Matthew Syed Quotes

#1. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance. - Author: Matthew Syed

#2. It is only by starting at an unusually young age and by practicing with such ferocious devotion that it is possible to accumulate ten thousand hours while still in adolescence. Far from being an exception to the ten-thousand-hour rule, Mozart is a shining testament to it. - Author: Matthew Syed

#3. Creativity is, in many respects, a response. - Author: Matthew Syed

#4. Well, it doesn't work. Lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise. - Author: Matthew Syed

#5. The subversive idea at the centre of Ericsson's work is that excellence is not reserved for the lucky few but can be achieved by almost all of us. - Author: Matthew Syed

#6. Marginal gains is not about making small changes and hoping they fly. Rather, it is about breaking down a big problem into small parts in order to rigorously establish what works and what doesn't. - Author: Matthew Syed

#7. Failure is rich in learning opportunities for a simple reason: in many of its guises, it represents a violation of expectation.6 It is showing us that the world is in some sense different from the way we imagined it to be. - Author: Matthew Syed

#8. The only way to be sure is to go out and test your ideas and programmes, and to realise that you will often be wrong. But that is not a bad thing. It leads to progress. This - Author: Matthew Syed

#9. World-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached. Over time, through constant repetition and deep concentration, the gap will disappear, only for a new target to be created, just out of reach once again. - Author: Matthew Syed

#10. Mere experience, if it is not matched by deep concentration, does not translate into excellence. - Author: Matthew Syed

#11. It is partly because we are so willing to blame others for their mistakes that we are so keen to conceal our own. We - Author: Matthew Syed

#12. When two peoples share a common passion: they are capable of empathising with each other's misery. - Author: Matthew Syed