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The Science of Experience
I was out of the office for a week and decided to catch up on my blog reading this afternoon. While reading one of Scott Hanselman's posts when I took his advice to read the post "What does it take to be a grandmaster" by Jeff Moser. Jeff's article mentioned a Time Magazine article entitled The Science of Experience which described the work of Anders Ericsson, who is an expert on experts. His research has produced the following fascinating piece of information:
Ericsson's primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding. You like the Tuesday New York Times crossword? You have to tackle the Saturday one to be really good.
Wow! This should not have come as a shock to me, but it did. I guess, like most people, I just needed the cold hard data to make things clear.
I have long believed in the fact that if anyone could do it, they would. Which is why I think there are actually so few people doing cutting-edge work – because it's hard.
Throughout my career I've had opportunities to work on some fascinating projects with some amazing ( at the time ) products. But, I always noticed that at some point in time, when you've learned pretty much all you can learn about something, it gets boring.
Boring = Coasting. Coasting = Not Improving. Not Improving = Not Growing.
And if you're not growing, what the heck use are you anyway?
Well, with the introduction of CRM 4.0, I'm back to learning a whole new bunch of stuff all over again. I guess it's time to put down the Cheetos, get off the couch and jump neck-deep back into learning how CRM 4.0 works, and more importantly, how to make it work. :)
Both Jeff's article and the Time Magazine article are worth reading and full of interesting information. Read both when you have time.
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