Recent Posts
Building Long-Term Positive Memories
You become what you repeatedly do, and eventually you become what you remember. How you file those things in your brain as positive or negative will determine who you become. In their book Be A Player, Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson share this about memory: “Psychological research has shown that humans have a 3:1 negativity bias as our default setting in storing memories. The brain naturally stores negati... Read more…
Nationals 2020: Competing With New Eyes
Previously: My reflections on being able to see for the first time in 2 years. Gil, Doss, and I got three days to actually shoot at our field before Nationals. And that was the first time I had shot after my cataract surgery. I had not shot since last year’s Nationals, since I couldn’t see, so I had to go through a learning curve. We worked on a new move called the challenge move and that was about all we did. I spent ... Read more…
Inconsistency and Evaluation: What’s Holding You Back?
Ask a room full of sporting clays shooters if they would like to be more consistent, and you’ll be overrun with enthusiastic responses. Few, if any, really know why they are so inconsistent. They’re good on some days and not so good on others. But there seems to be no real consistent rhyme or reason for their results. It’s the inconsistency that keeps most shotgun shooters from practicing, because they don’t ... Read more…
The Limits of Massed Practice
Our intuition persuades us to dedicate stretches of time to single-minded repetitive practice of things we want to master. We’ve been led to believe that the regimen of massed practice is essential for building mastery of a skill or learning new knowledge. But it fails the long-term test. These intuitions are compelling and hard to distrust for two reasons. First, as we practice over and over, we often see ou... Read more…
The Power of Learning and its Challenges
Remember that the most successful students take charge of their own learning and follow a simple but disciplined strategy. You may not have been taught how to do this, but you can do it and will likely surprise yourself with the results. Embrace the fact that significant learning is often difficult. You will experience setbacks, but these are signs of effort, not failure. Setbacks come with striving, and stri... Read more…
