Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success Hardcover – Bargain Price, April 20, 2010

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 shy 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".

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.