Rob Berger

My wife and I moved to Boston in 1989 so I could attend law school. Driving in Boston is an adventure.

One day when we were still new to the area, we got lost driving around the city. Ok, I got lost. We were at an intersection where six streets converged. This is not uncommon for Boston, and some would even say it adds to the charm. While I was completely lost, I had an idea of which way to go.

So we set off in one direction. Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to another intersection, and I finally knew where we were. I announced this to my wife, playing up my mad Magellan-like navigational skills.

She just laughed.

“Rob, you realize we are at the exact same intersection we were at 15 minutes ago,” she said. “You’ve just come from a different direction.”

I looked around like I’d just come out of a dark room and it was taking my eyes a few seconds to adjust. She was right, of course.

How we see things matters. We can look at the same old thing from a different angle and see it fresh for the first time.

Or as T.S. Eliot put it–

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Have you seen the rocks and sand demonstration? It’s called the Jar of Life.

The rocks represent the important things in your life. The sand is everything else. And then there’s a jar to fit both. It’s a metaphor for everything in our lives, both the important things and the things that don’t much matter.

Put the sand in first, the unimportant stuff, and the rocks won’t fit.

Put the rocks in first, the important stuff, and the sand fits perfectly as it falls among the rocks to fill up the jar.

It’s important to start every day, every week, every month, and every year with the rocks. Really, the rocks should get our focus. The sand can take care of itself.

My wife’s cousin lost his cell phone. It’s probably happened to most of us at some time. It’s just a phone, but it feels like we lost an important part of ourselves. It’s as if the thief rummaged through our draws at home while we were away. Icky.

He left it on the counter at a McDonalds. Nobody turned it in. They went back 30 minutes later and it was gone.

His comment on Facebook caught my eye. He said, “I hope somebody honest found it.” Time will tell.

I hope somebody decent, good and honest finds anything I might lose. I hope they find me when I’m at my lowest.

We increase the odds of somebody decent, good and honest being there when we fall if we surround ourselves with people who are decent, good and honest.

And we increase the odds if we are decent, good and honest ourselves.

An acquaintance of mine is about to publish a book. To say that he’s excited about it is like saying the Empire State Building is tall.

To hear him speak about his project leaves one believing it will be the best book of all time. It might out sell the Bible (6 billion by one estimate). He talks about how much time he spent on it, what he’s doing to promote it, how great it is.

At first, his enthusiasm rubbed me the wrong way. The book might be good, it might not be. But it’s hard to imagine it living up to his predictions. And it didn’t help that I was working on a book of my own. I don’t naturally talk up my work. In fact, I’m more likely to speak dismissively of it.

And then I listened to a Tony Robbins podcast. The podcast was a clip from one of his seminars. He was talking to a member of the audience who used self-deprecating humor in casual conversation. You heard it in his back and forth with Tony. I do the same thing.

To my surprise, Tony admonished him. He said it’s perfectly fine to communicate this way to a point. But taken too far, all you’re doing is putting down your own worth. Why would you do that?

Why would I do that? The work that I do is important. If I don’t recognize that, how will other people?

How important is your work?

I’ve played chess since college. I took some time off after law school, and then got back into the game about a year ago.

My rating, yes there are ratings in chess, is about 1925. To become a chess master, you need a rating of 2200. The best players in the world have ratings about 2800. Speaking of which, the battle for the World Chess Champion starts tomorrow in London. It pits current champion Magnus Carlsen against U.S. Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana. It should be good fun.

Question: Can a 52 year old chess player with a rating of 1925 improve to 2200 by age 60?

Most would say it’s extremely unlikely. Chess is a young person’s game. At tournaments, half or more of the players are under the age of 20. I encounter 12 year holds who are incredibly talented chess players. I also see younger players who over the course of a few years improve from Class D players to 2100.

As we age, our ability to adapt to and learn new things erodes. Or so we are told.

I’m reading the book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool.

In the book the authors speak of what the call “deliberate practice”:

More than two decades ago, after studying expert performers from a wide range of field, my colleagues and I came to realize that no matter what the field, the most effective approaches to improving performance all follow a single set of general principles. We named this universal approach “deliberate practice.”

Deliberate Practice (DP), the authors found, involve the following:

• Teacher or Coach: DP requires a well established field in which the student has access to a qualified teacher or coach
• Comfort Zone: DP requires the student  to constantly try new things. You must get out of your comfort zone.
• Goals: DP requires well-defined, specific goals.
• All In: DP requires your full attention.
• Feedback Loop: DP requires feedback. We must know when we are doing something right or wrong, so that we can reinforce or correct our performance.

How can Deliberate Practice help you achieve your goals?