Posts
"The price of excellence is discipline.
The cost of mediocrity is disappointment."
- William Arthur Ward
How EASY is EFFORTLESS?
My mother used to say:
"Practice makes perfect -- but only if it is perfect practice."
Only one Olympic competition do I enjoy watching:
It's a guy thing perhaps.
But there is such grace, poise, and effortlessness to those ladies.
Effortlessness?
It takes 20 years on the average
for each of those competitors to reach the skill level to make it to the Olympics ...
starting in preschool!
In an average week, the typical elite figure skater trains six days.
She spends the majority of each of those days focused on her craft.
A typical day includes two or three training sessions on ice, one or two off-ice sessions, warm-ups, cool-downs,
calculated nutrition, visualization and mental training.
Besides Luck, a person needs around 18 years of training to achieve the technical fluency
and begin to to have some semblance of a repertoire.
You need an impeccable musical memory:
most concert pianists that I know have at least 4 full programs of music
that is ready or needs only the slightest polishing to be concert ready, and this is minimal.
Sviatoslav Richter had a ridiculously large repertoire before he decided to stop playing concerts only by memory.
Frozen dinners taking 8 minutes are thought to take too long.
Hour Long Documentaries bore -- only sound bites attract attention.
Novels completed in 30 Days are applauded across the internet.
Only one Olympic competition do I enjoy watching:
Women's Skating
It's a guy thing perhaps.
But there is such grace, poise, and effortlessness to those ladies.
Effortlessness?
It takes 20 years on the average
for each of those competitors to reach the skill level to make it to the Olympics ...
starting in preschool!
In an average week, the typical elite figure skater trains six days.
She spends the majority of each of those days focused on her craft.
A typical day includes two or three training sessions on ice, one or two off-ice sessions, warm-ups, cool-downs,
calculated nutrition, visualization and mental training.
Think of Concert Pianists
Besides Luck, a person needs around 18 years of training to achieve the technical fluency
and begin to to have some semblance of a repertoire.
You need an impeccable musical memory:
most concert pianists that I know have at least 4 full programs of music
that is ready or needs only the slightest polishing to be concert ready, and this is minimal.
Sviatoslav Richter had a ridiculously large repertoire before he decided to stop playing concerts only by memory.
But This Is The MicroWave Culture
Frozen dinners taking 8 minutes are thought to take too long.
Hour Long Documentaries bore -- only sound bites attract attention.
Novels completed in 30 Days are applauded across the internet.
What do you think?
Do Short-cuts to Excellence
Lead Anywhere?
Hibbs Says:
Never Give Up!
Hi Roland - we need to keep practising. One of our pair dancers fell and badly damaged her knee - so she's out for quite a long time - I feel for her ... I'm sure she'll be back - one has to be determined to achieve so much - getting back up is essential and very possible.
ReplyDeleteCheers Hilary
http://positiveletters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/e-is-for-extinct-animals-and-endangered.html
I am grieved to hear that about that poor dancer's injury -- knee injuries never do heal completely. :-(
DeleteIt's the same with ballet dancers--decades of work that starts around kindergarten.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean about how we applaud people who write a book in a few weeks, when it should always be quality that matters. Then again, I just finished Ian Fleming's first Bond book, Casino Royale, which he wrote in a few weeks. Sigh. Sure, it's short and he had a couple of decades' experience in intelligence work so he didn't have to do a lick of research. But a few weeks launched his lucrative writing career? Sigh again.
He also had pivotal contacts to smooth the road for him to getting his book published, too! Sigh with you. :-)
DeleteMy father never made any saying out of his demand, he just said "Practice!" and I did, often with some reluctance. Sometimes for emphasis he would say, "Practice, practice, practice." There were times when he was a man of few words, while other times he loved to talk and I liked to listen.
ReplyDeleteAn 8 minute microwave meal? Absurd!
Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out
My Pop who's a priest in Nigeria
ReplyDelete(they gottan annulment),
wrote me in Greek:
"suffering teaches"
[pi+fish... some other symbols
which I dont remember the names]
Yes, suffering teaches...
yet, thank GAWWWD!! life's short.
Eternity's forever
either Upstairs or...
downtown withe filthy pigs.
trustNjesus.
ALWAYS.
God bless your indelible soul.
...
DeleteWould U please help a plethora of King Size, wildchild, rawkuss poetry/wordz which are lookin 4 a home in thy novelty?? Thx. Whew. They're pretty insane. They're bereft of reason. Oi! Blimey! They're bloody PINK spiders!!
Gotta lotta gobba shrewd, surreal, supersonic, sardonic satires, sassy N savvy elixers N electronic elegance ( ...and palpable nuance) on our YOUTHwitheTRUTH blogs. Wannum? Have'm. N'joym. Gettm outta my hair!!!
How mucha wanna betcha our sugar-high-mojo, antioxident, hot-shot, full-throttle, pleasure-beyond-measure, fuse-blowin-exploits R a copious madhouse of one lavish bookay D.O.A.? Our proFUSE NRGod who leads U.S. to explosive fairy-tales in the 'one-stop-shop' symphony Upstairs? God's the BigDude, the Owner of ElysianFields, the Grand Prize, the Austere Overdrive, NoPurchaseNecessary: our bombastic tenaCITY on a Hill which'll plant the Seeds 4u2 grow-up to new N greater heights!! Mama mia! Thatsa good pasta!!
CAUTION: our 22ish, avant-guard, accurately-atrocious, offa-the-reservation-like-Jimmy-Hoffa, metal breadcrumms R sooo out-of-order, toots, they're an intimate wealth of bottomless sophistication. And dats da lethal fak, Jak. Go ahead. Sue me. Yawn. But, yet, here's the perennial KOO D'TAH: who else has actually SEEN the Great Beyond in spirit & lived to tella youse bout the bionic, bloated, brevity-like-earth we're living on?? Yes, earthling, I had an NDE, almost salivating4salvation. So gain altitude, never attitude: death has no intrinsick favorites.
If Mr. abSUREditty's an ultra-great-reward, and not everyone enters, Q: why is it an excruciating deluge of epic-.357-caliber where the quality's a limitless bulldozer plowin, pushin-your-power-cord with eternal goodies? A: the Prize-A+-TheEnd just gives U.S. moe-curley-graphix 2 VitSee: an explosion-of-extravagance which few R asking 4 anymore! Grrr. They're too concerned withe grotesque sanity of ambivilant piss-ants which swiftly crawl like lemmings to their scorecard, effusive destruction. C'est la guerre.
THANK GAWWWD!!! the Don has the ebullient BAWLS!!! to do the Manifest Destiny!!! To lead U.S. forward to the White House Upstairs with his SQUARES!!!
So, break-free, earthling; be like a contraversial outgrowth of incredibly-intoxicating-effusiveness in your zeitgeist to give the ultimate stunning, avant-guard, bareknuckle potency: Wiseabove. Wanna join this useFULL idiot Upstairs 4 the most zany, kooky, X-acto-knife antidotes? Extremely exquisite, explicit endorphins in abundance? Puh-lenty of pulverizingly-tantalizing psychopathic psychosomatics with eXtras? i2i-kick-velocity's-ass-ultra-maximum-rocket-fuel-party-hardy at my pad ya ever encountered without d'New Joisey accent 4 an eternal slew of precarious, magnanimous & primeval absurdities indelibly etched in the granite corridors of eternity with a total-barrage-of-melt-in-thy-mouth 'depth-of-undenial'???
Make Your Choice -SAW
...cuzz nobody gitts outta here alive, earthling.