What It Takes To Be Great

The following is an excerpt from the article, "What It Takes To Be Great" published in Fortune magazine.

"The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call deliberate practice. It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice."

Simply hitting your minimum activity numbers is not deliberate practice, which is why most sales reps don't get any better. Picking up the phone 175 times each day with a goal of setting 6 appointments and running three appointments 75 percent of the time, continually observiing results and making appropriate adjustments - that's deliberate practice.

Link to full article:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391794/index.htm