Get Better At Getting Better

What makes people succeed? Why do some people succeed, while others struggle despite working hard? This book is based on the insight that success is not about how good you are but how powerful a model you have to improve how good you are. Chandramouli Venkatesan calls it the Get-Better Model, or GBM. Successful people are those who are able to build a powerful GBM to continuously improve themselves, and this book will show you how to do it. A GBM is made up of four key components and these must be practised deliberately for getting better-getting better by yourself; getting better by leveraging others; making others get better; and making and implementing a get-better plan. This powerful and life-changing book thus shows how you can constantly get better to unlock your potential at work and in life.

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.

Rules for developing talent with disciplined, deliberate, intelligent practice We live in a competition loving culture. We love the performance, the big win, the ticking seconds of the clock as the game comes down to the wire. We watch games and cheer, sometimes to the point of obsession, but if we really wanted to see greatness—wanted to cheer for it, see it happen, understand what made it happen—we'd spend our time watching, obsessing on, and maybe even cheering the practices instead. This book puts practice on the front burner of all who seek to instill talent and achievement in others as well as in themselves. This is a journey to understand that practice, not games, makes champions. In this book, the authors engage the dream of better, both in fields and endeavors where participants know they should practice and also in those where many do not yet recognize the transformative power of practice. And it’s not just whether you practice. How you practice may be a true competitive advantage. Deliberately engineered and designed practice can revolutionize our most important endeavors. The clear set of rules presented in Practice Perfect will make us better in virtually every performance of life. The “how-to” rules of practice cover such topics as rethinking practice, modeling excellent practice, using feedback, creating a culture of practice, making new skills stick, and hiring for practice. Discover new ways to think about practice. Learn how to design successful practice. Apply practice across a wide range of realms, both personal and professional The authors include specific activities to jump-start practice Doug Lemov is the best-selling author of Teach Like a Champion A hands-on resource to practice, the rules within will help to create positive outliers and world-changing reservoirs of talent.

A good job, hard work, IQ, EQ, good communication skills-these are all ingredients for a successful life. The presence of these elements alone, however, does not guarantee success. To convert them into long-term success, you need certain stimuli which precipitate or accelerate your growth. This robustly effective book identifies the various catalysts that you can cultivate and how you can leverage them to propel yourself in your work and life. Accessible, engaging and easy to follow, and written by someone who has experienced all this in real life and not in theory, Catalyst will arm you with the right tools to succeed at your work place and get the most out of every moment, every day.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

The most well-known and respected psychotherapist of our time offers a "three-pronged" system for maintaining--or regaining--emotional health, consisting of healthy thinking, healthy emotions, and healthy behavior.

In her witty, southern-fried suspense novels, Sarah Shankman delivers nonstop action with a hilarious bite. Now she sends her acclaimed, irreverent heroine -- New Orleans writer Samantha Adams -- to a southwestern New Age hot spot, to unearth a secret past that was supposed to be six feet under. My dearest Sugar. I must see you. It's urgent. I need your help. The letter that arrived from Sam's mother was postmarked Santa Fe, penned in her mother's handwriting, and disclosed details only Johanna Adams could know. There was just one catch: Johanna Adams had been dead for thirty-four years. The mind-blowing missive could have been an entry from Sam's latest book of bizarre anecdotes, American Weird -- or an elaborate hoax. Either way, it instantly rekindled Sam's impossible wish that her mother hadn't really died in a plane crash when Sam was a child. Fueled by her journalistic instincts -- and a daughter's need for closure -- Sam touches down among Santa Fe's tourists and crystal gazers, jewelry shops and fast-food stands. But only when she summons the courage to knock on the door of Room 409 at the La Fonda Hotel does her surreal, mother-seeking adventure take off with no turning back.

What is it that really gets people better? With practical information on how to support clients' healing processes, this book helps practitioners across a wide range of physical and medical therapies, as well as psychotherapists, to improve their practice and get better at what they do. Getting to the core of true healing, Noah Karrasch explores the essentials of effective practice that apply across all healing modalities and expands on a four step formula based on these essentials: caring about patrons, providing a safe setting, communicating with clients, and encouraging their participation in their own healing. The book also discusses the practitioner's self-understanding and self-healing work as a vital part of becoming a better provider of health and healing, and Karrasch presents a model of communication focused on recognising which of four centers (head, heart, gut, or groin) both practitioners and their clients operate from to strength ties between healing partners. Revealing the fundamentals of effective practice drawn from a wide range of therapies, this book provides practical advice, as well as points of reflection, for all those seeking to deepen their therapeutic practice.