Synthesis : Scott Becker

Deliberate Practice

I read the book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport. It’s a quick read and I recommend it. A little repetitive (before this book the guy wrote books on how to study, he repeats things so you’ll remember it). The key ideas are – blindly following your passion is bad advice – especially if you don’t know what your doing and are going to make a big switch to something you fantasize about but know little, and instead you should focus on the hard work of building the marketable / valuable skills in your field, aka “Career Capital”.

There were two other key takeaways for me. 1 – “deliberate practice” – putting in time getting better at the basics in whatever field you are in. Professional musicians and athletes are awesome at this. Knowledge workers not so much. 2 – the “adjacent possible” – which is what is waiting around the corner to be discovered once you’ve gotten to the edge of existing knowledge in your field. Once you get to that point, making the jump to that next discovery is easier. I’ve been trying to put in more time doing deliberate practice, building out my ideas and reading.

 

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