" The author is a table tennis champion and thus most of the book revolves around success in sports arena. He uses certain neuro concepts like reflexive behaviour aka implicit coding of that particular act to maximize performance. He says that consciously focussing on an act which has already been encoded in the implicit memory can hamper smooth execution if that task. Thus he stresses the importance of persistent and meaningfull practice to achieve high level expertise in any field ( though he stresses the two concepts namely quantity of practice and quality of practice in two different chapters making it slightly disparate, nevertheless the message is conveyed. He also devotes a chapter to dispell the myth that genius is inborn. Gives examples of Judith Polgar,Tiger Woods amongst others to substantiate the above point. In short the message is that nothing great was ever achieved without HARD WORK (as in here I have painstakingly typed the word in capital letters though my iPod touch doesn't support continents caps lock).
Overall it's a good book but not much ideas except the ones cited above and some chapters may be 1 or 2 are nausea the point as the one dealing with doping in sports and one about optical illusions. Regarding the last point and the underlying theme of the book, I wonder if the author (knowingly/otherwise) is trying to tickle the curiousity of the lay reader in understanding or knowing something more about the workings of the brain.
All in all a light read with some good insightful ideas to improvise and achieve GREATNESS.
Thank you for ur patient reading. :-) "
— Swapnil, 9/27/2013