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| Harvard greats Anil Nayar and Victor Niederhoffer |
In today's selection -- from Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman. The oft-cited 10,000-hour rule, which states that you must spend 10,000 hours practicing a task to attain mastery, is only partially true:
Here's a short biography and an early article (a great read) in Sports Illustrated about him.
Since we're reminiscing about Niederhoffer, I remember playing a match in the late 80's against another Harvard great, Anil Nayar, at the Harvard Club of NY. (Nayar was a 2-time National Men's Open Champion playing with the hardball as well as a 5-time U.S. National Veteran's Champion playing with the softball.) The annual invitational tournament was known as the Cowles, Jacobs, Barnaby named after the three venerable Harvard coaches. It was a tournament that had three draws - each draw named after one of the former coaches.
The Barnaby draw was an exclusive competiton limited to sixteen veteran (35+) players. At first glance the draw seemed to consist of only Harvard greats who just coincidentally were former National champions - not surprising given Harvard's stature and dominance of the intercollegiate game at that time. I somehow managed to secure an invitation, (I suspect that given the number of Harvard grads who were members at the University Club, that a few strings were pulled on my behalf. (Thank you Peter and Murray! -JL)
I made the annual pilgrimage in January to New York for a number of years running, gloriously winning in 1991 against 13-time U.S. National hardball and softball Veterans Champion from Michigan, David Linden.
However, the match that I most remember during the years when I competed in the tournament, was a semi-final match against Nayar in the late 80's. Born and raised in India, and therefore learning to play squash by playing softball, he possessed a formidable and exquisite game which possessed elements of both hardball and softball. He became India’s #1 ranked player.
During a rally in the middle of the match, I was prepared to respond to a backhanded roll-corner (a shot rarely used in softball). All of the tell-tale signs preceding the shot were there - body alignment angled to the side-wall, a modest and decelerating back-swing, and more importantly, he had hit the shot earlier in the match. So sure of the shot's design, I was prepared - leaning to the front wall. But he was also looking for MY tell-tale tip-offs; and as I was leaning to the front wall ready to pounce, HE CHANGED his shot by snapping his wrist at the very last second to hit a straight rail!
On that point, I was beaten by the hold. My read-and-react technique in all of my years of playing betrayed me for the very first time during that match. It was his way of saying to me, "Welcome to the game that we big boys play!" Needless to say I was totally bamboozled at being out-smarted in that way.
It took me awhile to integrate this ploy into my game (one can practice it for some time, but it needs to be put to use during match-play for it to be fully integrated).
One of the many steps it took to become a competitive player.
"The '10,000-hour rule' -- that this level of practice holds the secret to great success in any field -- has become sacrosanct gospel, echoed on websites and recited as litany in high-performance workshops. The problem: it's only half true.
"If you are a duffer at golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your game. You'll still be a duffer, albeit an older one.
(When I was a teaching pro, I explained this to students by saying,"practice makes permanent, not perfect." - JL)
"No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000 -- hour rule of thumb, told me, "You don't get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal" ...
"Apart from sports like basketball or football that favor physical traits such as height and body size, says Ericsson, almost anyone can achieve the highest levels of performance with smart practice. ...
"Ericsson argues that the secret of winning is 'deliberate practice,' where an expert coach takes you through well-designed training over months or years, and you give it your full concentration.
"Hours and hours of practice are necessary for great performance, but not sufficient. How experts in any domain pay attention while practicing makes a crucial difference. For instance, in his much-cited study of violinists -- the one that showed the top tier had practiced more than 10,000 hours -- Ericsson found the experts did so with full concentration on improving a particular aspect of their performance that a master teacher identified.
"Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them -- which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks.
"The feedback matters and the concentration does, too -- not just the hours. ...
"Daydreaming defeats practice; those of us who browse TV while working out will never reach the top ranks. Paying full attention seems to boost the mind's processing speed, strengthen synaptic connections, and expand or create neural networks for what we are practicing.
"At least at first. But as you master how to execute the new routine, repeated practice transfers control of that skill from the top-down system for intentional focus to bottom-up circuits that eventually make its execution effortless. At that point you don't need to think about it -- you can do the routine well enough on automatic."
"And this is where amateurs and experts part ways. Amateurs are content at some point to let their efforts become bottom-up operations. After about fifty hours of training - whether in skiing or driving - people get to that 'good-enough' performance level, where they can go through the motions more or less effortlessly. They no longer feel the need for concentrated practice, but are content to coast on what they've learned. No matter how much more they practice in this bottom-up mode, their improvement will be negligible.
"The experts, in contrast, keep paying attention top-down, intentionally counteracting the brain's urge to automatize routines. They concentrate actively on those moves they have yet to perfect, on correcting what's not working in their game, and on refining their mental models of how to play the game, or focusing on the particulars of feedback from a seasoned coach. Those at the top never stop learning: if at any point they start coasting and stop such smart practice, too much of their game becomes bottom-up and their skills plateau."
On a related note:
One of the greatest players of the American hardball was Victor Niederhoffer. I first met him when he was a visiting professor at Berkeley at the time when I was an undergraduate just learning how to play the game.
He would practice quite regularly in the courts at Harmon Gym. I always thought it was odd that whenever he spent time on the court, he was not engaged in a game but he was alone and just hitting a variety of shots over and over again while moving from side-to-side and front-to-back. I later came to realize that he was focusing on smart and deliberate practice - the routine of a champion. (on occasion he would have a partner - not an opponent - on the court with him. Club member, Barbara Hendrickson (an average player at best) was one of the very few.
He also struck me as a bit of an oddball. Upon meeting him from time to time and regardless of the occasion, he was always sporting a pair of mis-matched court shoes and had an unlaundered look about him.
He was also a staunchly principled individual when he refused to participate in squash events from 1967 through 1972 because he was protesting against the elitism and anti-Semitism that he believed existed in the game. He applied for membership to five private clubs and was denied admission to all of them. (I have similar stories- JL) When the 1967 National Tournament was held at Chicago's Lake Shore Club, he decided not to defend his championship. Disgusted with the elitist environment of the game, he scarcely played the game for five years.
Since we're reminiscing about Niederhoffer, I remember playing a match in the late 80's against another Harvard great, Anil Nayar, at the Harvard Club of NY. (Nayar was a 2-time National Men's Open Champion playing with the hardball as well as a 5-time U.S. National Veteran's Champion playing with the softball.) The annual invitational tournament was known as the Cowles, Jacobs, Barnaby named after the three venerable Harvard coaches. It was a tournament that had three draws - each draw named after one of the former coaches.
The Barnaby draw was an exclusive competiton limited to sixteen veteran (35+) players. At first glance the draw seemed to consist of only Harvard greats who just coincidentally were former National champions - not surprising given Harvard's stature and dominance of the intercollegiate game at that time. I somehow managed to secure an invitation, (I suspect that given the number of Harvard grads who were members at the University Club, that a few strings were pulled on my behalf. (Thank you Peter and Murray! -JL)
I made the annual pilgrimage in January to New York for a number of years running, gloriously winning in 1991 against 13-time U.S. National hardball and softball Veterans Champion from Michigan, David Linden.
However, the match that I most remember during the years when I competed in the tournament, was a semi-final match against Nayar in the late 80's. Born and raised in India, and therefore learning to play squash by playing softball, he possessed a formidable and exquisite game which possessed elements of both hardball and softball. He became India’s #1 ranked player.
During a rally in the middle of the match, I was prepared to respond to a backhanded roll-corner (a shot rarely used in softball). All of the tell-tale signs preceding the shot were there - body alignment angled to the side-wall, a modest and decelerating back-swing, and more importantly, he had hit the shot earlier in the match. So sure of the shot's design, I was prepared - leaning to the front wall. But he was also looking for MY tell-tale tip-offs; and as I was leaning to the front wall ready to pounce, HE CHANGED his shot by snapping his wrist at the very last second to hit a straight rail!
On that point, I was beaten by the hold. My read-and-react technique in all of my years of playing betrayed me for the very first time during that match. It was his way of saying to me, "Welcome to the game that we big boys play!" Needless to say I was totally bamboozled at being out-smarted in that way.
It took me awhile to integrate this ploy into my game (one can practice it for some time, but it needs to be put to use during match-play for it to be fully integrated).
One of the many steps it took to become a competitive player.
John
******
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