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from the he'll-never-make-it-to-Carnegie-Hall dept.
The Atlantic has an article on Dan McLaughlin, the "average guy" who spent six thousand hours working on becoming a professional golfer
Seven-plus years ago, aged 30 and unsure even of which hand to grip a golf club in, McLaughlin quit his job as a commercial photographer, took in lodgers to cover the mortgage, husbanded his savings for green fees, and set out to make the PGA Tour, home to the world's elite golfers.
He created a catchily named blog to document his quest, and in short order the Dan Plan commanded magazines spreads and TV spots. Along the way, it drew an avid community of followers riveted by the spectacle of a regular Joe living out an everyman fantasy. No less captivated: a salon of leading figures from the science of learning and human performance.
What could you achieve if you committed to something completely, all-in, no excuses? How far could you go? For five years, McLaughlin cast everything else aside—career, money, even relationships—to put this to the test. But then his back gave out. He pushed himself to the limit and still came up short.
The article follows Dan's attempt to follow the idea, popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is the main factor in developing any skill to world class expertise.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday August 14 2017, @01:01PM (9 children)
You need three things to become exceptionally good at anything :
1) Natural skill
2) Detemination
3) Opportunity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:06PM (1 child)
> 2) Detemination
Anyone else read this as a variant of "detumescence"? They do say that sex steals all your strength away...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:19PM
> 2) Detemination
>> Anyone else read this as a variant of "detumescence"?
No, just you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 14 2017, @01:18PM (2 children)
You also need a lot of luck. For instance, Dale Earnhardt risked death every time he got into his car for a race, and a lot of those auto racing deaths had nothing to do with the skill or lack thereof of the driver.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
At first I thought you were using luck in the sense of connecting with the right people to sponsor you, work on your team, etc. There are many excellent race drivers that just don't get noticed for whatever combination of bad luck and circumstance. Also, there is very little room at the top (in all pro sports).
Dale Earnhardt's final accident was fatal, but it's possible that with better safety equipment (available at that time) he could have survived. More details are in this article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 14 2017, @05:09PM
I filed that under "Opportunity", which Dale Earnhardt had in spades because his dad was a race car driver too.
But I was referring more for the luck he had in not getting killed when he was a nobody. Most NASCAR drivers spent time on dirt tracks and regional circuits in obscurity prior to joining the "big leagues", and could get killed on those tracks without ever making it to the top-tier races through no fault of their own. Same story in football: A few high school players are killed each year through no fault of their own, and occasionally a college player dies in training or in games.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday August 14 2017, @04:10PM (3 children)
"Natural skill" might not be as magical as we think. Even if you end up being really good at something, you still start out really bad at it.
If you start out as a kid, it doesn't matter as much that you suck because nobody expects better. Adults like Dan, however, have high barriers of "you suck" and "shouldn't you be earning money right now" to keep us from trying.
I propose that "natural skill" is actually about the desire a child has to do something, despite being bad at it. Given the opportunity, the encouragement, and a huge number of years before anybody expects them to be any good, it may just take consistent effort in your formative years to be good at something.
That and kids don't throw out their backs training for physically-demanding skills.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Monday August 14 2017, @06:01PM
No, that is determination (correct spelling this time); mayby OK-ish at a low level but not enough in itself to get to the top. Natural skill is like a basketball player being over 6ft tall, and they say that Babe Ruth was an exceptional baseball player partly because his eyes were set further apart than the human average, giving a edge in his 3-D vision. Champion cyclists have much larger than average lung and heart capacities, which is an in-born characteristic and cannot be acquired : Vittorio Adorni [wikipedia.org], who won the Giro d'Italia in 1965 had such a large heart, and therefore low pulse rate, that doctors who examined him were alarmed at his freakishness.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 14 2017, @08:16PM (1 child)
> I propose that "natural skill" is actually about the desire a child has to do something, despite being bad at it.
You have a natural skill for creating newspeak.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:39PM
And you have a natural skill for butchering Orwell.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?