Caterina.net: Practicing your art

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{ Monday, May 4, 2009 }

Practicing your art

David Brooks writes about Genius - The Modern View whereby we leave the Romantic view of a genius inspired by divine spark, and take a more prosaic view -- that we learn to be geniuses by effort and application. He mentions two books that have been recently published on this theme, "The Talent Code " by Daniel Coyle; and "Talent Is Overrated " by Geoff Colvin.

According to Colvin, Ben Franklin would take essays from The Spectator magazine and translate them into verse. Then he'd translate his verse back into prose and examine, sentence by sentence, where his essay was inferior to The Spectator's original.

Coyle describes a tennis academy in Russia where they enact rallies without a ball. The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. (Try to slow down your golf swing so it takes 90 seconds to finish. See how many errors you detect.)

LINK | 7:55 AM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

I've read the book by Colvin - pretty good. It ties in with Gladwell's book Outliers, and actually a lot of what they say is flows through the On Writing book by Stephen King

MaJoHa | May 4, 2009 10:17 AM

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Is not art a marriage of vision/voice and skill? What skill does not require practice for maintenance as well as perfection? But how do we practice to improve vision/voice?

Craig | May 5, 2009 6:46 AM

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I read (listened to) Freakonomics, then about 5 minutes into Blink, decided it was terrible. Is Outliers better than Blink? There was a headline on ycombinator lately: 'The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell' -- but that place does often read like what i imagine would be a typical lunch with the young republicans...

Oh btw "I'm your biggest fan."

I always never wanted to say that.

But it's true!

Jesse | May 5, 2009 7:17 AM

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Very truthful book. Either you love it or you want to commit suicide. Viva!

Jesse | May 10, 2009 11:48 AM

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Caterina – from your experience at Hunch, Flickr and other roles you’ve held – what types of skills/practices do you think helped you become an accomplished entrepreneur?

After reading Talent is Overrated and the original Handbook of Expertise I was inspired to do some of my own research in business by learning more about the activities that “expert entrepreneurs” engage in when performing “deliberate practice”.

It would be interesting and helpful to hear your opinion.

Dan Shilov | May 16, 2009 3:49 PM

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