In Bounce, Matthew Syed debunks the myth of talent and gives hope, inspiration and encouragement to all who have dedicated themselves to the put in the hard work necessary for success in any field of endevour.

I do not know if I have an innate talent for writing. If I did, it stayed dormant for many years. But as I have pursued my dream of creating the most read Leadership and Personal Development blog on the planet, I see myself getting better and better at writing. You can improve on your skills by doing the work.

Let me tell you five things I like about this book and one thing I don’t like.

What Resonates with Me

1. Anyone Can Reach the Top – Matthew Syed has taken the trouble to examine his own success as a top sportsman and come to the conclusion that hard work and a commitment to purposeful practice is a vital ingredient to reaching the top. This gives hope to millions of people all over the world who feel that they have had a disadvantaged birth or upbringing. While the when and where of your childhood can be an advantage  (Unequal Childhood), you can make up for a lack of privilege by committing to do the hard work necessary for success in your chosen endevour.
2. Practice Does Not Make Perfect; Purposeful Practice Makes Perfect. – We are made to understand that opportunities and access to serious practice will improve your chances of success. This means you have to learn from and train with the best in the best facilities. If practice is not intentional or if practice is denied, then no amount of talent can make up for a lack of practice.
3. There Are No Short Cuts to Success. – Everything takes time. Syed quotes from Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” and points out the fact that top performers practice their craft for not less than one thousand hours a year. Twenty hours a week. At this rate, it will take you ten years to have any prospects of making it to the Olympics. To succeed you have to put in the years of continuous and purposeful practice. Top violinist  and top athletes put in at least two thousand more hours a year than the good ones. So stick to your trade. You can only get better with time. And if you want to be the best, you can, by putting in more hours into the doing and practicing.
4. Systematic Evaluation Of Your Performance With A View To Making Adjustments Is Key To Deliberate Practice – I never took squash lessons and as such I find myself good at playing the wrong strokes. So its not all about the hours. Its about the thought and planning behind those hours. As someone once said, there is a difference between having ten years experience, and having one years experience repeated ten times. Just because you have been driving a car for eight hours a day for ten years as a London taxi diver does not make you a world class driver. You may have an expert knowledge of London roads but you are certainly not an expert car driver. Most of your driving is done on auto pilot and that does not equate to purposeful practice. To make improvements, you need to get feedback on your performance and then take corrective action. You also need to increase the difficulty level of your practice.
5. The Curse Of Choking And How To Avoid It – All the practice in the world will not prepare you for that time in your life when all eyes are on you to deliver a top class performance. And you end up with mediocre results. Choking is the word used to describe the catastrophic decline in performance when it matters. Syed himself experienced this at the Gold Coast Olympics in Australia. To avoid choking, you need to train your mind to think that its only a game and that your performance at that point does not matter.

What I don’t Get

If this book is about the myth of talent and the power of practice, I am yet to figure what connection chapters like “The Placebo Effect” and “Baseball Rituals” have with talent and practice.

Bounce is a well written book and Matthew Syed has done a great job at demystifying talent. Well worth reading.

NB. Feel free to leave a comment if you have read this book or if this review has inspired you to read the book.