Thursday, December 9, 2010

BAD HABIT #1: IGNORE YOUR MISTAKES

Many top performers are obsessive about critically reviewing their performances – either on videotape or with a coach or teacher.
A good example of this is Bill Robertie, who’s a world-class poker player, world champ in backgammon, and a grand master in chess. Robertie reviews every game obsessively—even the ones he wins—searching for tiny mistakes, critiquing his decisions, breaking it down. The same is true of many top athletes, musicians, comedians, etc.

In the book The Mundanity of Excellence (by Daniel Chambliss), Chambliss makes a powerful case that top performers aren’t great because of any overarching superiority, but rather because they do a lot of ordinary things very well. They pay attention to detail. They make each repetition count. They seek small, incremental improvements one at a time, every single day. And these little habits, over time, add up to great performance.

(Thanks Daniel Coyle, Author of The Talent Code)

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