CHAPTER 6Personal Performance
“My opponent did not understand preparation. He had little idea of the weeks, sometimes months that I spend in lonely isolation preparing my case. What he saw, without knowing it, was a lawyer who had been freed by acquiring a fund of eloquently prepared facts.”
—Gerry Spence, trial lawyer who has never lost a criminal case
When we see the greatest performers in any domain, whether art, business, engineering, law, medicine, music, sports, or teaching, what we're seeing is the product of preparation. It's easy to watch two‐time Olympic Gold Medal skier Mikaela Shiffrin race down a mountain and think how lucky she is to be so talented. It's also dead wrong. Mikaela Shiffrin's high‐school roommate, Bug Pech, had this to say about the all‐time winningest women's World Cup skier: “She had the work ethic of Tom Brady when she was 13.”1
As former NBA All‐Star and sharpshooter Ray Allen said, “When people say God blessed me with a beautiful jump shot, it really pisses me off. I tell those people, ‘Don't undermine the work I've put in every day.’ Not some days. Every day. Ask anyone who has been on a team with me who shoots the most. The answer is me.”2
Studies conducted by Florida State professor Anders Ericsson on violin players demonstrated the power of preparation. He observed that the general music education students had practiced on the violin an average of 3,240 hours by their 18th birthday, the better violin students had practiced an average of ...
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