*Bounce*

Matthew Syed's Bounce tries to uncover how exceptional people got that way.  It starts out promising, but quickly fizzles out.

It offers a very tight review of current studies that demonstrate that hard work matters more than talent.  You can skip Talent Is Overrated and just read the first couple chapters of Bounce.

But the hard work argument just opens another mystery: what compels people to work so hard that they rise above everyone else, even at great cost and pain to themselves?  The book never provides a meaningful answer.  A few studies show that the right kind of coaching words can make a difference, but that just scratches the surface.  I doubt Michael Jordan was lucky enough to only have positive, supportive coaches all his youth and career.

The rest of the book talks about other high performance issues, such as "choking" and how to avoid it.  Not uninteresting, but more like appendix material to the main storyline, which remains unresolved.

Today, good is bad

In our age of excess, it's harder than ever to stay focused, says Paul Graham in a remarkable essay:

One sense of "normal" is statistically normal: what everyone else does. The other is the sense we mean when we talk about the normal operating range of a piece of machinery: what works best.

These two senses are already quite far apart. Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.

Emphasis mine, just because I love that sentence.  The point is, you have to practically live like a monk to avoid the multitude of distractions that feel productive but in fact are just sinkholes of time with maybe some, but definitely small, benefits.  

Most of us won't make it (most likely me included).  Unlike the modern day food industry and trying to eat well -- another place where if you're behaving like everyone else, you're doing quite badly -- in this case you can determine exactly the outcome you want for yourself. 

An opportunity for the disciplined.

Hiring anti-pattern: Don't break the build

A job posting on a mailing list mentioned that the applicants should not have ever broken a build. Not that I am looking for a job, but that certainly ruled me out as a candidate. That's not the first time I've heard such message

Well, reading about it on Venkat's blog was in fact the first time I'd heard of it, and it shocked me.  Breaking the build just happens, for reasons that Venkat succinctly describes.  As he also mentions, most important is having a culture that makes fixing the broken build the top priority.

Hiring only non-build breakers shocks me because we need to encourage people to take risks.  Breaking builds is not a requirement for taking risks, obviously, but an environment where everyone has to be perfect on secretarial matters smells badly of a place where everyone just focuses on avoiding trouble, and not on getting things done, not on trying new things, not on taking risks.

Risk-taking leads to more innovation, and innovation drives everything having to do with success.  Research shows this repeatedly.  If you ever hear any interviews with Jack Welch, the great GE businessman, he constantly talks about encouraging risks, and therefore having to also accept failure, despite being incredibly bottom-line, results oriented.

As a hiring qualification, it is at best pathetic, and at worst an anti-pattern.  They might as well have a requirement that only people who haven't had any bad ideas or made a fool of themselves in public apply.

It's easy to forget

When reading about guys like Saul Griffith -- who has had, in half the number of years, more amazing ideas than I ever will -- it's easy to forget the origins of greatness.  He lives up to his reputation as "an invention engine": factory-less eye glasses manufacturing, solar energy-collecting roads, power supplies for the One Laptop per Child project.  He seems to spin out new ideas effortlessly.

But, if you have access to the full article, you also realize (once you stop being amazed) that he works on new ideas constantly.  He devotes his life to it.  Even his kids are involved: a hybrid bicycle he made short-circuited, setting fire to the seat that his infant son had just been riding in.

In the end, he represents another example of the hard-work principle, also known as the 10,000 Hour Rule.  Most of the research today on extreme performance and super achievement comes back to the fact that the achievers put in the time, day after day.  Slate offers a nice round-up on recent books on the subject.  (Via Ben Casnocha.)

You don't have to be the greatest programmer walking the earth.  And if you decide equally balance devotion to the craft with your family and friends, hobbies, and health, that makes a ton of sense.  The point is to realize that "greatness" lies within you; how much of it you want to unlock is up to you, and involves, as the Slate article points out, some amount of negative effects.

Apolo Ohno

Check out this workout schedule.

Ohno hired John Schaeffer, a kick boxer turned trainer, in 2002. Schaeffer’s résumé included work with swimmers, boxers, weight lifters, mixed martial artists and N.F.L. players, but never before had he encountered someone with Ohno’s intensity, recovery ability and capacity to endure pain.

“I don’t know anybody, honestly, who could train with Apolo,” Schaeffer said.

He traveled with Ohno to Italy for the Olympics and to Los Angeles for “Dancing With the Stars.” He once ran Ohno up the mountains near Reading, Pa., three times each day for three days, “like a goat.” ...

A typical workout: eight sets of two repetitions at 1,000 pounds on the leg press, one leg at a time, holding the weight between each set. Then bench hops. Then one-legged hops. Then, in the afternoon, treadmill training, alternating each minute between 12 and 15 miles an hour for 20 rotations.

It's often easy to see the greatness and forget about the hard work. And we sometimes dismiss it as genetics -- he's great because it's in his blood.  But there's always unbelievable levels of hard work and practice behind it. 

In our jobs, we're not really trying for Olympic-level extreme greatness.  But imagine what you could accomplish if you really pushed yourself.  Not up a mountain three times, but at least hard enough so that it hurt. 

*The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People*

This is an old book that everyone knows.  I was drawn to it by the title.  Effectiveness continues to be a top priority.  Habits indicates hard work, no shortcuts; I'm a believer in practice making perfect.  Highly, as opposed to Super or Awesomely, is understated and again indicates realistic goals.

Also, the title is much better than How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Apparently, we've learned to be slightly less obvious in our ambitions.

I particularly liked the section on being more proactive.  I mentioned in an earlier post that he has the best definition of proactive, one that actually means something.  I don't know if he coined "proactive" or "win-win", but he might have been the one to popularize them.  Now, those words have been so overused that they barely resonate.

Covey also has a strong smell of authenticity.  You really get the sense that he lives what he's preaching, that he would be living that way even if he knew he couldn't package it up and sell it, and gives the whole thing credence.

This book is particularly good for someone who is in a funk, or maybe between jobs, and needs some direction.  He offers practical ways to implement what he's saying, though I found the "private" / personal changes to be more interesting than the "public" / interpersonal one, perhaps because the interpersonal ones have been re-done and re-stated so many times since then.

Two ways to know you are good

1. when you announce you are leaving, management makes an effort to retain you.  This could come as a salary match, or as a pitch with new title / authority.  It certainly includes sincere regret and the belief that your departure leaves a big hole in the group.

2. as others leave, you find new responsibilities being driven to you.  I'm not talking about being required to take on more repetitive crapwork, but exerting more responsibility and decision making.  As you become the "veteran" of the group, your expertise become more recognized, and you are increasingly viewed as the expert.

As always, these aren't definitive, but you might recognize these patterns as the job market thaws and people leave.