PEAK CH1-2

Thoughts

My mum loves singing and she really does it well. I have shown much interest and talent in playing instruments at an early age of six. With the gene from my mum, the born gift in music and eight years of practice, did I become a genius? Of course not. There must be something else crucial to lead to success.

I had gone through naive practice when I was trained to be precise at playing every note; and I also had done some purposeful practice by playing several hours a day to prepare for piano exams or contests. Before I might move on to hone my skills and get into deliberate practice, I dropped it due to heavy school work at middle school. No challenges, no changes. I think the tissue of my brain that is in charge of the musical neurons must have become smaller and smaller ever since then and it gradually set me back to where I was, just like those retired London taxi drivers.

I feel lucky to have access to PEAK and get to know man can develop their extraordinary abilities in any area of human performance. There is still numerous unexplored potential in my brain, in your brain, in everyone's brain. Hope I could get inspired from rest of the book and get onto my new challenge, my new change.

Summary

People all have a born extraordinary gift which is much more powerful than we could imagine. But that does not mean everyone would achieve it. You have to develop the gift with right sort of trainings and practices too.

The author used several examples to show us what naïve practice and purposeful practice were. Naïve practice basically can be achieved by trying hard but it would not last far; purposeful practice has more advantages. Its four characters may push yourself to your limits at doing something but they still have limits.

Scientists have proved that the most powerful and effective approach to improve is the deliberate practice. Before going deep dive on it, the author first led us to the secret of our brains with examples of London cabbies and Braille readers. From the London cabbies' experiment, we could know the posterior hippocampi of the drivers has increased at the brain tissue level; and the study on the Braille readers' visual cortex tells us the brain's structure may change in response to use. The brain, like human body, could change upon the challenge it faces. Most importantly, we need make sure we do not push ourselves too hard otherwise we may put ourselves in risk and set back to where we were. So it is crucial to keep in changing but not too far outside its comfort zone.

The fact that the human brain and body respond to challenges by developing new abilities underlies the effectiveness of purposeful and deliberate practice.

Regular trainings can lead to changes in the parts of the brain that are challenged by the training but not homeostasis. The deliberate practice is to build your potential, to make things become possible. It requires challenging homeostasis, getting out of one's comfort zone and forcing your brain or body to adapt. It is doing more by increasing your ability to do, rather than helping you on how to do.

Expressions

Mozart is about to embark on a tour around Europe that will jump-start the Mozart legend.

embark on / verb // 本意为登上船，常用来表示开始着手做某事

I am embarking on cooking myself a nice dish.

jump-start / verb // 本意为一辆车给另一辆车的电瓶充电，文中表示cause to start quickly

Proper exercise every day will jump-start your good mood and health.

One of the divers barely avoided serious injury while attempting a double somersault, and an official report released a few months later concluded that the dive was simply too dangerous and recommended that it be banned from future Olympic Games.

somersault // 翻筋斗，也可以表示态度的巨大转变

One caveat here is that while it is always possible to keep going and keep improving, it is not always easy.

caveat // 注意事项、预先声明

(there was one caveat...), 后面的话是补充说明前面的信息，同时起强调作用

There is one caveat that it is never too late to learn.

That still left one loose end, however: perhaps the taxi drivers in the studies had started out with larger posterior hippocampi that gave them an advantage in finding their way around London, and the extensive testing they went through was nothing more than a weeding out process that zeroed in on those prospective drivers who were naturally better equipped to be able to learn their way around the maze that is London.

zero in on // give it your full attention, concentrate on

You can try to zero in on the gentle wind to feel the silence and peace.

They found that Einstein's inferior parietal lobule was significantly larger than average and that its shape was particularly unusual, which led them to speculate that his inferior parietal lobule may have played a crucial role in his ability to perform abstract mathematical thinking.

speculate // to guess about the possible causes or effects of something, without knowing all the facts or details.

Every one in the room is holding different thoughts about the financial crisis and speculating every possible result.

We will spend much of the rest of the book answering that we have glossed over in this chapter: what exactly are we trying to improve about our brains?

gloss over // to avoid talking about something unpleasant, or to say as little as possible about it.

She glossed over the talk regarding her husband's fairs.