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posted by cmn32480 on Monday August 14 2017, @10:12AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday August 14 2017, @04:10PM (3 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday August 14 2017, @04:10PM (#553734)

    "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.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Monday August 14 2017, @06:01PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Monday August 14 2017, @06:01PM (#553781)

    I propose that "natural skill" is actually about the desire a child has to do something

    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)

    by Bot (3902) on Monday August 14 2017, @08:16PM (#553824) Journal

    > 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.

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    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:39PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:39PM (#554310)

      And you have a natural skill for butchering Orwell.

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