirely due to innate ability. Instead, he argues, it is thousands of hours of purposeful, challenging practice and determination to improve that create the superior skill observed in top athletes, chess players and professionals in other fields.

Syed writes in a conversational tone that is very engaging and easy to follow. He does a decent job articulating his arguments and uses scientific evidence, personal experience as a table tennis Olympian and anecdotes from famous athletes to back up his claims. Additionally, this book has plenty of good insight, for example: the amount of practice it takes on average to acquire a high level of skill in a particular activity; the difference between regular practice and purposeful practice; why certain races are falsely perceived to be "naturally" good at certain sports; how children respond when they are rewarded for talent vs. hard work; the physiology of choking during a performance and many others.

Despite the good stuff, certain parts of the book were not entirely convincing. Here is an example. Rationally, it's not too hard to buy into the idea that hard work and talent breed excellence. The problem is that this still doesn't quite explain what makes those people that start mastering a skill at a very early age gravitate towards say soccer ball vs. violin. Or why some children who are as young as two (before any meaningful parental intervention) enjoy being challenged and thrive on practicing a skill, while others shine away from it. Another interesting notion that is not discussed in this book is the speed of learning. For example when very young children are given an opportunity to do something new, some will still learn the skill quicker than others when all the other factors, such as purposeful practice and "growth mentality" have been controlled for. Think for example when a group of parents take their kids to the same skating rink, with the same instructor for the very first time. It is hard to argue that after the first half hour or so, some kids will be completely helpless and falling, others will manage to stand up, while still others will actually be successfully skating around. I am not arguing that these initial differences cannot be overcome with practice, but how did they originate in the first place if everyone is tabula rasa as Syed argues? Anyway, my goal here is not to start a nature vs. environment debate, I am just pointing out some examples that I wish this book addressed in greater detail.

Overall, Syed's book is still pretty insightful, however as shown in my previous example, I don't think that his theory of acquisition of skill is complete. This makes the book read kind of a like an almanac of interesting things about top performers rather than a serious analysis into which part of "talent" is innate vs. which part is practice. I would love if for his next book, Syed could concentrate on the aforementioned gaps instead of giving us bits and snippets of "cool pop sci material".

This is a good book, but not a great one. It has many good ideas within it, and it also does a good job of demolishing some old icons. It is a work of synthesis and it is honest enough to acknowledge the influence of many other books including Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else and Outliers: The Story of Success As I had already read these two books I found the ideas in Bounce familiar. Its main failing is the lack of a summary chapter at the end bringing the book to a conclusion. It just ends.

Bounce is superb at demolishing the ideas of "innate talents" and "genetic endowments and "racial characteristics." Syed points out the combinations of factors that come together to allow top performance to emerge. It is usually some combination of focused and genuine enthusiasm, opportunity, certain local quirks; disciplined practice and well trained experience. The initial enthusiasm for a task has to come from within- which allows the learner to put up with the knocks and setbacks on the way to becoming good at something. He explains very well why parents can try pushing their children into something...but probably won't get great results by so doing. The proverb about leading the horse to water, but not being able to get them to drink comes to mind. This leaves open an obvious niche for a book that helps parents to recognise and go with their child's talents and abilities.

The idea of disciplined practice being necessary to get good at something is stressed throughout the book. This applies in many fields both in sporting and other professions. The idea of perceptual compression, so that an expert apprehends and understands a situation so much more quickly and deeply than the non-expert is well described. The importance of domain specific knowledge is stressed. Syed makes a well aimed punch at the nonsense of "general management" and the idea that "the cognitive processes of learning, reasoning and problem solving" are sufficient for good decision making. He points out that the expert in a field does all these processes much more quickly, effectively, and powerfully than any non-expert, no matter how intelligent. The mechanism is that the expert is using is called "advanced pattern recognition."

"It is the rapid escalation in the number of variables in many real life situations-including sport- that makes it impossible to sift the evidence before making a decision: it would take too long. Good decision making is about compressing the informational load by decoding the meaning of patterns derived from experience. This cannot be taught in the classroom; it is not something you are born with; it must be lived and learned. To put it another way it emerges through practice."

Syed describes what happens in the brain as we progress from learning to performance. He also describes beautifully what happens when an expert "chokes." In this the expert stops using their unconscious competence, and tries to move back to doing the task consciously. But in so doing they disrupt their flow, and take too long analysing the situation, when normally they would just do what has to be done.

There are many good and useful ideas within this book about what helps towards and what hinders achievement. Syed mainly uses examples from sport, but he also uses examples from other fields with memorable examples of a fireman's sense that something was just a bit different so he got his crew out just before a building collapses, and of the differences between experienced and novice doctors.

If you want to achieve more in your chosen activity then this book has many ideas within it that will help you. I would recommend reading Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else alongside it. The earlier in life you get hold of the ideas in these books and use them the better.

This is an incredibly interesting book that basically claims that practice makes perfect (it must be PURPOSEFUL practice, however). The author makes the case, with plenty of examples, that excellence in many areas--from Mozart in music to Tiger Woods in golf--comes not from any inborn talent, but from sheer practice. It also gives us who work in the business world evidence that a person who may be great at managing, for example, an electrical service company may not be any good at all at managing an automobile company--that experience and knowledge of automobiles (in this case) is more important than the experience of simply managing.

There are fascinating accounts of how the brain works throughout the book. For example, why a chess grandmaster playing ten games simultaneously while blindfolded can remember the placement of every chess piece on every board and win most, if not all, of the games; but when in a non-game situation with the chess pieces set randomly on the board, can not remember the placement of pieces any better than you or I.

The author makes the argument that practice is more important than natural talent. In fact, he makes the argument that what many consider natural talent is simply the accumulation of purposeful practice. The book is well-written, interesting and informative reading all the way through (although the last chapter or two are a bit weaker than the rest). It should be of interest not only to the sportsworld and such but also to educators and business.

This is an interesting and informative book related to performance improvement and competition, mostly focusing on sports, but with applicability to work situations as well. It is the latest of a number of books that attack specific situations by applying combinations of neurological development, psychology, and economics. In this regard, it is somewhat similar to books on behavioral finance insofar as it takes a multi-disciplinary approach to analyzing human performance. As such it provides novel and, to me, refreshing insights about human performance that could have applicability to anyone who is interested in achieving, or encouraging, success.

The book covers a lot of ground, but generally speaking, it posits that people are not "born" stars - excellence is a function of time and commitment. Thus, reach "expert" status in most activities, including sports, you must:

1. Practice - lots of it. 10,000 hours are required to achieve expertise. The book argues that successful decisions to problems characterized by complexity are propelled not by innate ability, but experience built up by practice.

2. Push your limits. You must fail in order to succeed via "purposeful practice." Syed argues that mistakes are not a problem -- it's how you learn from them.

3. Find motivation. In this part of the book, there is a discussion on the influence of commonality and role models in the development of superior performers

4. Believe in yourself, even against the odds. Syed discusses both the importance of placebo effect, and the role of superstition in sports and life in successive chapeters.

The book also discusses topics such as the development of decisional heuristics in top athletes/performers, and the final chapter, entitled "Are Blacks Superior Runners?" is dedicated to debunking racial myths in performance.
The focus of this work is on sports, but it has equal applicability to life - whether in trying to succeed in the working world, learn a new language, or even raising children (hint: praise effort, not results).

The writing itself is crisp, using sentence structures and methods found in many newspapers rather than in more academic works. It uses interesting anecdotes from a number of areas, whether they be Mozart's or Tiger Woods' childhoods, a fatal airplane crash from 1972, or the flawed advice given to Enron my the consultancy McKinsey rather than the dry writing style you might expect from a book covering the topics mentioned above.

In all, I really enjoyed this book. If you like Freakonomics, Soccernomics, behavioral finance, or sports in general, chances are you'll find it to be a good read. The only complaint I have is that the chapter on drugs in sport, while entertaining, does not necessarily fit in with the overall flow of the book itself, but that is a minor complaint.

The author comes down squarely on the side of nurture in the "nature vs. nurture"
debate. He maintains that 10,000 hours of focused and deliberate practice,
(based on a studies by Anders Erricsson published in Psychological Review in 1993)
are the difference between true excellence and being just good. This is territory that has been covered in "Outliers" and "Talent is Overrated", and I think in at least a slightly more broad manner.

Although he does mention fields such as chess and music, "Bounce" focuses mainly on this theory applied to sports. Specifically he uses as an example throughout the book on his own mastery of ping pong. Since sports IS dependent on physical characteristics (there are no 5 foot tall NBA players or 7 foot tall Olympic gymnasts) it is interesting that this is not really covered. The premise seems not to be "if you have the physical characteristics, then 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert" but simply that "practice really does make perfect" , talent, ability or physical build matching the sport are not necessary.

The issue I have with these sort of books is that they are very one sided and often based on just a few studies which the author then extrapolates to a much broader conclusion. Perhaps the study shows that 10,000 hours of practice does make a chess champion. That does not necessarily mean 10,000 hours of practice would make a world class scientist. The book also presumes causation (Practice=expert). Perhaps there is another confounding variable. For example, perhaps kids who start out good at something are more likely to pursue it, practice more, get better, repeat cycle.

Generally I found the book an easy read, but was put off by the premise that giving a bunch of examples constitutes proof of a theory. Because the book includes in the title "The Science of Success" I expect more actual science.

This book was widely reviewed for proposing a different view of genius. Syed argues that genius is not in the genes, so to speak, but lies in a huge amount of repetitive practice--practice done not under a parent's eye, but from an inner drive to excel. In other words, you too could have been Roger Federer--or Pablo Picasso--if you had started practicing your craft at a very early age and devoted your whole life to perfecting it.

The title suggests that the book examines the lives of the four geniuses named in the title, and reveals a common thread, which would have been interesting, if it were possible. But the book focuses mostly on the author's experiences as a young table tennis champ in the U.K. It happens that there was a small club in the neighborhood where the kids all practiced for hours, as kids do. As a result, they all became first class players, winning all sorts of tournaments and championships.

There's little doubt that almost anyone can improve a skill by practicing it a lot. You've probably had this experience with games you were obsessed with for a time, crossword puzzles, or parallel parking. But to suggest that anyone can become a Mozart or a Beckham under the right conditions seems a bit farfetched, and Syed doesn't make the case very well. Interesting idea, but a lot more research and support would be needed to convince me.

Before I begin, let me just state that I never read Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers," but I have a feeling this book is going to draw a lot of comparisons to that one. The premise seems to be exactly the same: Examining what appears to be "Natural" genius and discovering that it is really the product of 10,000 hours of dedicated, focused practice. All I can imagine is that the two authors were working on their books at the same time, and Gladwell got his out first, leaving Syed in a rather unfortunate position...

In any case, I loved this book. I found myself pulling out my highlighter and marking key sentences that can serve as motivation. The basic gist of the book is, as I stated, that anyone has the potential of becoming incredibly successful in an endeavor AS LONG AS they engage in about 10,000 hours of PURPOSEFUL practice. This is where you work on things that you can't do, with the goal of getting better. It requires not just dedication but also the right education and training. But from the anecdotal evidence Syed provides, it looks as though if you put those things together, you WILL be successful.

Syed discusses parents who have made the choice to turn their kids into world-class athletes/chess-players/etc, and shows that with focused training from an early age, the parents can be successful. But he gives short shrift to the morality of it all. The whole book seems like it should naturally look at the philosophy of whether it is right to direct your child's skills like this, and it should raise questions of predestination and whether WE have any control over our interests and skills, or if it is all training! But the book just barely touches on those concepts, instead leaving the reader to wonder about it for himself. This was a bit frustrating.

And despite all the book's anecdotes and repetition of the importance of 10,000 hours of purposeful practice, I couldn't help but wonder if there really ARE people who are just naturally gifted and more able to make use of those 10,000 hours. Of course common sense dictates that there are -- after all, some peoples' brains just work more QUICKLY than others (we have all experienced being in the same room as someone who just seems to have an IQ off the charts, and we are struggling to keep up...) In the end, despite all the data and anecdotes, I still found myself questioning whether some people really ARE touched by God, as it were. As much as Syed tries to disprove the "supernaturally gifted" position, he never really allayed these persistent questions of mine.

That said, this was an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone curious as to the true nature of genius and excellence.

The 10,000 hour long road to stellar performance begins with 1 flow-caliber practice moment at a time. In my reading, "Bounce" effectively demystifies talent by getting the ego out of the way, emphasizing practice, leveraging intrinsic motivation and process-focus (rather than outcome-focus). This highly readable book offers tons of well-researched sophisticated performance psychology and offers a no-nonsense path to perfect performance without perfectionism. An up-to-date, must resource for athletes, coaches, parents, and zero-sum competitors/players of any kind.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D., author of "Present Perfect: a Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need to Control" (New Harbinger, June 2010)

BOUNCE includes three parts.

Part 1 talks about practice and mindset. It's amazing that stuff Zen masters have known for centuries is now just getting "discovered" by modern psychologists. Matthew Syed quotes extensively from Gladwell's Outliers, Coyle's The Talent Code, and Colvin's Talent Is Overrated. Original sources get dismissed, in favor of these books. Syed compiles the available literature up to his publication time, and then mixes parts of his personal experience as a world-class table tennis player with reflection on how he and other world-class athletes got good. It's good to have a summary of "talent literature" up to this point, but Coyle fits himself too comfortably into the existing schools of thought regarding excellence, without contributing much original insight into his personal experience. Instead of memoir we get mostly journalism.

Part 2 talks about the placebo of belief, and how a positive belief helps performance. Here is where Syed's research branches slightly from traditional Zen performance theory, and where modern psychology has not yet caught up to (or yet fully understands) Zen practice. In Zen, if we don't care about losses, we don't fear. (For those chess players out there, go read some interviews with U.S. champ Hikaru Nakamura for examples of his no-fear mindset.) Belief is only a single means to no-fear. Temporarily brainwashing oneself into believing one can win is not what happens. The fundamental thing going on is that one is relaxing one's ego, making the competition moment no different than the practice moment.

In Part 3, Syed talks about steroids, performance enhancing drugs, and the role of genes. Syed makes a convincing argument that traditional stereotypes, like the one that states Kenyan marathoners have good genes for long-distance running, is actually a function of nurture, not nature.

A decent summary of performance studies, with a bit of memoir thrown in.