late night thoughts
David Brooks' article Genius: The Modern View echoes the great words of wisdom of Thomas Edison: Genius is one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration. Genius is not produced by inherent, divine talent, but by methodical practice. Which is to say, that my aspirations to be come a world-famous writer will not be realized unless I blog more often :P.
But seriously, my knitting has improved significantly since I first started over two years ago, but I spend anywhere from half an hour to three or four hours knitting every day. To be fair, most of those hours are spent knitting during movies or Star Trek The Next Generation episodes, but I am still practicing. It makes me wonder: How would the quality of my ideas and communication improved had I made a similar commitment to writing?
If Edison's words are true, then I am not sure if we are to be encouraged or discouraged. It is encouraging to know that anyone with slightly above-average skill in some area can become a "top performer", but it is discouraging to confront the amount of time and discipline required to develop that excellence. It makes me wonder if it's too late for me to excel in any area and to reverse my current trajectory of becoming jack of all trades and master of none. But it also makes me wonder how much is it worth sacrificing to become the best of the best?*
* A professor once told my friend that she was capable of becoming a leading history scholar. She would just have to pick a good area and master everything written on that topic. Of course, her research may also require her to spend several months away from her family each year. Not an easy price to pay.
4 comments:
It's taken 6 years, over a thousand practices, and almost 700 shows for Rosetta to be even marginally taken seriously as a musical entity. I think part of the "genius" thing is that people accord genius to distinctive voices. So a lot of the praxis is devoted to developing that distinctive character.
I'm skeptical that genius can be reduced to persistence.
As an analogy, look at Olympic athletes. Yes, these folks practice more and harder than the rest of us. But they also have natural ability far above the rest of us.
That said, to be better at something than everyone else you probably need both gifting and practice standard deviations above the mean.
That was part of my point --- mindless repetition doesn't do anything, praxis has to be directed.
I was initially skeptical of your thesis. My first reaction was that, while natural genius is certainly not a sufficient condition to top performance, it is a necessary condition. If this is not true in all pursuits, it is at least true in those that rely heavily on the mind. While a hard-working person with a moderate IQ could become a very successful doctor, such a person could not become a top-flight mathematician.
But then I stumbled upon this post by UCLA's Terrence Tao. Tao was a child prodigy, and is widely regarded as one of the world's most brilliant mathematicians. Yet he seems to agree with you, linking to an article similar to Brooks by David Dobbs.
In light of this, I'm reassessing my beliefs about the role of natural genius in success. I'll let you know how it turns out.
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