The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle

The Little Book of Talent is a great book on how to improve any skill from sports, to necessary life activites.  I have found it useful in my golf game as well as learning the piano.
Coyle, Daniel.  The Little Book of Talent.  Bantam Books. New York. 2012.

Tip #1 Stare at who you want to become 
If you were to visit a dozen talent hotbeds tomorrow, you would be struck by how much time the learners spend observing top performers.  When I say "observing," I'm not talking about passively watching.  I'm talking about staring--the kind of raw, unblinking, intensely absorbed gazes you see in hungry cats or newborn babies.

One of the keys to igniting your motivation is to fill your windshield with vivid images of your future self, and to stare at them every day.  Another way of putting it is: "seeing it better than it is."  Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation.  For example, being told that you share a birthday with a mathematician can improve the amount of effort you're willing to put into difficult math tasks by 62 percent.

Many talent hotbeds are fueled by the windshield phenomenon.  In 1997, there were no South Korean golfers on the LPGA Tour.  Today there more than forty, winning one-third of all events.  Se Ri Pak won two majors in 1998, and through her, hundreds of South Korean girls were ignited by a new vision of their future selves.  "If she can't do it, then why can't I?"  Just take a look at Inbee Park who was inspiried by Se Ri Pak!


Think of your windshield as an energy source for your brain.  Use pictures (the walls of many talent hotbeds are cluttered with photos and posters of their stars) or better yet, video.

One idea: Bookmark a few YouTube videos, and watch them before you practice, and/ or at night before you go to bed.
  

Tip #2 Spend 15 minutes a day engraving the skill on your brain
What is the best way to begin to learn a new skill?  Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method.  Basically, they watch the skill being performed closely and with great intensity over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint.   


A few years back, for the TV show 60 Minutes, the tennis teacher and author Timothy Gallwey assembled a group of middle-aged people who'd never played tennis before.  He gave them a brief test of ability, and then selected the woman who showed the least potential.  Then, without uttering a word, Gallwey began to hit a forehand while the woman watched.  He directed her attention to his feet, his grip, and the rhythm of the stroke.  The woman watched intently and then began to emulate his moves.  Within twenty minutes, she was hitting a shockingly decent forehand.

Another example of engraving, which involves the ears instead of the eyes, is the Suzuki method for learning music.  Each day, separate from their lessons, Suzuki students listen to a menu of songs, beginning with "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and progressing by degrees to more complex tunes.  Hearing the songs over and over and over again engraves the songs in the students' brains.  The "listening practice" builds a strong detailed mental map, a series of points from which the success or failure of each following attempt can be measured.

The key to effective engraving is to create an intense connection: to watch and listen so closely that you can imagine the feeling of performing the skill.

• For physical skills, project yourself inside the performer's body.  Become aware of the movement, the rhythm; try to feel the interior shape of the moves.  
• For mental skills, stimulate the skill by re-creating the expert's decision patterns.  Chess players achieve this by replaying classic games, move by move
• public speakers do it by regiving great speeches complete with original inflections
• musicians cover their favorite songs 
• some writers I know achieve this effect by retyping passages verbatim from great works.  (It sounds kind of Zen, but it works)  

Tip #3 Steal Without Apology 

We are often told that talented people acquire their skill by following their "natural instincts."  This sounds nice, but in fact it is baloney.  All improvement is about absorbing and applying new information, and the best source of information is top performers.  So steal it. 

Stealing has a long tradition in art, sports, and design, where it often goes by the name of "influence."  The young Steve Jobs stole the idea for the computer and drop-down menus from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.  The young Beatles stole the high "woooooo" sounds in "She Loves You" "From Me to You" and "Twist and Shout" from their idol Little Richard.  The young Babe Ruth based his swing on the mighty uppercut of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson.  As Pablo Picasso (no slouch at theft himself) put it, "Good artists borrow.  Great artists steal."  

Linda Septien, founder of the Septien School of Contemporary Music, a hotbed near Dallas that has produced millions of dollars in pop-music talent (including Demi Lovato, Ryan Cabrera, and Jessica Simpson), tells her students, "Sweetheart, you gotta steal like crazy.  Look at every single performer better than you and see what they've got that you can use.  Then make it your own."  Septien follows her own advice, having accumulated fourteen three-ring notebooks' worth of ideas stolen from top performers.  In plastic sleeves inside the binders, in some cases scribbled on cocktail napkins, reside tips on everything from how to hit a high note to how to deal with a rowdy crowd (a joke works best).  

Stealing helps shed light on some mysterious patterns of talent--for instance, why the younger members of musical families so often are also the most talented.  The difference can be explained partly by the windshield phenomenon, "connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation," and partly by theft.  As they grow up, the younger kids have more access to good information.  They have far more opportunity to watch their older siblings perform, to mimic, to see what works and what doesn't.  In other words, to steal.  When you steal, focus on specifics, not general impressions.  Capture concrete facts: the angle of a golfer's left elbow at the top of the backswing; the curve of a surgeon's wrist; the precise shape and tension of a singer's lips as he hits that high note; the exact length of time a comedian pauses before delivering the punch line.  

Ask yourself:

• What exactly are the critical moves here?
• How do they perform those moves differently than I do?   

Tip #4 Buy a Notebook

A high percentage of top performers keeps some form of a daily performance journal.  Tennis champion Serena Williams and former World Series MVP Curt Schilling use notebooks; rapper Eminem and the choreographer Twyla Tharp use shoeboxes which they fill with ideas written on scrap paper.  What matters is not the precise form.  What matters is that you write stuff down and reflect on it.  Results from today.  Ideas for tomorrow.  Goals for next week.  A notebook works like a map: it creates clarity.

Tip #51 Keep Your Big Goals Secret
While its natural and oh so tempting to want to announce big goals, it's smarter to keep them to yourself.  In a 2009 at New York University, 163 subjects were given a difficult work project and 45 minutes to spend on it.  Half the subjects were told to announce their goals, while half were told to keep quiet.  The subjects who announced their goals quit after only an average of 33 minutes and reported feeling satisfied with their work.  Those who kept their mouths shut, however, worked the entire 45 minutes and remained strongly motivated.  (In fact, when the experiment ended, they wanted to keep working.)
Telling others about your big goals makes them less likely to happen, because it creates an unconscious payoff--tricking our brains into thinking we've already accomplished the goal.  Keeping our big goals to ourselves is one of the smartest goals we can set.

Tip #5 Be willing to be stupid

Teammates of the hockey star Wayne Gretzky would occasionally witness a strange sight:  Gretzky falling while he skated through solitary drills on the ice.  While the spectacle of the planet's greatest hockey player toppling over like a grade-schooler might seem surprising, it actually makes perfect sense.  As skilled as he was, Gretzky was determined to improve, to push the boundaries of the possible.  The only way that happens is to build new connections in the brain--which means reaching, failing, and looking stupid.  

Feeling stupid is no fun.  But being willing to be stupid--in other words, being willing to risk the emotional pain of making mistakes--is absolutely essential because reaching, failing, and reaching again is the way your brain grows and forms new connections.  When it comes to developing talent, remember, mistakes are not really mistakes--they are the guideposts you use to get better.  One way some places encourage "productive mistakes is to establish rules that encourage people to make reaches that might otherwise feel strange and risky--in effect nudging them into the sweet spot at the edge of their ability.  For example, students at the Meadowmount School of Music often practice according to an informal rule: If a passerby can recognize a song, it's being played too fast.  The point of this super-exaggerated slowness (which produces songs that resemble those of humpback whales) is to reveal small mistakes that might have gone undetected, and thus create more high-quality reaches.  

Businesses do it too.  Google offers "20 percent time":  Engineers are given 20 percent of their work time to spend on private, nonapproved projects they are passionate about, and thus ones for which they are more likely to take risks.  I've encountered numerous organizations that have employees sign a "contract" affirming that they will take risks and make mistakes. 

Whatever the strategy, the goal is always the same:  to encourage reaching, and to reinterpret mistakes so that they're not verdicts, but the information you use to navigate to the correct move.  

Tip #7  Before you start figure out if it's a hard skill or a soft skill

The first step toward building a skill is to figure out exactly what type of skill you're building.  Every skill falls into one of two categories:  hard skills and soft skills.  

The point of this tip is that hard skills and soft skills are different (they use different structures of circuits in your brain), and thus are developed through different methods of deep practice.

Begin by asking yourself which of these skills need to be absolutely 100% consistent every single time.  Which need to be executed with machine like precision?  These are the hard skills.  Then ask yourself which skills need to be flexible and variable, and depend on the situation?  Which depend on instantly recognizing patterns and selecting one optimal choice?  These are the soft skills. 

A quick litmus test: Is a teacher or coach usually involved in the early stages?  If the answer is yes, then it's likely a hard skill.  If not, then it's a soft skill.  

Hard/ high precision skills are actions that are performed as correctly and consistently as possible every time.  They are skills that have one path to an ideal result; skills that you could imagine being performed by a reliable robot.  Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.  Some examples:

• a golfer swinging a club, a tennis player serving, or any precise, repeating athletic move.
• a child performing basic math (ex: addition or multiplication tables)
• a violinist playing a specific chord
• a basketball player shooting a free throw
• a young reader translating letter shapes into sounds and words
• a worker on an assembly line, attaching a part

Here your goal is to build a skill that functions like a Swiss watch reliable, exact, and performed the same way every time, automatically, without fail.  Hard skills are about ABC: Always Being Consistent.

To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right wires in your brain.  In order to do this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly attuned to errors.  To work like a careful carpenter.  A good example of hard-skill carpentry is found in the Suzuki music instruction method.  Suzuki students begin by spending several lessons simply by learning to hold the bow and the violin with the right finger curve and pressure, the right stance, the right posture.  Using rhyme and repetition, they learn to move the bow without the violin "up like a rocket, down like the rain, back and forth like a choo-choo train."  Each fundamental, no matter how humble seeming, is introduced as a precise skill of huge importance (which of course it really is) taught via a series of vivid images, and worked on over and over until it is mastered.  The vital pieces are built, rep by careful rep.  Another example can be found on a worn piece of paper inside the wallet of Tom Brady.  On that paper is a handwritten list of fundamental keys to throwing technique.  All of them are simple (ex: throw down the hall") and all of them connect to the drills Brady's been doing with his personal coach Tom Martinez.

Precision especially matters early on, because the first reps establish the pathways for the future.  The first repetitions are like the first sled tracks on fresh snow: on subsequent tries, your sled will tend to follow those grooves.  When you build hard skills, be precise and measured.  Go slowly.  Make one simple move at a time, repeating and perfecting it before you move on.  Pay attention to errors, and fix them, particularly at the start.  Learning fundamentals only seems boring--in fact, it's the key moment of investment.  If you build the right pathway now, you'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble down the line.

Soft/ High flexibility skills on the other hand are those that have many paths to a good result, not just one.  These skills aren't about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices.  Soft skills tend to be found in broader, less-specialized pursuits, especially those that involve communication, such as:

• a soccer player sensing a weakness in the defense and deciding to attack
• a stock trader spotting a hidden opportunity amid a chaotic trading day
• a novelist instinctively shaping the twists of a complicated plot
• a singer subtly interpreting the music to highlight emotion
• a police officer on a late-night patrol 
• A CEO "reading a room" in a tense meeting or negotiation

Soft skills are about the three Rs: Reading, Recognizing, and Reacting.

Soft skills catch our eye because they are beautiful: picture soccer star Lionel Messi improvising his way to a brilliant goal, or Jimi Hendrix blazing through a guitar solo, or Craig Ferguson riffing through a comic monologue.  They are the result of super-fast brain software recognizing patterns and responding in just the right way.  While the hard skills are best put together with measured precision, soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever-changing environments.  These are the places where you encounter different obstacles and respond to them over and over, building the network of sensitive wiring you need to read, recognize, and react.  In other words, to build soft skills you should behave more like a skateboarder in a skateboard park: aggressive, curious, and experimental, always seeking new ways to challenge yourself.  

Brazil, home of many of the world's most skilled soccer players, develops its players through a unique game called futebol de salao ("soccer in the room").  This insanely fast, tightly compressed five-on-five version of the game--played on the size of a basketball court--creates 600% more touches, demands instant pattern recognition and in the words of Emilio Miranda, a professor of soccer at the University of Sao Paulo, serves as Brazil's "laboratory of improvisation." 

Even the most creative skills--especially the most creative skills--require long periods of clumsiness.  The Bronte sisters, three of whom became world class novelists, built their talents by writing thousands of pages of stories in tiny homemade books when they were children.  The early Bronte stories, like Tina Fey's early improv work, aren't very good--and that's precisely the point.  They became skilled by performing thousands of intensive reaches and reps in an endlessly challenging, variable, engaging space.  

When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of varied reps, and on getting clear feedback.  Don't worry too much about making errors--the important thing is to explore.  Soft skills are often more fun to practice, but they're also tougher because they demand that you coach yourself.  After each session ask yourself, what worked?  What didn't?  And why? 

Tip #10 Honor the hard skills

As you probably recognize, most talents are not exclusively hard skills or soft skills, but rather a combination of the two.  For example, think of a violinist's precise finger placement to play a series of notes (a hard skill)  and her ability to interpret the emotion of a song (a soft skill).  Or a quarterback's ability to deliver an accurate spiral (a hard skill) and his ability to swiftly read a defense (a soft skill).  

The point of this tip is simple: prioritize the hard skills because in the long run they're more important to our talent.  At Spartak, the Moscow tennis club, there is a rule that young players must wait years before entering competitive tournaments.  "Technique is everything," said a coach, Larisa Preobrazhenskaya.  "If you begin playing without technique it is a big mistake."

You might be surprised to learn that many top performers place great importance on practicing the same skills they practiced as beginners.  The cellist Yo-Yo Ma spends the first minutes of every practice playing single notes on his cello.  The NFL quarterback Peyton Manning spends the first segment of every practice doing basic footwork drills--the kind they teach twelve-year-olds.  These performers don't say to themselves, "Hey, I'm one of the most talented people in the world--shouldn't I be doing something more challenging?"  They resist the temptation of complexity and work on the task of honing and maintaining their hard skills, because those form the foundation of everything else.  

Think of your talent as a big redwood tree.  First build the trunk, then work on the branches.

Tip #11 Don't fall for the prodigy myth

Most of us grow up being taught that talent is an inheritance, like brown hair or blue eyes.  Therefore, we presume that the surest sign of talent is early, instant, effortless success, i.e., being a prodigy.  In fact, a well-established body of research shows that that assumption is false.  Early success turns out to be a weak predictor of long-term success.  

Many top performers are overlooked early on, then grow quietly into stars.  This list includes Michael Jordan (cut from his high school varsity team as a sophomore), Charles Darwin (considered slow and ordinary by teachers), Walt Disney (fired from an early job because he "lacked imagination"), Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Lucille Ball, and so on.  One theory why prodigy's seem to fall away is that the praise and attention they receive lead them to instinctively protect their magical status by taking fewer risks, which eventually slows their learning.  *Note: I believe however that with all these books and information on the market that this is becoming less and less of a phenomenon, since prodigy's have figured out that they need to keep taking risks.*

The talent hotbeds are not built on identifying talent, but on constructing it, day by day.  They are not overly impressed by precociousness and do not pretend to know who will succeed.  

Anson Dorrance, the head coach of the University of North Carolina women's soccer team, which he has lead to 21 national championship wins, sums this up nicely.  "One of the most unfortunate things I see when identifying youth players is the girl who is told over the years how great she is.  By the time she's a high school freshman, she starts to believe it.  By her senior year she's fizzled out.  Then there's her counterpart: a girl waiting in the wings, who quietly and with determination decides she's going to make something of herself.  Invariably, this humble, hardworking girl is the one who becomes a real player."  

If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens.  If you don't have early success, don't quit.  Instead, treat your early efforts as experiments, not as verdicts.  Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Tip #12 Five ways to pick a high-quality teacher or coach

Great teachers, coaches, and mentors, like any rare species can be identified by a few characteristic traits.  The following rules are designed to help you sort through the candidates and make the best choice for yourself.  

1) Avoid someone who reminds you of a courteous waiter

This species of teacher/coach/mentor is increasingly abundant in our world: one who focuses his efforts on keeping you comfortable and happy, on making things go smoothly, with a minimum of effort.  This is the kind of person who covers a lot of material in a short time, smiles a lot, and says things like, "don't worry, no problem, we can take care of that later."  This is a good person to have as your waiter in a restaurant, but a terrible person to have as your teacher, coach, or mentor.  

2) Seek someone who scares you a little

In contrast to encounters with courteous waiters, encounters with great teachers/ coaches/mentors tend to be filled with unfamiliar emotion: feelings of respect, admiration, and, often a shiver of fear.  This is a good sign.  Look for someone who:

Watches you closely: He is interested in figuring you out--what you want, where you're coming from, what motivates you.

Is action-oriented:  She often won't want to spend a lot of time chatting--instead, she'll want to jump into a few activities immediately, so she can get a feel for you and vice versa. 

Is honest, sometimes unnervingly so:  He will tell you the truth about your performance in clear language.  This stings at first.  But you'll come to see that it's not personal--it's the information you can use to get better.  You are not looking for a buddy or a parent figure.  You're looking for someone solid, someone you trust, someone with whom you take a journey.

3) Seek someone who gives a short, clear directions

Most great teachers/coaches/mentors do not give long winded speeches.  They do not give sermons or long lectures.  Instead they give short, unmistakable clear directions, they guide you to a target.  John Wooden's average utterance lasted only four seconds.  This underlies a large truth: teaching is not an eloquence contest; it is about creating a connection and delivering useful information.

4) Seek someone who loves teaching fundamentals

Great teachers will often spend entire practice sessions on one seemingly small fundamental--for example, the way you grip a golf club, or the way you pluck a single note on a guitar.  This might seem strange, but it reflects their understanding of a vital reality: these fundamentals are the core of your skills.  The more advanced you are, the more crucial they become.  

5) other things being equal, pick the older person

Teaching is like any other talent: it takes time to grow.  This is why so many hotbeds are led by people in their sixties and seventies.  Great teachers are first and foremost learners, who improve their skills with each passing year.  That's not to say there aren't any great teachers under thirty or that all coaches with gray hair are genius's.  But other things being equal, go with someone older.

Tip #13 Find the sweet spot

There is a place, right on the edge of your ability, where you learn best and fastest.  It's called the sweet spot, here's how to find it.  

Comfort Zone:

Sensations: Ease, effortlessness.  You're working, but not reaching or struggling.  

Percentage of Successful Attempts: 80% and above

  

Sweet Spot:

Sensations: frustration, difficulty, alertness to errors.  You're fully engaged in an intense struggle--as if you're stretching with all your might for a nearly unreachable goal, brushing it with your fingertips, then reaching again.  

Percentage of successful attempts: 50-80%

Survival Zone:

Sensations: confusion, desperation.  You're overmatched: scrambling, thrashing, and guessing.  You guess right sometimes, but it's mostly luck.

Percentage of successful attempts: below 50%

To understand the importance of the sweet spot, consider Clarissa, a freckle-faced 13 year old clarinet player who was part of a study by two Australian music psychologists named Gary Mcpherson and James Renwick.  Clarissa was an average musician in every sense of the word--average ability, average practice habits, average motivation.  But one morning, a remarkable thing happened: Clarissa accomplished a month's worth of practice in five minutes.  

Here's what it looked like: Clarissa played a few notes.  Then she made a mistake and immediately froze, as if the clarinet were electrified.  She peered closely at the sheet music, reading the notes.  She hummed the notes to herself.  She fingered the keys in a fast silent rehearsal.  Then she started again, got a bit farther, made another mistake, stopped again, and went back to the start.  In this fashion, working instinctively she learned the song.  McPherson calculated that she learned more in that span of five minutes than she would have learned in an entire month practicing her normal way, in which she would have learned in an entire month practicing her normal way, in which she played songs straight through, ignoring any mistakes.

Why?  Picture the wires of Clarissa's brain during those five minutes.  Each time she made a mistake, she was 1) sensing it and 2) fixing it, welding the right connection in her brain.  Each time she repeated the passage, she was strengthening those connections and linking them together.  She was not just practicing,  She was building her brain.  She was in the sweet spot.  

Locating your sweet spot requires some creativity.  For instance, some golfers work on their swings underwater (which slows them down so they can sense and fix their mistakes).  Some musicians play songs backward (which helps them better sense the relationship between the notes).  These are different methods, but the underlying pattern is the same: seek out ways to stretch yourself.  Play on the edges of your competence.  As Albert Einstein said, "One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one's greatest efforts."  The key word is "barely."  Ask yourself: if you tried your absolute hardest, what could you almost do?  Mark the boundary of your current ability, and aim a little beyond it.  That's your spot.  

Tip #14 Take off your watch

Deep practice is not measured in minutes or hours, but in the number of high quality reaches and repetitions you make--basically, how many new connections you form in your brain.  Instead of counting minutes or hours, count reaches and reps.  Instead of saying, "I'm going to practice piano for 20 minutes," tell yourself, "I'm going to do five intensive reps of that new song."  Instead of planning to hit golf balls for an hour, plan to make 25 quality swings with each club.  Instead of reading over that textbook for an hour, make flash cards and grade yourself on your efforts.  Ignore the clock and get to the sweet spot, even if it's only for a few minutes, and measure your progress by what counts: reaches and reps.

Tip #16 Each day, try to build one perfect chunk
In our busy lives, it's sometimes tempting to regard merely practicing as a success.  We complete the appointed hour and sigh victoriously--mission accomplished!  But the real goal isn't practice; it's progress.  As John Wooden put it, "Never mistake mere activity for accomplishment."

One useful method is to set a daily SAP: Smallest Achievable Perfection.  In this technique, you pick a single chunk that you can perfect--not just improve, not just "work on," but get 100 percent consistently correct.  For example, a tennis player might choose the service toss; a salesperson might choose the twenty-second pitch he'll make to an important client.  The point is to take the time to aim at a small, defined target, and then put all your effort toward hitting it.

After all, you aren't built to be transformed in a single day.  You are built to improve little by little, connection by connection, rep by rep.  As Wooden also said, "Don't look for the big, quick improvement.  Seek the small improvement one day at a time.  That's the only way it happens--and when it happens, it lasts."


Tip #17 Embrace struggle
At all of the talent hotbeds, from Moscow to Dallas to Brazil to New York, I saw the same facial expression: eyes narrow, jaw tight, nostrils flared, the face of someone intently reaching for something, falling short, and reaching again.  This is not a coincidence.  Deep practice summed up: struggle.  Most of us instinctively avoid struggle, because it's uncomfortable.  It feels like failure.  However, when it comes to developing your talent, struggle isn't an option--it's a biological necessity.

Tip #18 Choose five minutes a day over an hour a week
With deep practice, small daily practice "snacks" are more effective than once a week practice binges.  The reason has to do with the way our brains grow--incrementally, a little each day, even as we sleep.  Daily practice, even for five minutes, nourishes this process, while more occasional practice forces your brain to play catch-up.  Or, as the music-education pioneer Shinichi Suzuki puts it, "Practice on the days that you eat."

The other advantage of practicing daily is that it becomes a habit.  The act of practicing--making time to do it, doing it well--can be thought of as a skill in itself, perhaps the most important skill of all.  Give it time.  According to research, establishing a new habit takes about thirty days.

Tip #19 Don't do drills.  Instead play small, addictive games
This tip is about the way you think your practice.  The term "drill" evokes a sense of drudgery and meaninglessness.  It's mechanical, repetitive, and boring--as the saying goes, drill and kill.  Games are precisely the opposite.  They mean fun, connectedness, and passion.  And because of that, skills improve faster when they're looked at this way.

Dig into the biography of any world-class performer and you'll uncover a story about a small, addictive game.  They have a juicy addictive sense of involvement, fun, and excitement.  Good coaches share a knack for transforming the most mundane activities--into games.  The governing principle is: if it can be counted, it can be turned into a game.  Keep track of a score, give yourself points for each perfect chord, shot, etc.  Then try to beat your score.

Tip #20 Practice Alone
Solo practice works because it's the best way to 1) seek out the sweet spot at the edge of your ability, and 2) develop discipline, because it doesn't depend on others.

World class performers were found to spend 5 times as many hours practicing alone.

Tip #21 Think in images

• take the tennis racket back as if you were sweeping dishes off a coffee table
• sing the phrase like a balloon running out of air 
• touch the strings as if they were burning hot
• let the ball kiss your foot

Images are far easier to grasp, recall, and perform.  Whenever possible, create a vivid image for each chunk you want to learn.

Tip #22 Pay attention immediately after you make a mistake

People who pay deeper attention to an error learn significantly more than those who ignore it.  Never take mistakes as a flaw of your person.

Tip #23 Visualize the wires of your brain forming new connections
When you go to the sweet spot on the edge of your ability and reach beyond it, you are forming and strengthening new connections in your brain.  Mistakes aren't really mistakes, then--they're the information you use to build the right links.  The more you pay attention to mistakes and fix them, the more of the right connections you'll be building inside your brain.  Visualizing this process as it happens helps you reinterpret mistakes as what they actually are: tools for building skill.

Tip #24 Visualize the wires of your brain getting faster
Every time you practice deeply--the wires of your brain get faster.  Over time, signal speeds increase to 200 mph from 2 mph.  When you practice, it's useful and motivating to visualize the pathways of your brain being transformed from simple copper wires to high speed broadband, because that's what's really happening.

Tip #25 Shrink the space
Smaller practice spaces can deepen practice when they are used to increase the number and intensity of reps and clarify the goal.  This doesn't not just apply to physical space.  Poets and writers shrink the field by using restrictive meters to force themselves into a small creative form.  Comedy writers use the 140-character arena of Twitter as a space to hone their skills.  Businesses can also benefit from compression: Toyota trains new employees by shrinking the assembly line into a single room filled with toy sized replicas of its equipment.  The company has found that this mini-training is more effective than training on the actual production line.  Ask yourself: what's the minimum space needed to make these reaches and reps?  Where is extra space hindering fast and easy communication?  

Tip #26 Slow it down (Even slower than you think)
When we learn how to do something new, our immediate urge is to do it again, faster.  This is known as the "Hey, Look at me! reflex.  This urge for speed makes perfect sense, but it can also create sloppiness, particularly when it comes to hard skills.  We trade precision and long term performance for a temporary thrill. So slow it down
Super slow practice works like a magnifying glass.  It lets us sense our errors more clearly and thus fix them.  Slow practice is used in many talent hotbeds to teach hard skills, from the Spartak Tennis Club (where students swing in such slow motion they resemble ballet dancers) to the Septien School of Contemporary Music (where performers learn a song by singing one slow note at a time).  Ben Hogan routinely practiced so slowly that when he finally contacted the ball it moved about an inch.  As the saying goes, "it's not how fast you do it.  It's how slowly you can do it correctly."


Tip #28 Mime it
At talent hotbeds you see people swinging golf clubs and tennis rackets at empty air, playing piano on tabletops, and skiing down imaginary slalom courses with their feet fixed on the floor.  It looks crazy, but from a deep practice perspective it makes sense.  Removing everything except the essential action lets you focus on what matters most: making the right reach.


Tip #29 When you get it right, mark the spot
One of the most fulfilling moments in a practice session is when you have your first perfect rep.  When this happens, freeze.  Rewind the mental tape and play the move again in your mind.  Memorize the feeling, the rhythm, the physical and mental sensations.  The point is to mark this moment--this is the spot where you want to go again and again.  This is not the finish--this is the new starting line for perfecting the skill until it becomes automatic.  "Practice begins when you get it right."

Tip #33 To learn from a book, close the book (pg 71-72)
Research shows that people who follow the strategy--reading ten pages once, then closing the book and writing a one-page summary--remember 50 percent more material over the long term than people who follow the strategy--reading those ten pages four times in a row, and trying to memorize them.

This is because of one of deep practice's most fundamental rules: learning is reaching.  Passively reading a book--a relatively effortless process, letting the words wash over you like a warm bath--doesn't put you in the sweet spot.  Less reaching equals less learning.

On the other hand, closing the book and writing a summary forces you figure out the key points (one set of reaches), process and organize those ideas so they make sense (more reaches), and write them on the page (still more reaches, along with repetition).  The equation is always the same: More reaching equals more learning.


Tip #36 Invent Daily Tests (pg 75-76)
The important thing, the only thing, is to help the student push themselves.  There are many ways to do that; whether it's money or chocolate or pride or something else doesn't really matter.

To invent a good test, ask yourself:

• What's one key element of this skill?  
• How can I isolate my accuracy or reliability, and measure it?
• How can I make it fun, quick, repeatable, so I can track my progress?

1. Practicing correctly 
2. Getting a great coach
3. Total Concentration 

When we practice in certain ways we are actually upgrading our brains, we actually are upgrading/ improving our brains.  This method is called deep practice.  Deep practice can increase the velocity of skill acquisition 10 times faster than regular practice.  Practice does make perfect, but it's got to be the right kind of practice.


Tip #37 Choose the Best Practice Method
The biggest problem in choosing a practice strategy is not there are too few options, but that there are too many.  How do you identify the best methods?  This tip provides a way to measure practice effectiveness.  It's called the REPS gauge.  Each letter stands for a key element of deep practice.

R: Reaching and Repeating
E: Engagement
P: Purposefulness
S: Strong, Speedy Feedback
  
Reaching and Repeating:  Does the practice have you operating on the edge of your ability, reaching and repeating?

Scenario: Two math teachers teaching the multiplication tables to thirty students.

• Teacher A selects a single student to write the tables on the board
• Teacher B creates a "game show" format in which a multiplication problem is posed verbally to the entire class, then a single student is called on to answer

Result: Teacher B chose the better option because it creates thirty reaches per question.  In Classroom A, only one student has to reach--everybody else can lean back and observe.  In Classroom B, however, every single member of the class has to reach in case their name is called.  

Engagement: Is the practice immersive?  Does it command your attention?  Does it use emotion to propel you toward a goal?

Scenario: two trumpet students trying to learn a short, touch passage in a son.  

• Trumpeter A plays the passage twenty times
• Trumpeter B tries to play the passage perfectly--with zero mistakes--five times in a row.  If she makes any mistake, the count goes back to zero and she starts over

Result: Student B made the better choice, because the method is more engaging.  Playing a passage twenty times in a row is boring, a chore where you're simply counting the reps until you're done.  But playing five times perfectly, when any mistake sends you back to zero is intensively engaging.  

Purposefulness: Does the task directly connect to the skill you want to build?  

Scenario: Two basketball teams keep losing games because of missed free throws.

• Team A practices free throws at the end of a practice, with each player shooting fifty free throws alone.  
• Team B practices free throws intermittently during a full-court scrimmage, with the fouled player shooting while tired and under pressure, as in a game.  

Result: Team B made the better choice, because their practice connects to the skill they want to build, the ability to make free throws under pressure, while exhausted.  (No player ever gets to shoot fifty straight in a game).  

Strong, Speedy Feedback: Does the learner receive a stream of accurate information about his performance--where he succeeded and where he made mistakes?  

Scenario: two high school students trying to improve their SAT scores.

• Student A spends a Saturday taking a mock version of the SAT test, then receives the test results one week later.  
• Student B spends a Saturday taking a mini version of each section, grading herself and reviewing each test in detail as soon as it's completed.  

Result: Student B made the better choice, because the feedback is direct and immediate.  Learning swiftly where she went wrong (and where she went right) will tend to stick, while finding out a week later will have little effect.

The idea of this gauge is simple: when given a choice between two practice methods, or when you're inventing a new test or game, pick the one that maximizes these four qualities, the one with the most REPS.  The larger lesson here is to pay attention to the design of your practice.  Small changes in method can create large increases in learning velocity.  

Tip #38 Stop Before You're Exhausted

In many skills, particularly athletic, medical, and military ones, there's a long tradition of working until total exhaustion.  This tradition has its uses, particularly for improving fitness and mental toughness, and for forging emotional connections within a group.  But when it comes to learning, the science is clear: exhaustion is the enemy.  Fatigue slows the brain.  It triggers errors, lessons concentration, and leads to shortcuts that create bad habits.  It's no coincidence that most talent hotbeds put a premium on practicing when people are fresh, usually in the morning, if possible.  When exhaustion creeps in, it's time to quit.

Tip #39 Practice Immediately After Performance

The previous tip was about the importance of practicing when you're fresh.  This tip is about a different kind of freshness, which comes in the moment just after a performance, game, or competition.  At that moment, practicing is probably the last thing you want to do.  But it's the first thing you should do, if you're not too worn out, because it helps you target your weak points and fix them, as the golfer Jack Nicklaus said, "I always achieve my most productive practice after an actual round.  Then, the mistakes are fresh in my mind and I can go to the practice tee and work specifically on those mistakes.

Tip #40 Just Before Sleep Watch a Mental Movie

This is a useful habit that I've picked up from dozens of top performers, ranging from surgeons, to athletes, to comedians.  Just before falling asleep they play a movie of their idealized performance in their heads.  A wide body of research supports the idea, linking visualization to improved performance, motivation, mental toughness, and confidence.  Treat it as a way to rev the engine of your unconscious mind, so it spends more time churning towards your goals.  

Tip #41 End on a Positive Note

A practice session should end like a good meal--with a small, sweet reward.  It could be playing a favorite game, or it could be quite literal (chocolate works quite well).  

Tip #43 Embrace Repetition

Repetition has a bad reputation.  We tend to think of it as dull and uninspiring.  But this perception is titanically wrong.  Repetition is the single most important lever we have to improve our skills, because it uses built-in mechanism to make the wires of our brains work faster and more accurate (see appendix pg 117).  

Los Verdes Golf Tournament

7/12/13 Los Verdes Golf Course: +1, 72
http://www.losverdesgc.com/

This is a detailed account of my Los Verdes Golf Tournament through the Marshal Canyon Men's Club.

I was fairly nervous waking up this morning for my first golf tournament in a long time (about 2 years), but I felt well prepared leading up to it.  I had been working on a few faults in my long game (see My Golf Swing), but I was very confident with my short game (from reading and studying Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible).  I have always prided myself on a great short game, and it's true that what happens within 100 yards or so says a lot about your score.  My career best score, a -2, 70 at Lakewood Golf Course (back in July 2011) had a lot to do with my wedge game and putting.  This most recent tournament I wedged and putted almost as well as that day, and I am fully satisfied with the result.

On my equipment side, I have switched off my Odyssey White Hot XG #1 putter because I have lost the feel and the connection I look for in a putter.  I have worked a lot with it, in attempt to grow accustomed to it, but I feel that since it has taken over two years with little results to show for it, it is time to retire the putter.  In my mind I agree with Dr. Bob Rotella in his book Putting Out Of Your Mind that "if you think the putter you're using will help you, it probably will."  I've put a lot of time and money into it, and I just don't see much value in it right now.  Hence the switch.  So I have gone back to my trusty Bullet putter (model shown below) that I just love!  Now I don't worry about the putter and I just worry about setting up my mind for the putt.  Without a doubt this process has been working because I have recently shot -3, 32 on the Mountain Course at Whittier Narrows (9 holes) with only 10 putts.  I haven't calculated the strokes gained putting yet, but I know that it was a great statistic on that day.  As for the Los Verdes Tournament, I took only 28 putts while missing a one and a half foot tap in for bogey (oops!).  Next time I know now to mark and give myself comfortable standing room to putt instead of just trying to get out of everyones' way quickly.
     


The course was playing from the white tees, but on some of the holes, the tees were up, so it played only about 6,100 yards (par is 71 with three par 5's and four par 3's).

Preparation

Warming up for the round, I hit maybe 40 balls on the range.  I started out with my PW and worked my way up to the 3 wood.  I used my balance balls a lot in order to keep my early extension under some control.  I also used my swingyde (mostly with the 7 iron) in order to keep my arc a little bit wider going back, as I have a tendency to get a bit wristy on the backswing.   

I then hit a few putts on the practice green focusing on letting the speed happen.  The greens were about a 10.0 in the morning and maybe an 11.0 on the stimp meter in the afternoon.  I hit some putts with my eyes on the point where I wanted the ball to enter the hole (my target) as this gets me target oriented on my putts.  This way I also don't have to worry about my stroke, rhythm, etc. especially since focusing on those things are detrimental to putting anyways.  I told myself before going to warm up and before going to the first tee to focus on my game and to keep a calm and neutral attitude because that's when I seem to perform at my best, whether it's a college test, a golf game, or refereeing hockey.  In my putting and wedge play I also told myself frequently to what Dave Pelz prescribes as "dead hands," which is where you feel the centrifugal force (outward pulling) and natural motion of the swing powering the shots, rather than "hitting" shots with your hand and arm muscles. And you hold your finish, retaining the feel of your swing until each shot lands and you can see how far it flew.

Play By Play Highlights

The first hole is a par 5 dogleg to the left (you can see the tee box in the above picture on the right) and I was very nervous when I went through my routine and addressed the ball.  I took a 3 hybrid as my club of choice after consulting my strategy book and after taking a few conscious breaths, swung, and hit the ball (with a beautiful medium height ball flight) straight down the fairway about 210 yards away.  After another hybrid for a layup, I was about 40 yards away lieing in some thick rough, so I used my finesse swing, trusting my feel to gauge the exact distance, and I hit another beautiful shot with a low trajectory that hopped on the front, took a hug bounce, and bit about 5 feet from the hole.  I nervously went through my routine, consciously telling myself to just focus on my target (a spot on the edge of the hole) and as I looked back at the inch in front of the ball that I was going to putt over, I still could picture the hole and my target in my mind.  Then I calmly released the stroke as per se my routine and it found the center of the cup with a medium pace, taking a gentle right to left break.  Off to a great start with a birdie!

On the second hole I had to layup out of a fairway bunker because I was behind a tree.  I hit the ball from the back of my stance and I nearly didn't get back in play (next time I'll approach this type of layup with normal bunker setup and swing).  I hit a beautiful PW shot from about 130 yards that took off right at the flag and didn't budge one bit.  I ended up about 15 feet from the hole and two putted for bogey.  

On the third hole the yardage was 169 yards playing uphill to a back pin, so I figured it was playing about 180 yards.  I hit a solid 5 iron draw that started out right of the pin about 30 feet and drew back to 10 feet right of the pin, about 18 feet from the hole total.  Hopefully I won closest to the pin on this hole!  All day I was focusing on keeping my butt against the tush line (I figured out that making swings against the side of the cart seemed to help my early extension midway through the round).  At this point, about 9:45AM, the weather was still overcast with the marine layer and fairly cool, about 65 degrees Fahrenheit.  I had a slightly uphill, left to right breaking putt, that I stroked smoothly into the left center side of the hole for another birdie!  

On the fourth hole I made a nice finesse sand wedge from about 70 yards with my 9:00 swing that went slightly right of the hole, leaving a downhill 16 foot putt from right to left.  I had a 6 foot return putt for bogey that I calmly refocused myself through my routine, focused on a spot on the cup and then stroked it right into the middle.  

On the fifth hole I had a tricky downhill putt from about 18 feet that broke sharply from left to right (about 3 feet).  I lined up my alignment line on the golf ball for this putt so that I could give myself some confidence about where I was aiming this slippery fast putt.  I gave it a bit too much break and tapped in for a par.  By this time the sun was coming out, and the temperature was a lukewarm 72-74 degrees. 

On the sixth hole I had a brilliant little flop shot from about 7 yards away with the pin shortsided from my position and running away from me downhill.  I picked out a landing spot about a 6 feet short of the hole that I would land on with spin.  I opened up the face to about 45 degrees and put the ball in the center of my stance aligning myself a few feet to the left of the flag.  I executed it nicely, bringing my arms to just past the 7:30 position and it landed with a little spin and stopped about two and a half feet left of the hole.  I calmly aligned myself neatly and made the putt in the center.  

On the seventh hole I hit a great, piercing, push draw 3 wood about 250 yards down the right side of the fairway.  My approach was just to the left of the green and I chipped on with a LW (at the back of my stance) to about 3 feet.  I calmly stroked in the par putt.  

On the 8th hole again I hit a great push draw 3 wood that found the center of the fairway.  I made a great return putt from about 7 feet down a slippery slope that dripped right into the center of the hole.  I picked out a spot about halfway to the hole, and that became my new hole that I would roll it to (as if the green were flat).  

On the 9th hole again I hit another great 3 wood that again had a nice piercing flight (although it was a bit pushed out to the right).  I practiced my butt against the cart drill, and I hit a 6 iron right where I was aiming to the middle portion of the green (the pin was at the back right portion).

On the 10th hole I hit a great putt from about 18 feet that was downhill breaking about 3-4 feet from right to left.  My thoughts before I stroked this putt were to keep on focusing on my target, and to have dead hands (so I wouldn't consciously try to hit the ball into the hole--I tend to do this when I really want to make a putt, I just give the ball an extra hit so I can ensure the ball to get to the hole, but it usually results in disaster).    

On the 11th hole (shown below) I hit a nice 3 wood down the hill (about 50-60 feet downhill).  I had about 25 yards to the pin just to the left of the green (I had to go over the bunker shown below).  My wedge was hit nicely and it landed just about where I wanted it, but it hit a downslope that shot it forward to the fringe of the green about 30 feet away.  I proceeded to pick a spot on my line about 6 or 7 feet short of the hole which became my new target I was putting to.  I was very calm as I stroked the putt, and it took a tantalizingly close run at the right side of the cup.  The speed was drop-dead gorgeous and I tapped in for par. 

 

On the 12th hole, a 137 yard uphill par 3, I tried to muscle a 9 iron there, but I came up on the front fringe.  I hit a beautiful chip shot from about 10 yards away, the back of my stance with a LW, to about 3 feet.  I committed to my target, and again I sank the putt in the middle of the cup.

On the 13th hole, a straightaway hole with an elevated green, I hit a 3 wood that was slightly pushed right of my target line, but straight and with a piercing ball flight.  It went a good 260 yards with the roll, so that was awesome (I only had about 117 yards from the right rough).  I only used the driver once all day, and it was a good game plan for me since I had been eratic with that club of late.  After coming up just short on the approach, I hit another nice chip from the back of my stance with a SW.  It bounced and then checked a bit as it rolled out nicely to about 3 feet away.  Again I picked out my target and calmly rolled it in the middle.

The 14th hole was one to forget, so I don't want to remember it haha.  Jack Nicklaus had a very selective memory, and I think that it definitely is good to forget the bad holes and focus on remembering the great ones.

The 15th hole is the signature hole at Los Verdes, and it certainly is beautiful (see below).  I hit another great push draw 3 wood off the tee that ran out to about 192 yards away.  I hit a four iron (pictured below) that wasn't struck very well, but it trundled just over the back of the green.  My putt was from the back left portion of the green downhill towards the pin, another very fast putt.  I picked out a spot about 6 feet short of the hole on my intended line and again went through my routine, stroking with confidence.  The putt just missed and rolled on by about 3 feet.  I read the putt with my feet while standing over my marker and became confident that the putt would break slightly right to left up the gentle slope.  I picked a spot just right of the center of the hole I thought the ball should enter and stroked it nicely right where I was intending.  

On the 16th hole, a dogleg left short par 5, again I hit 3 wood, but I hit a straight push about 10 yards of where I was aiming.  Thankfully the 3 wood's distance kept me right in the middle of the fairway, so I had a clear shot into the green.  From about 244 yards, I hit 3 wood again.  The ball was sitting above my feet a little bit, so I was a bit concerned about not topping it, but I mustered the courage and picked out a tree limb well into the distance and went through my routine.  I hit a low running draw that started right where I was aiming, and it drew back towards the green.  I thought it may have gotten onto the green with the right bounce, but it ended up just on the right side of the green about 13-14 yards away, on a little downslope (it was pin high though!).  I put the LW in the back of my stance, and opened up the blade slightly in an attempt to gain more loft to counteract some of the downslope.  I hit it just a tad too far, and it rolled about 9-10 feet by.  But my putting was just so solid, I picked out a spot about 8-10 inches short of the hole on my line and stroked it beautifully into the left center portion of the hole (the putt broke slightly from left to right).  I gave a little fist pump there!  

The 17th hole was an all around sloppy hole and I don't care to recall it.

The 18th however was played just how I drew it up in my mind standing on the tee.  I aimed down the right side of the fairway and creamed my 3 wood about 260 yards down the hill right at the palm tree I was aiming at in the distance.  Again it was a beautiful piercing medium height ball flight that sort of hissed as it took off.  I was left with about 151 yards to the hole and I hit a nice controlled 7 iron from a fairly severe side slope with the ball above my feet and a bit downhill too.  I made more of a conscious effort to get to my left side solid contact through the swing and I hit it right on the nose.  It left the club face a few yards right of the flag, landed in the middle of the green (about 20 feet from the hole) and rolled to within 7 feet of the hole.  I stared down my putt with confidence and a bit of will.  The putt broke gently from left to right (about 6 inches) and I putt the alignment line of my ball on the apex of the line I was going to take.  I picked a spot on that line about 5 inches short of the hole and with my dead hands stroke, I smoothly rolled it right in the middle!  What a day, and what a round!  I was pleased with my round, especially my wedge game and putting!  

         

    

Remember to Remember - Dr. Bob Rotella

Rotella, Robert. Your 15th Club: The Inner Secret to Great Golf  
Publisher: Free Press (May 2008), New York. 
This is a summary of Chapter 6 "Remember to Remember":

I have a client, Mark Wilson, who's about the same age as Tiger Woods.  But that was all their golfing resumes had in common until recently.  Tiger was a success as soon as he turned pro.  Mark was one of those players who struggle to stay on the PGA Tour.  He grew up in Wisconsin, where the golf season is short, and while Tiger was winning junior events worldwide, Mark's claim to fame was a Wisconsin, where the golf season is short, and while Tiger was winning junior events worldwide, Mark's claim to fame was a Wisconsin high school championship.  He finished at the University of North Carolina in 1997, turned pro, and spent six years grinding on golf's minor league level, playing before nonexistent crowds, doubling up in cheap motel rooms, knowing that only a very high finish would earn back a tournament's entry fee.  (It's one of the ironies of professional golf that the millionaires on PGA Tour pay a $100 entry fee for each tournament, a figure that hasn't changed in years.  The struggling novices on the mini-tours pay tournament entry fees two and three times that high.)


He got to the PGA Tour in 2003, but he never quite managed to earn enough money to keep his playing privileges for the next season.  Mark compiled dubious distinction of playing in the tour's qualifying tournament ten times.  He first came to see me in the fall of 2006, as he was preparing for his tenth trip to Q-school.  From that fact alone, I knew he was a determined guy.  I knew he wasn't a quitter.  And I admire those qualities.

But one of the toughest challenges a player in Mark's situation faces is maintaining his confidence.  As years go by and the goal of success on the PGA Tour remains just out of reach, it can be tough for a player to continue to see himself as a winner.  It can be easy to start dwelling on missed shots and missed opportunities.  It can be easy to feed the subconscious the sort of thoughts that undermine confidence instead of building it up.  This is why players don't progress at a steady rate as they play and gain experience.  They may be learning better ways to hit the ball; they may be learning better ways to manage their games in tournament situations; they may be learning how to handle life on the road.  But if they're not becoming more confident as they learn these things, it can be all for naught.  Mark had played more than 100 events on the PGA Tour, but he would have been the first to tell you that he couldn't win there.  I suggested that he improve his subconscious self-image by keeping a journal.  I wanted it to be a special kind of journal.


Keep a "Good Memories" Journal
In it, I wanted Mark to record every good shot he hit every day.  I didn't care if it was just a 5-iron he pured on the practice range warming up.  I wanted him to write it down.  Mark agreed.  Every night he wrote down or typed into a computer file all of his good shots.  He then read and reread that list.

Keeping the journal accomplished several things for Mark.  Obviously, it required him to recall all of his good shots.  He had to remember them in detail in order to write them down and describe them.  So each night, he was reliving the good shots that he'd made.  The act of writing reinforced the memory of those good shots.  Over time, Mark began enjoying the process of writing in his journal.  He like pulling out the handwritten version and reading it throughout the day.  The process helped him learn to take pleasure in his good shots. 

And, as time went on, he realized that the vast majority of his shots every day were good ones.  He hit more good shots than he had time to write down.  Equally important was what the journal prevented him from doing.  He no longer went back to his room and brooded over his bad shots.

By staying with this process, Mark dramatically improved the input he was giving his subconscious.  He quickly saw results.  Five months after we started working together, Mark was playing down in the Honda Classic down in Florida (51).  He won by making a clutch 30 footer on the first playoff hole and by making a 10 footer on the third playoff hole.  This is what Mark's improved confidence allowed him to do.  He had never won before.  Those who think that confidence can grow only from winning would have predicted he'd melt down in the crucible of pressure he faced in the final holes.  They would have been wrong.  Confidence doesn't depend on experience.  It depends on how you choose to think.      


I've had other clients who benefited from keeping journals.  Skeptics may read about this and think that I'm saying that a golfer who keeps a journal of his or her good shots will become an immediate winner.  I'm not saying that.  I understand that golf is a game of both confidence and competence.  If you haven't mastered the fundamental shots, you're not going to win any tournaments (unless you're getting handicap strokes).  You need to make sure that your physical skills match your aspirations.  What is important is that you improve both mentally and physically.  Mark had the physical skills.  He just needed more confidence, and he got it by using journals to change the nature of the data they were feeding their subconscious minds.  If your physical skills are adequate only to break 100, you won't start shooting in the 70s just by developing confidence.  But if you develop confidence, you'll be shooting in the 90s even when you play your buddies for that hotly contested $2 Nassau or in that tournament you call "your major."

• Record and relive the good memories
• Forget the bad shots
• Assign the same relatively low level of importance to every shot
• If you aren't going to figure out ways to feed positive, confidence-building memories and ideas to their subconscious, you ought to try not to think about golf at all when you're away from the course. 
• The golf world and life in general is full of commentators.  They exist at the professional level, at your local course.  They are generally very good at reaching the conclusion that what has worked is brilliant and what hasn't worked is not.  Sometimes they're right, and sometimes they're not.  The point is that outside commentators are the last thing you or anyone else should believe in.  Believe in yourself.  Believe in your own internal commentator.  Make sure that your commentator is telling you things that will help you.  (see The Road to Progress and Happiness in Life, Golf, and Beyond)