Quotes About Development

All our movies suck at first," Catmull says. "The BrainTrust is where we figure out why they suck, and it's also where they start to not suck.

On the face of it, these awkward moments at Pixar, the SEALs, and Gramercy Tavern don't make sense. These groups seem to intentionally create awkward, painful interactions that look like the opposite of smooth cooperation. The fascinating thing is, however, these awkward, painful interactions generate the highly cohesive, trusting behavior necessary for smooth cooperation.

We usually think of passion as an inner quality. But the more I visited hotbeds, the more I saw it as something that came first from the outside world. In the hotbeds the right butterfly wingflap was causing talent hurricanes. "I

purposely operating at the edges of their ability, so they will screw up. And somehow screwing up is making them better.

As football coach Tom Martinez likes to say, "It's not how fast you can do it. It's how slow you can do it correctly." Second, going slow helps the practicer to develop something even more important: a working perception of the skill's internal blueprints—the shape and rhythm of the interlocking skill circuits.

Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it's about seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions. Pick a target. Reach for it. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach. Return to step one.

How does a cranky, demanding coach create the most cohesive team in all of sports? One common answer is that the Spurs are smart about drafting and developing unselfish, hardworking, team-oriented individuals. This is a tempting explanation, because the Spurs clearly make a concerted effort to select high-character individuals. (Their scouting template includes a check box labeled "Not a Spur." A check in this box means the player will not be pursued, no matter how talented he is.)

No time plus no space equals better skills.

You will become clever through your mistakes.

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter.

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

Small children cannot say what they want to be later because they don't really understand what later means.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.

People tend to become more emotionally intelligent as they age and mature.

Emotional intelligence begins to develop in the earliest years. All the small exchanges children have with their parents, teachers, and with each other carry emotional messages.

The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy.

I think we are born square and we die round. As waters of life wash over us, we lose our sharp corners, and that can be good; we take on surprising, satisfying new shapes.

But, if you observe children learning in their first few years of life, you can see that they can and do learn on their own - we leave them alone to crawl, walk, talk, and gain control over their bodies. It happens without much help from parents.

Have you ever seen a six-month-old or a three-year-old who's not curious and self-directed? I haven't. That's how we are out of the box.

mastery often involves working and working and showing little improvement

Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. "People who play tennis once a week for years don't get any better if they do the same thing each time

Several researchers have found that companies that spend the most time offering guidance on quarterly earnings deliver significantly lower long-term growth rates than companies that offer guidance less frequently. (One reason: The earnings-obsessed companies typically invest less in research and development.)

Of course, other animals also respond to rewards and punishments, but only humans have proved able to channel this drive to develop everything from contract law to convenience stores.)