success

Anders Ericsson

I found out a few days ago that Anders Ericsson passed away in early May. Ericsson was a professor of psychology at Florida State University, and his research on the relationship between practice and achievement was the basis for Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-hour rule”.

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Gladwell selectively interpreted Ericsson’s findings, and overlooked some of the key concepts that are important in understanding the results of that research  – for example, that the quality of practice (“deliberate practice”) is as important, if not more important, than the amount of practice.

David Epstein, whose excellent book The Sports Gene explores all of the factors in addition to practice that make athletes successful, has written a lovely tribute to Ericsson and the impact of his research. I was going to write a longer post myself, but David has said everything that I wanted to say and said it much better. So I’ll link you to his article instead. You can read David’s tribute here.

Skating Is A Great Sport. Here’s Why.

2018 is an Olympic year, and in my sport of figure skating, many countries are having their national championships right around now. These championships are stressful events in any year, but these ones will be even more stressful. The results of those championships go into choosing the skaters that will compete at the Olympics.

The skaters most likely to go to the Olympics tend to be the skaters that get the most media attention – but there are lots of other skaters competing at Nationals who also have wonderful stories. I’d like to introduce you to two of those skaters, because they represent what makes skating a truly great sport. (more…)

The Crooked Path of Research

 

This is a great explanation of why scientific research projects, and the results of those projects, are not as definitive or as linear as writers like Malcolm Gladwell want us to believe.

Scientific progress is a tricky thing. Despite what you might think, the direction of science is not always forwards – sometimes as a species we can unlearn things which then take us hundreds of years to re-discover. Sometimes this is simply from ideas not being publicised enough and it slips through the cracks. But more…

via How to keep science going forward — ErrantScience

Being Innovative About Innovation

Canada’s federal government released its 2017 budget last week – and the word of the day was “innovation”. By one estimate, “innovation” is mentioned more than 200 times in the 278-page budget document. And there’s lots of money available for innovation too: more than $8.2 billion directed toward various programs around skill and product development.

But despite the numerous mentions of “innovation” in the budget document, it’s difficult to find a clear explanation of how the federal government defines that term.  The government is right that workplaces are changing, and that workers and employers need to adapt to changes that affect their industries. But from looking at what the government is actually funding, it appears that the government is defining “innovation” mostly in relation to developing new technology, particularly around inventions that can be patented or commercialized. And much of the funding around “innovation” is devoted to creating conditions in which technology-based development can happen: for example, supporting “superclusters” of researchers and entrepreneurs to encourage business development in technology-related industries, or funding programs that teach kids how to code.

But let’s step back and look at this for a minute. (more…)

Mary Tyler Moore and Workplace Equality

When Mary Tyler Moore passed away this week at the age of 80, the world lost a very talented performer. But the world also lost a woman that made a difference for other women. In the 1970s, through her TV show The Mary Tyler Moore Show – which she co-created and co-produced, as well as starred in –  Moore helped to change attitudes about workplace equality.

Dan McGarry, who teaches human resource management at Seneca College in Ontario, sent me this post, which he also put on his course website. He wanted to tell his students how important Moore’s television show was in depicting the barriers that women faced at work.

Mary Tyler Moore’s name may mean very little or nothing to most of you, except that you heard that she passed away yesterday. However her television show, which used just her name, was a groundbreaker when it was first aired starting in 1970. Her character of Mary Richards was the first ‘career woman’ portrayed as the primary character in a TV show. 30-something, unmarried and unattached, she demonstrated something new in the mass media: a woman who could ‘make it on her own’. (more…)

Job Churn and Precarious Work

I wrote an opinion article for the Report on Business section of the Globe and Mail newspaper, responding to recent comments by Canadian politicians that workers should “get used to” job churn and precarious work. You can read the article here.

How I Promise You One of the Most Meaningful Days of Your Life — Both Sides of the Table – Medium

An incredibly inspirational post from venture capitalist Mark Suster, about a program giving entrepreneurial opportunities to prisoners.

I know the title “I promise you one of the most meaningful days of your life” sounds grandiose but I mean it and I hope you’ll read through to the end and choose to take one small, totally free action, that will change your life and likely those of others.On September 10th of this year I…

via How I Promise You One of the Most Meaningful Days of Your Life — Both Sides of the Table – Medium

The Olympics, Part II: Inspiring Or Discouraging?

There was a lot of complaining – justifiable complaining – about the media coverage of the recent Rio Olympics. The coverage was sexist; a television commentator attributed the success of swimming gold medalist Katinka Hosszu to her husband’s coaching, and a Tweet referred to bronze medalist trapshooter Corey Cogdell not by name but as the “wife of a [Chicago] Bears lineman”. The coverage was ageist; 56-year-old coxswain Lesley Thompson-Willey, competing in her eighth Olympics, was characterized as “old enough to be the competitors’ mother” in a story headlined “Too old for the Olympics”? And then there was the NBC network’s chief marketing officer for Olympic coverage, who got roundly criticized for claiming that women, the primary viewers of the Olympics on TV, were “not particularly sports fans” and “less interested in the result and more interested in the journey”.

But it wasn’t just the media coverage of the Olympics that had problems. The Olympic Games themselves have very big problems, to the point where (more…)

The Olympics, Part I: Insights from Marc Kennedy

The 2016 Summer Olympics happened while the blog was on vacation. I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about the event, for many of the same reasons that were so eloquently expressed by fellow blogger Caitlin Constantine. And after the event ended, I read a very thoughtful and critical article which got me thinking about how the Olympics  affect the structure and funding of amateur sports in Canada.

So I’m going to write two posts related to the Olympics. This, the first post, is about a wonderful speech by an Olympic athlete that I heard earlier this year. The second, which I’ll post later on, is about how, while the Olympics are supposed to inspire people to get active, their effects on amateur sport may be making it more difficult for non-elite athletes to do that.

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In June, I had the privilege of hearing a talk by world and Olympic champion curler Marc Kennedy.

This wasn’t the first time that I’ve been at a presentation by a high-achieving athlete. My cynical self was expecting a recycling of the usual themes in these speeches: “work hard”, ”have a dream”, ”fight through setbacks”, ”never give up”. But instead, Kennedy’s speech was a very insightful and honest look at the realities of performance at an elite level  – and a lot of what he said has relevance to work and to life, as well as to sports. These are the points from what Kennedy said that really stuck with me. (more…)

Graduate Degrees and Low-Wage Work

Underemployment is a phenomenon in the labour market that doesn’t get a lot of attention. That’s partly because the term “underemployment” can mean a couple of different things. One definition of “underemployment” is part-time workers who would prefer to be working full-time, or who are actively seeking full-time work while working part-time. Those situations aren’t always captured by measures that simply count the numbers of part-time workers, because those data don’t look at workers’ reasons why they are working part-time.

Another definition of “underemployment” is workers that have higher qualifications than the requirements of the job they’re employed in. This is also referred to as “overqualification”. And there’s a new study with some fascinating data about underemployment or overqualification among people with graduate degrees. (more…)