Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success [Hardcover]

Bounce is a very interesting and thought provoking book. It basically argues that for any significantly complex human activity (especially sports like tennis, football and golf, and games like chess) natural talent is of pretty low importance because the wiring of the brain required to succeed can only be achieved through a massive amount of "purposeful" practice. The end result of this practice is often mistaken for natural talent, but in fact the trait most high achievers have in common is a willingness to work harder than their peers and a belief that this hard work will drive greater improvement and success, not a belief in their fixed superiority. There are a number of compelling and inspiring examples in the book, the most amazing of which is a family of Hungarian chess players whose story has changed the way I look at what is possible for any person to achieve. Woven into this argument are snipets of the author's own story as an internationally ranked table tennis player and Olympian. Although some of the material draws on the same sources (and also directly quotes) other popularizers like Malcolm Gladwell, I must say that having read the latter's books "Outliers" and "What the Dog Saw", I felt many of the key themes in "Bounce" are expressed in a very different way, and are in many ways much more compellingly argued. There are also whole sections on additional factors behind sporting success such as confidence, faith, nerve and even race, so that the overall sweep of the book's arguments is truly unique, rigourously argued and highly thought provoking. Although anchored mostly in the world of sports, it is hard to define this as just a sports book, as the ideas apply to many other walks of life as well. Highly recommended.

This is a good book, but not a great one. It has many good ideas within it, and it also does a good job of demolishing some old icons. It is a work of synthesis and it is honest enough to acknowledge the influence of many other books including Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Elseand Outliers: The Story of Success As I had already read these two books I found the ideas in Bounce familiar. Its main failing is the lack of a summary chapter at the end bringing the book to a conclusion. It just ends.

Bounce is superb at demolishing the ideas of "innate talents" and "genetic endowments and "racial characteristics." Syed points out the combinations of factors that come together to allow top performance to emerge. It is usually some combination of focused and genuine enthusiasm, opportunity, certain local quirks; disciplined practice and well trained experience. The initial enthusiasm for a task has to come from within- which allows the learner to put up with the knocks and setbacks on the way to becoming good at something. He explains very well why parents can try pushing their children into something...but probably won't get great results by so doing. The proverb about leading the horse to water, but not being able to get them to drink comes to mind. This leaves open an obvious niche for a book that helps parents to recognise and go with their child's talents and abilities.

The idea of disciplined practice being necessary to get good at something is stressed throughout the book. This applies in many fields both in sporting and other professions. The idea of perceptual compression, so that an expert apprehends and understands a situation so much more quickly and deeply than the non-expert is well described. The importance of domain specific knowledge is stressed. Syed makes a well aimed punch at the nonsense of "general management" and the idea that "the cognitive processes of learning, reasoning and problem solving" are sufficient for good decision making. He points out that the expert in a field does all these processes much more quickly, effectively, and powerfully than any non-expert, no matter how intelligent. The mechanism is that the expert is using is called "advanced pattern recognition."

"It is the rapid escalation in the number of variables in many real life situations-including sport- that makes it impossible to sift the evidence before making a decision: it would take too long. Good decision making is about compressing the informational load by decoding the meaning of patterns derived from experience. This cannot be taught in the classroom; it is not something you are born with; it must be lived and learned. To put it another way it emerges through practice."

Syed describes what happens in the brain as we progress from learning to performance. He also describes beautifully what happens when an expert "chokes." In this the expert stops using their unconscious competence, and tries to move back to doing the task consciously. But in so doing they disrupt their flow, and take too long analysing the situation, when normally they would just do what has to be done.

There are many good and useful ideas within this book about what helps towards and what hinders achievement. Syed mainly uses examples from sport, but he also uses examples from other fields with memorable examples of a fireman's sense that something was just a bit different so he got his crew out just before a building collapses, and of the differences between experienced and novice doctors.

If you want to achieve more in your chosen activity then this book has many ideas within it that will help you. I would recommend reading Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else alongside it. The earlier in life you get hold of the ideas in these books and use them the better.

Bounce is a remarkable book. Its central argument is that there is no such thing as natural talent and that top achievement is the consequence of huge amounts of a very particular kind of practice.

This may sound radical, but the evidence is compelling. The author shows how child prodigies are not quite what they seem and have actually clocked up quantities of practice that few of us achieve in our whole lives. He also shows how the extraordinary skills of elite athletes and other top performers in the arts and business can be explained by mental representations that all of us can acquire with practice.

When Roger Federer returns a fast serve he is not demonstrating faster reactions, but quicker anticipation. He is able to maker sharper and more accurate inferences about where the ball is going to go via the movement patterns of his opponent, so that he is in position almost before the ball has been hit. First class cricketers have figured out whether to play off the front or back foot 100 miliseconds before the ball has been bowled. The author demonstrates that these skills are not innate, but learned - and learnable by all of us.

Later chapters explore the importance of mindset and how parents and teachers can inculcate the "growth" mindset by praising effort rather than talent - this is of huge importance not merely to sport, but to education and life. There are also fascinating discussions of self belief, superstition, choking and drug taking. The final chapter provides a discussion of the reason for racial patterns of success and failure in sport and the wider economy.

It is absorbing, vividly readable and thought provoking throughout.