Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice
By Matthew Syed
3/5
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About this ebook
From the author of You Are Awesome: Find Your Confidence and Dare to be Brilliant at (Almost) Anything
Essential reading for an astounding summer of sport; If you’ve ever wondered what makes a champion, Bounce has the answer.
This edition does not include illustrations.
What are the real secrets of sporting success, and what lessons do they offer about life? Why doesn’t Tiger Woods “choke”? Why are the best figure skaters those that have fallen over the most and why has one small street in Reading produced more top table tennis players than the rest of the country put together.
Two-time Olympian and sports writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed draws on the latest in neuroscience and psychology to uncover the secrets of our top athletes and introduces us to an extraordinary cast of characters, including the East German athlete who became a man, and her husband – and the three Hungarian sisters who are all chess grandmasters. Bounce is crammed with fascinating stories and statistics.
Looking at controversial questions such as whether talent is more important than practice, drugs in sport (and life) and whether black people really are faster runners, the mind-bending Bounce is a must-read for the hardened sports nut or brand new convert.
Matthew Syed
A two-time Olympian and a graduate of Oxford University, Matthew Syed is a columnist for The Times (London), a commentator for the BBC, and a recipient of the British Press Award for Sports Journalist of the Year, and was named British Sports Feature Writer of the Year by the Sports Journalists' Association.
Reviews for Bounce
111 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So it turns out there's no such thing as talent, there's only hard work. This concept is immediately counter-intuitive, but the further through Bounce you get, the more it makes sense. They've identified ten years as the magic time it takes to produce a world champion - and only if that ten years is filled with lots of purposeful practice. Even Mozart turns out to have put in the prerequisite ten years before he wrote his first true masterpiece. The overall message is profound. Where it really hit home for me, as a father, was reading about the studies in which two groups of children were told either "aren't you clever!" or "didn't you work hard!" and the dramatic effects of each statement. This is the first time I've stumbled upon these ideas. The ideas are not the author's own but he neatly summarises studies across multiple disciplines, adding his own interesting research, resulting in a very accessible introduction to the topic of excellence.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bounce made me rethink (still in progress) how I approach my day to day activities. Which ones I would like to get good at? And which ones I would just like to enjoy while passing time? Which ones I would continue to enjoy while improving my skills?
The chapter about purposeful practice is very useful for anyone playing a musical instrument.
The last chapter was a cherry on the cake: ethics of human augmentation. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Book is an easy read and presents convincing arguments in favour of rigourous, motivated, driven, focussed and purposeful practice to achieve success in ANY field by ANYONE. Later half of book meanders off from original thesis somewhat but connects in the end.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Highly entertaining book with a good message--hard work and thoughtful practice is much more important than 'talent.' I had read two of the books that he draws examples from which made parts of the book rather derivative. However, the original parts, especially those dealing with his table tennis career, were delightful.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5interesting ideas (not terribly novel) but would have been a good magazine article - dragging things out and repeating them just pads it into a book-length work
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting book about how people like Mozart and Federer really got good (hint: it's not because they were naturally good or had innate talent).