To get good, it's helpful to be
willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad - until you improve to be
declared good. Baby steps are the royal road to skill. Remember, repetition is
the mother of skill. "Every great & commanding moment in the annals of
the world is a triumph of some enthusiasm," Emerson.
Deep practice isn't a piece of cake: It
requires energy, passion, & commitment. In a word, it requires motivational
fuel, the second element of the "Talent Code." Coyle refers to it as
ignition. Ignition supplies the energy while deep practice translates that
energy over time into forward progress.
Ignition is a hot mysterious burst, an
awakening – lightening in a bottle. It’s a sudden moment of realization that “I
can do this thing.” Or, “If he an do it so an I” like when Bannister broke the
4 minute barrier, once an insurmountable wall that Roger turned into a stepping
stone. The right butterfly wingflap was causes talent hurricanes. And it’s
really a butterfly wingflap not some earth shattering event. Two personal
examples: I was never a very good little league baseball player, never really
learned to hit the ball to hit the ball till I was coaching baseball &
found out it really was not that difficult. Anyway, the day I went to pick up
my first Sox baseball uniform, I went to my coach’s house up the street &
picked it up. I was walking on cloud 9. As I tucked it under my arm &
walked off the front porch, I heard coach say to his assistant, “There goes the
biggest uniform on the team & he isn’t worth a shit,” not exactly putting
lightening in my bottle. And then there’s a time years later that my high
school football coach pulled me aside & told me that I was “the best
lineman on the team & he expected me to be the Captain of the line to help
everyone execute their assignment properly.” Two different experiences = two
different results. Often tiny, seemingly insignificant cues can, over time,
create gigantic differences in skill.
As with everything, our attitude
determines out altitude, from the beginning starting with commitment. With the
same amount of practice, long-term-commitment groups outperform
short-term-commitment groups by a whopping 400%. The long-term-commitment
group, with a mere 20 minutes of weekly practice, progressed faster than the
short-termers who practiced for an hour & a half. When long-term commitment
combined with high levels of practice, skills skyrocketed.
Just think about this, I live in
Oregon. Kids grow up heir entire life either a Duck or a Beaver wanting to put
on the uniform, especially those of the Ducks, & play. Again, especially at
Autzen Stadium for the Ducks; or play for the Beavers & beat those Ducks on
Autzen. That is a long-term-commitment. Sadly, over 90% of the players for both
teams are scholarshipped players from out of state, mostly CA kids who grew up
wanting to play for USC, UCLA, CAL or some other school closer to home. They
never gave Eugene or Corvalis a thought until they got rejected by the CA
schools & Oregon came a’calling. Fast forward to the level of play when
these teams get behind, especially a CA school. You can just see them “give in”
– all their live they have been told how much better these CA schools were than
those rejects up North. After all, if they were any good, they would be playing
for the Trojans. My theory is that if say, 40-50% of the players on those
Oregon teams were from Oregon with their long-term-commitment, life-long,
fighting to the end would be more evident. Bob Devany would do this at NB which
has even fewer players & opportunities than here in OR. Kids would grow up
chanting “Go Big Red” their whole lives, generations even. NB once had the
absolute best walk on program in the country. Every year I think 3 scholarships
would go to those players who participated in the walk-on program which always
had nearly 100 kids in it. Going that route to the playing field certainly
demonstrated very long-term-commitment. And giving in was not an option. After
all, the more you put into something, the harder it is to hang it up.
Coyle reports that coaches can
instantly connect players to a high0octane fuel tank of motivation, which
powers deep practice. What powers the players is a vision of their ideal future
selves, a vision that oriented, energized, & accelerated progress. This
motivation originates in the outside world. Another personal example: When I
took over the Ranger football program, they had been to the playoffs once in 50
years & had never won a conference championship, ever. They had averaged
1.75 victories a year. It was where football coaches went to “die.” The first
night I met with the Seniors & the team, I took those Srs aside & said,
“Listen, there’s going to be all kinds of talk about ‘rebuilding’ & how
things might be better for the Rangers in the future. That I said was bullshit.
They would never hear it from me. This was their Senior year & I would do
everything possible to make their Sr year the one they had been reaming about
their whole lives – to dress down in the Ranger uniform & run onto the field
inside the hedges.” Long-term-commitment,
right? It was fortunate that these kids were sick & tired of being tired
& sick. They went to work. It didn’t hurt any that we went over to the 6th
ranked team in the sate and defeated them in the last 26 seconds of the game.
That just made them work harder, and if it were not for a tipped pass in the
last quarter of the last game of the season, they would have made the playoffs
with their 6-3 record. The next year, because those Srs kicked opened the door of
victory, saw the team go undefeated, conferences champs, & off to the
playoffs which we were in every year after that. Coyle goes on: these kids were
not born to be football players. Their wanting came from a distinct signal,
form something in their family, their homes, their coaches, the set of images
& people they encountered, certain primal cues that sparked an unconscious
response that manifested itself as an idea – “a wanting to be.”
Being highly motivated, when you think
about it is a slightly irrational state. One forgoes comfort now in order to
work toward some bigger prospective benefit later on. Each signal is the
motivational equivalent of a flashing red light: those people over there are doing something terrifically worthwhile. Each
signal is about future belonging.
Future belonging is a primal cue: a
simple, direct signal that activates our built-in motivational triggers,
funneling our energy & attention toward a goal. The ability to achieve is
already there, but the energy put into that ability goes through the roof. It’s
not strategic; we don’t think of it being useful because we are not even
thinking of it at all. It’s an automatic response. Ignition is a hair trigger
connected to a high-voltage power plant & is determined by a simple if/then
proposition, with the then part always the same – better get busy. See someone you want to become? Better get busy. Want to catch up with a
desirable group? Better get busy. Remember,
the unconscious mind is able to process 11,000,000 pieces of information per second while the conscious mind can
manage a mere forty. Thus making primal cues so very important; this
disproportion points to the efficiency & necessity of relegating mental activities
to the unconscious - & helps us to understand why appeals to the unconscious
can be so effective.
