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From Jonah Lehrer’s post about young Norwegian chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen:

“When we practice properly – and this means engaging in deliberate practice – we aren’t just accumulating factual knowledge. Instead, we’re embedding our experience into our unconscious, so that even insanely complicated calculations – and Carlsen can regularly plan twenty chess moves in advance – become mostly automatic.”

As a newbie trying to teach myself Japanese, this reaffirms the adage “Perfect practice makes perfect” — not “Practice makes perfect,” which is incorrect.

Bonus quote:

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Neils Bohr

LINK:

The Frontal Cortex – Chess Intuition

Image via angusf

After a brief break, I’m back. This blog is almost a year and a half old now, and I’m excited about 2010.

Stay tuned.

  

School Bokeh

Originally uploaded by shinealight (taking a break)

FYI – I already graduated from Miami Ad School’s Account Planning program on March 19th, so the classes I’m writing about in these posts actually took place a few weeks ago.

I’m going to combine Weeks 9 & 10 in this post since I really want to move on to writing about Agency Tours in NYC the week after graduation and some other things.

Anyway, our Planning instructor for Week 9 was Neal Arthur from Wieden + Kennedy NYC. Neal started us off with a great quote,

“Don’t give then what they want. Give them what they never believed was possible.” — Orson Welles

A couple key things that Neal said that resonated with me were:

1) New business pitches are the best, biggest and most grueling opportunities that a Planner can have

2) Work with as many new business pitches as possible

3) When you get a new business call, it’s because something’s broken with the client

Our instructor for Week 10 was Liam from Hall & Partners, which is now primarily a brand and communications research agency. Nice quote:

“Clients often use research the same way a drunkard uses a lamppost – for support instead of illumination.” — David Ogilvy

A few things that stood out this weekend:

• Just because it’s quant doesn’t mean it can’t tell a story
• Focus groups should not be boring – they should be fun!

There are certain challenges when working with clients:

• Inertia – We’ve always done it this way
• The paradox of choice – too many ideas, with no clear way to prioritize
• Lack of resources – not enough money; not enough manpower
• Impatience – lack of willingness to take the long view & invest in the future
• Culture – heirarchy and procedure take precedence over experimentation and entrepreneurialism

Lastly, Liam pointed out that Planners are thought partners with researchers. It’s important to create a culture that truly believes good ideas can come from anywhere and prizes openness.

Image Courtesy of Jasoon

This blog is under heavy duty construction at this time. Be back real soon.