The main problem with practice is that we all have a powerful instinct to avoid it. There’s a perfectly good reason for this: your unconscious brain. Practice involves spending lots of energy struggling for an … keep reading
Sorry to break this to you, but you are a pretty bad judge of talent. It’s not your fault. We’re all bad at judging talent because we instinctively tend to overrate the visible stuff (performance), … keep reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJgY9FtDLbs A couple days ago, a reader named Casey Wheel sent me a link to this conversation between Jack White and Conan O’Brien. I clicked, figuring I’d watch a couple minutes. Uh, wrong. An hour … keep reading
Note: The other day my wife and I were talking with our fourteen-year-old daughter Katie about how she stays ahead of schoolwork and sports, and Katie told us about a strategy she came up with. … keep reading
If “Zero Dark Thirty” wins the Oscar for best picture on Sunday (it’s got my vote), many will praise the movie’s gritty realism, particularly when it comes to the re-creation of the climactic raid on … keep reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8y9p4lZQI4 If you’re like most people, you grow up instinctively believing that the best learning takes place in an orderly, calm environment. We want well-groomed sports fields, tidy classrooms, and customized high-tech equipment. We want … keep reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmMbm78sEB4&feature=youtu.be Meet Titus, who is not yet two years old. Titus makes some great shots here, but for me the best moment is his smile, and his jubilant body language. Because it invokes how it … keep reading
If you saw the cellist Yo-Yo Ma a half-hour or so before one of his performances, you would see him do curious thing: he mellows out. He makes jokes; he smiles; he chats. You could … keep reading
We all daydream. We all spend hundreds hours in a pleasantly zonked state, weaving stories about our future successes. As a small kid, my favorite daydream was winning a gold medal at the Olympics. I … keep reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAP8Ou_lMfI “Let’s make it fun.” You hear those words a lot these days from parents, teachers, and coaches — along with words like “passion” and “engagement.” We all know that “fun” is a key element … keep reading
