In a recent e-mail to me and Anders, Marina E. asked about the most efficient way to write down your goals. I thought it was a good question, and so …
The Answer is Unicycles. What is the Question?
While I was talking with Lt. Steven Shaw, the U.S. Navy F-18 pilot and trainer featured in the previous blog, he said something that I thought was really profound, even …
An Interview with: A Naval F-18 Pilot and Trainer
Lt. Steven Shaw trains naval aviators to fly the F-18, the main jet fighter of the Navy and Marine Corps, at a base in Virginia Beach, Virginia. That’s his official …
Learning How to Learn
After spending the last eight years reading about deliberate practice, talking about deliberate practice, thinking about deliberate practice, and writing about deliberate practice, I thought I was familiar with all …
Taking the Fear out of Feedback
Something had to change. Students were going crazy. Lessons were not being learned. Mild-mannered professors were getting evaluations like “Dr. X should never be allowed to teach first-year dental students …
Expert Performance at Sea
One of the benefits of having published Peak is getting contacted by people from all walks of life who write to describe how they have used deliberate practice to develop …
Developing Psychological Resilience
Most of what is written about deliberate practice focuses on the technical aspects of developing a skill: how divers and gymnasts develop their amazing body control, how chess players pick …
Mental Representations in Running
In our book Peak, perhaps the most difficult concept that Anders and I introduce is the idea of mental representations. Over and over again we have gotten questions from …
Never Too Old
If you’ve heard of Adam Bronfman, you probably know him as one of the heirs to the Bronfman family fortune (which was based in large part on the Seagram’s whiskey …
A New Skill Each Month
Toward the end of Peak, Anders and I suggested that a better name for humans than Homo sapiens, “knowing man,” would be Homo exercens, or “practicing man,” because we are …