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Copyright of CRMIT-© 2011. All rights reserved. Confidential Information A Million Balls Naga Chokkanathan July 2011

A million balls

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Page 1: A million balls

Copyright of CRMIT-© 2011. All rights reserved. Confidential Information

A Million Balls

Naga Chokkanathan

July 2011

Page 2: A million balls

Copyright of CRMIT-© 2011. All rights reserved. Confidential Information

A Million Balls

• How many of you googled for it? ;)

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Recognize This Gentleman?

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Andre Agassi’s Father Believed in Math

• My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day,

I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of

one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls

• A child who hits one million balls each year will

be unbeatable

• (From Andre Agassi’s Autobiography “Open”)

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But…

• Does it work? Really?

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The 10,000 Hours Rule

• From the book “Outliers” By Malcolm

Gladwell

• Gladwell claims that greatness requires

enormous time, roughly 10,000 hours of

practice

• Examples:

– Bill Gates

– Beatles

– Mozart (Child Prodigy, huh?)

– Sachin Tendulkar

– … (fill it yourself)

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Another Book

• Bounce By Matthew Syed

• Quotes Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule and

extends it with many more examples, mainly

from sports (Matthew Syed used to be an

international table tennis player, by the way)

• This book adds an interesting twist to the tale

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Importance of Practice

• Three groups of violinists

– Grade A, B, C

• Check History - How many hours they practice in a

week?

– Group A: Roughly 4 hours a day

– Group B: Roughly 2 hours a day

– Group C: Less than an hour a day

• Important: There were no exceptions to this rule, both

ways

– Nobody who practiced 4+ hours a day went to B / C

– Nobody in A practiced < 4 hours a day

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But, Is Practice Enough?

• Car Driving for more than 10,000 hours is not

equal to Cricket practice for more than 10,000

hours

• Why?

– Autopilot mode

• OK Plateau

– Once you get there, you can’t come back

– This term comes from Joshua Foer's book, “Moon

Walking With Einstein"

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How To Come Out Of OK Plateau

• 3 Stages of learning:

– Cognitive

– Associative

– Autonomous

• But Experts manage this differently

– They are always looking for higher goals

– They develop strategies for keeping out of autonomous stage

• Example: Practicing something you already mastered

Vs Practicing something where you fail often

– Don’t confuse “Hitting the ball” with practice

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Purposeful Practice

• Matthew Syed uses the

example of Roger

Federer to explain this

– You can imagine any

sportsman you prefer

– They make it look so easy,

How?

– Response Time – How do

they get those precious

extra milliseconds?

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Purposeful Practice (Contd)

• Peripheral knowledge Vs Strong Experience in a domain

– It comes only with purposeful practice

• 10,000 hours of purposeful practice seems to be the magic formula

• Going back to Agassi Example

– If he was hitting the ball 1 Million times a year in the same manner again and again (auto pilot), we wouldn’t be talking about him today

– He has seen 1 Million opportunities to understand how to handle a ball

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Few Questions

• What is our 10,000 hour practice field (Domain)?

– Personal

– Professional

• Where are we, in terms of the 10,000 hour goal?

• Our Strengths / weaknesses?

• Are those weaknesses because of “OK Plateau”? If yes,

how can we break away from the Autonomous mode?

• Are we doing purposeful practice in our field? For how

long, when will we hit our 10,000 hour mark?

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Image / Video Credits

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Outliers.png

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malcolmgladwell.jpg

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joshua-foer-2007.png

• http://www.openclipart.org/detail/147121/tennis-ball-by-netalloy

• http://www.openclipart.org/detail/38197/-by-rejon-38197

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqOLYE9aWg

• http://www.andreagassi.com/

• http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/matthew-syed-author-of-bounce/

• http://collider.com/columbia-moonwalking-with-einstein/80897/

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/08/open-autobiography-andre-agassi

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Thank You

• And, Good Luck!

• Books Mentioned In This Presentation:

– Open: http://goo.gl/1PBq4

– Outliers: http://goo.gl/2IcIG

– Bounce: http://goo.gl/ZQ5f2

– Moon Walking With Einstein: http://goo.gl/oW0LQ

• Psst: There is something common between these three authors, guess what?