Here are a few more entries for The Brain Audit Book from around the world
Much luck (to you and Sean… and me!)
Alex Kuzelicki, Australia
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If you haven’t made the Butter Chicken the recipe is on Page 113. And Yes! Sean can cook too!! Yummy stuff.
This is the butter chicken on its way to TVNZ- New Zealand. A small thank you for asking Sean on The Breakfast Show. And yes, if you are wondering the rest of the butter chicken was eaten by Renuka
The page again 113.
Renuka Menon, Psychotactics Office, Auckland, New Zealand
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Marsha colouring Cuatro
Marsha D’Souza, All of 5 years old, Auckland, New Zealand
(Marsha and Sean are best friends)
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And the photos keep coming in for The Brain Audit competition. Today’s photos are from New Zealand and all the way from the Arctic Circle.
It’s child’s play..
Martin Thompson, Auckland, New Zealand
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I am sending the photo of The Brain Audit book, which travelled with me and a couple of friends 150 km north of the Arctic Circle. We had to carry all our food for 10 days on our backs, but I couldn’t resist packing the book as well. There is something very weird (in the nicest way) about reading about marketing when you don’t see a living soul for days.
All the best from Europe.
Ondrej Ilincev,Prague, Europe
PS: I am the one on the right.
PPS: I thought there would be more snow as well, but we were very lucky with the weather and it was 20-25 degrees Celsius.
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And here’s a biggie: I’m amazed at this book. And if you’ve ever wondered about the factor of getting old (and stupid), or wondered how we learn (and unlearn stuff), then you need to read this book. I intend to take snippets of the information and put my own spin to it over the weeks and months to come. You’ll understand all of that information so much better, and how it relates to talent—if you read this book.
Do we come into this world as conservative thinkers?
Or are we born with a radical bent?
Not surprisingly, we aren’t born with a blank slate.
We come into this world with Version 1.0 embedded in our brains.
So if you look at the most isolated to the most populated places on the planet, you’ll find we’re born with the same core Version 1.0 software.
And yet the software gets a sort of ‘virus’.
Some of us turn extremely conservative. We detest radical thoughts.
And some of us turn extremely radical. We in turn detest conservative thinking and actions.
But showing contempt for the other side is crazy. Because everything on the planet, including talent, is a matter of structure. Structure is conservative.
Talent is also a matter of art. Art is radical free-thinking.
Creativity and Talent do not exist in thin air. They need structure.
Structure is boring without creativity. It would make our lives drab and doom us to boredom.
Creativity without structure would lead to complete chaos.
Both must exist side by side.
Our iPhones, our cars, our houses, our computers: everything is based on someone’s ability to transcend their radical or conservative virus, and use both sides to create something new.
We can live with a virus that forces us to be ultra-conservative or ultra-radical.
Or we can understand that they’re like yin and yang.
That one cannot actually exist without the other.
The day you learn how to use the conservative as well as the radical part of your brain, that’s the day you’ll learn faster than ever before.
But can you do it?
Can you actually step over to the other side?
Try it. You’ll be amazed at what you find there!
(Watch this video by Jonathan Haidt as well: You may need to be online to watch it)
See that bridge. That’s a ‘bridge of pain’ or ‘no-pain.’ Find out how your brain deals with creating permanent pain.
I play a lot of badminton these days.
And after running on the courts for two hours, I’m fine.
But the next day, my knees are sore.
I find it difficult to bend my knees. And have to use some sort of pain-relieving balm.
So I decided to use my brain as a balm instead
And drive resources from my brain to make sure my knees are not sore any more.
So all I did was focus on my knees not being sore.
And believe me, I’m no magician.
Incredibly, they’re not sore any more.
Now this sounds bizarre, doesn’t it?
Probably as bizarre as learning a new skill.
When you learn a new skill you’re in extreme pain.
And of course, you have all those naysayers saying, “You’re not talented.”
So there’s a lot more than mere extreme pain. There’s discouragement too.
But the brain can rise above all of this pain to create permanent success.
You see the brain works on the system of synapses and neurons (wait, don’t glaze over, because I’ll explain)
Think of neurons as two sides of a cliff.
Neuron 1 is one side of cliff.
Neuron 2 is the other side of the cliff.
There’s a wide, deep ravine in between those cliffs.
To cross over, you need a bridge
That bridge is the synapse bridge.
When we learn something new, the brain keeps building a bridge between the two cliffs.
All the time, as you go through your day, your brain is building new bridges.
The more you repeat a learning or action, the more the brain works on strengthening the bridge, because it recognises the bridge as important.
So you can create a bridge of pain.
And the brain will keep working on that bridge so that your synapse (bridge) is one one of pain.
Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.
Pain and more pain.
So that a once rickety bridge becomes a steel structure.
A structure that’s permanent, and can take on even more loads of pain.
Thus increasing your pain manifold.
Really talented people recognise the failure and the pain
But they rise above it forcing their brain to remember the joy and achievement.
The excuse-makers find a way to focus the brain on the pain and failure.
And the brain gives us exactly what we want. It creates a stronger bridge of pain or joy—depending on what you choose.
So do you want to fix muscular pain?
Or creative pain?
Get your brain to swing into action. And see how it fixes the so-called problem faster than you think.
How much is 3 + 3?
You know the answer already, don’t you?
That answer is embedded in your brain through a factor of repetition.
Time and time again, you were called on to remember random numbers.
Then you had to add them up, multiply them and eventually they formed a memory.
Your brain has a storage point for all these bits and pieces.
And talent works on memory. But depends far more on layering.
So if you were to listen to Clay Shirky on collaboration (see video below), you’d learn about collaboration in groups.
If you were to listen to Clay Shirky a second time, you’ll learn something quite different about collaboration in groups.
If you were to listen to Clay Shirky four or five times, you’ll learn something quite different every single time.
How do I know this?
Because I went for a walk to the beautiful Milford beach, near my home.
And during that one hour walk, I listened to the same audio five times over.
Each time my brain remembered something from the previous hearing, and layered a new learning over it.
The more I listened, the more I learned.
It wasn’t just repetition.
It was literally a bunch of new ideas that were popping in my brain with every repetition.
In effect, I was layering.
Then I took that layering, and added some more information.
I listened to Deborah Gordon and how ants use collaboration (see video below)
Then I spoke to my wife, Renuka about how collaboration could be used on our websites.
Then I brought up the concept of collaboration in a client call.
With every layer, my understanding of collaboration increased in leaps and bounds.
I now understood collaboration like never before.
What my brain is doing, is creating a whole bunch of amazing links.
Links that help me learn.
And get more talented in the understanding of collaboration.
Compare this with 3 + 3.
No matter how many ways you look at it, it’s still 6.
Which brings us back to the question of superiority. Which is more important? Layering or repetition?
Without a doubt, layering is what helps us become talented.
Memory merely helps us remember those layers.
Memory isn’t superior than layering. And neither is layering superior to memory.
Both are needed to learn and sustain a skill.
But if you really want to become a genius at something you can’t depend solely on memory.
Memory by itself is just a bunch of 3 + 3 situations.
Layering is what causes genius.
More on this later…now that I’m back thanks to a nudge from Stew Walton
For now, watch these fascinating videos on collaboration.
They all relate to one simple factor.
Your brain freezes.
It doesn’t have a memory of a fire-drill
So let’s start with the fire-drill, shall we?
The reason why you had a fire-drill in school or at an office, isn’t because the organisation likes making you run out of the building, and onto the street.
The biggest reason for fire-drills, is to know what to do in an emergency.
Because contrary to what you may believe, people don’t actually run helter-skelter in an emergency. They sit there, transfixed, as if in a bad dream.
And in your business, emergencies pop up like 800-pound gorillas
Suddenly you have to write a report. Or create a presentation. Or even worse, write an engaging article.
And your brain panics. It freezes. And it has no memory of any fire-drill.
The brain goes into panic mode. It scans memory bank after memory bank for a memory of success.
On the contrary, it finds failure after failure
Why does it run into failure? And how do we overcome this failure? Listen to this short 7 minute audio, and you’ll understand exactly what goes in the mind of a so-called ‘talented’ person. Why that person is able to walk right past that 800-pound assignment, while you can only watch in terror.
We automatically assume that we’re born with some talent.
But what if the reverse were true?
What if we were all blank slates?
What if everything depended on where we lived?
What if everything depended on if we were taught, based on how we learned fastest?
What if we had ‘teachers’ that didn’t believe in talent?
It’s all very fine to believe in talent.
But that’s like believing that 2 + 2=4.
Or to believe that time exists.
Because time doesn’t exist.
Neither does 2+2.
We humans made it all up.
And what if we made up the concept of talent as well?
Makes you wonder how many more skills you could have, if only you didn’t believe in talent, huh?
But again, it’s fine to fire rhetorical questions. But science is about proof.
And not only is it about proof.
But the proof must work across the board.
This means that anyone who’s interested in learning should be able to master the talent.
Anyone.
This means that you could walk into a cafe, where there were fifty people seated.
Fifty people of different ages.
Fifty people from different countries.
And education.
And capabilities.
And imagine we assumed that all of those fifty people are blank slates.
And we could teach them a skill.
But not only a skill, but help them become faster and more efficient than others who’d been using that skill for a long time.
We need a worthy challenge don’t we?
So let’s take a really difficult challenge.
Let’s learn Photoshop.
Let’s learn Photoshop without the toolbars.
And then let’s get everyone around you, no matter what their abilities, to learn Photoshop.
And then, learn it in such a way, that people have been using Photoshop for many years look at you in wonder.
And then, just to make it even more interesting, let’s learn Photoshop without a computer.
Is that a good enough challenge?
Are you game?
Because you’re one of those fifty people.
And this blog is the cafe.
So? Are you game, then?
Are you willing to believe in the blank slate, not because I say so.
But because you can prove it to yourself.
Are you?
Say yes in the comments section if you are ready
Learning and talent is all supposed to hinge on ease of instruction.
But what if you made learning difficult?
And what if there was no apparent benefit or payoff?
One Indian researcher ended up doing just that, quite by mistake…
In the year 1999, Sugata Mitra occupied an office at NIIT (a computer-training institute that has trained over five million students). And his office overlooked an urban slum in New Delhi.
A wall separated the slum from the office
So Sugata and his colleagues made a hole in the wall, and placed a computer in that hole. The monitor and the touch pad faced the slum. And the computer had a decently fast connection and was connected to the Internet.
Then Sugata and his colleagues sat back and watched.
What would happen next?
About eight hours later, an eight year-old child and six year-old girl were browsing the Internet.
Now the browser was in English, and technically at least, the kids didn’t speak the language.
But what if they were somehow helped?
There they were browsing the Internet, but hey, this was an urban slum. It’s possible that they were helped by someone with an understanding of computers, and/or an understanding of the foreign language.
This experiment was bringing up more questions than answers
So Sugata headed off to Shivpuri. Now Shivpuri is reasonably remote in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
They put another computer in the wall, and it was found by a 13-year old school dropout.
Yet in eight minutes, having never seen a browser before, he was busy browsing. By the evening, over seventy (yes, seventy) kids had begun to browse (again with no prior knowledge of browsers).
By the year 2000, the experiment had gone one step further.
Sugata took the experiment to a village called Madantusi, near Lucknow, in India.
Now if you know India, even just a little bit, you’ll know that English is all pervasive. Yes, the accents and the pronunciation is a bit different, but you can make yourself understood in English.
Well, the village of Madantusi didn’t seem to have an English teacher at all.
And once again, the computer was placed in the wall, this time with CDs available. And no Internet connection.
And the computer was left there for three whole months.
When Sugata came back three months later he was amazed
The little kids turned to him and said they needed a faster processor. And a better mouse.
How did the kids learn what they needed?
Amazingly, though all the terms and the information was in English, the kids taught themselves to understand the ‘code’ of English.
The kids were now using over 200 English words in conversations with each other.
In fact, in many instances, when the computers were hooked up to the Internet, the kids would search for a website that would teach them the English alphabet.
Are you stunned?
You should be.
Not only was the concept of the computer alien to most of the kids.
But the language was the equivalent of you reading an unknown language, like Swahili.
And yet, the kids quickly worked it out.
So how did they work it out?
Were they more talented?
As it turns out, they were not.
The kids were just kids from the village, who’d found something interesting.
So how did they pick up this talent of browsing, finding websites, and speaking a foreign language?
You see, talent is a matter of understanding code.
If code is simple to follow, then you understand and apply it.
But as it turns out, even when things are difficult, the human brain is able to work things out.
So why do we not become as talented as we should be?
Parents. And teachers.
The people who believe that we’re born to do certain things.
And not other things.
The people who tell us that nature, and family and heritage determines talent.
Time and time again, these parents and teachers tell us who we are.
And what we should be doing.
And what we can’t do.
But as it turned out, in this experiment there was no parent. Or teacher.
The hole in the wall computer was manned only by curious kids, eager to learn.
And to teach each other the ‘code’.
And time and again, they succeeded, across the length and breadth of India.
No matter what the level of education, or language, or diversity. The experiment played out almost the same way time and time again. And a whole bunch of kids became magically talented.
Which makes you wonder, eh?
Are parents, and teachers, and our school system…who believe in talent, the factor that kill our talents?
Hmmm…
Note: Watch the video below that details the experiment. If you’re reading this on email, you’ll have to go to http://www.brainaudit.com/blog to watch the video. If you’re online, you can already see the video right under this line.
Could you read maps with your feet?
That’s not quite how we read maps, eh?
Some of us need directions, and need to close our eyes.
Some of us need to see a picture. And print the picture.
Some of us need explicit left-right directions.
But what if you weren’t any of those people mentioned above?
What if you read maps with your feet?
Gillian Lynne is a dancer.
Back in the 1930’s she was doing miserably at school.
The pictures didn’t help. The words didn’t help.
Obviously, nothing the teachers did or said got Gillian’s attention.
And she spiralled into, what we’d today call, a ‘challenged child.’
She was unfocused.
Fidgety.
Refused to learn.
So her mother took her to a doctor
Luckily the doctor wasn’t a teacher.
He turned on the radio, sneaked out of the room, and then asked Gillian’s mother to look at what Gillian was doing.
So what was she doing?
She was dancing.
Gillian didn’t think with her head. She thought with her feet.
All those words, and pictures, and blah-blah that was being taught at school was completely wasted on Gillian.
Because her method of learning, wasn’t words, or picture, or lecture-related.
It was all about dance.
Now here’s the sad story: Gillian went on to be famous
She went on to join the Royal Ballet.
She worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at West End, and was cast in roles on British Television.
She was the choreographer on the world-famous Andrew Lloyd Weber musical: Cats.
And then The Phantom of the Opera.
She was the director and choreographer of the Muppet Show.
She started her own dance school.
She did this and did that.
So why do I call it sad?
What if Gillian weren’t famous?
What if Gillian didn’t do what she did to become famous, but simply settled down for the rest of her life in the suburbs?
What then?
There are six billion talented people on the planet, all being fed with the school-system of teaching.
And for all practical reasons, at least five billion are getting the wrong instructions.
Which of course brings up the question
Do we really have dumb kids?
Do we really have dumb adults?
Do we really think that there are un-creative people out there?
Do we really think that Gillian couldn’t read maps by dancing on the map with her feet?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Yes, wrong.
We’re all fed with this same funnel of words. Mostly words.
The biggest chunk of your education is a matter of reading a book.
But what if someone could teach you through cartoons?
Or what if someone could teach you through music?
Or what if someone could teach you through dance?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Has always been. Well, it’s been right for some and wrong for many.
And it’s because we’ve never recognised the most important factor of all.
The factor that some of us, can indeed read maps best with our feet.
So how do you think best?
Post your answer in the comments below
Is it true that I write six articles a week?
No it’s not.
Many days I’ll write six articles a day.
And that’s not bragging.
And it’s most certainly not talent.
So what’s the story: How did I get so darned prolific?
I was forced by others to write at least twice a month (well, persuaded). One of the early persuaders was Allen Weiss, from marketingprofs.com.
Today, Marketingprofs.com has hundreds of writers, but back then, it was Allen and probably ten or twenty of us (I don’t know). What I do know was that he was keen on me writing at least twice a month. And he’d publish the articles. And I’d get subscribers. So it was good for all of us.
Then I think I was still writing, and they wanted articles more often
So I started writing once a week and I’d publish the articles on Psychotactics.com and Marketingprofs.com.
Oh, did I struggle?
But it was easier writing once a week, than once a month.
Then in 2002, I started up 5000bc.com
But I was still writing less than I am now. However, in the year 2004, I revamped 5000bc.com. At the time, I was a member of another membership site. That owner of the site was writing about 4 articles a week, so I thought, ok, I’ll write about 4-5 articles a week for 5000bc.
And so I moved up to about 6 articles a week.
Now all this writing may sound horrific to you.
How do you get the time to write 6 articles a week?
But the converse is true. The more you write, the more you ‘discover’ the secrets of writing (because you have to be super-efficient).
The more you ‘discover’, the faster you get at the darned thing.
And that’s not all. If you write once a week, you have to warm up. Writing almost six articles, means that you’re writing almost every day, if not at least 2-3 days in a week.
That of course, is only part of the writing.
At Psychotactics.com we have courses. And workshops (Most of our courses have about 200 pages of notes each). And I had to write for that.
And forums on the courses. More writing.
Started up a blog and asked who wanted to read it. A few put up their hands. More writing. Started up a second, and third blog. More writing.
If it’s beginning to sound insane to you, it’s not.
I probably spend less time writing than most writers.
Through NO MAGIC PILL and sheer writing, day after day, I’ve become good enough to write 2-4 articles in about 2-3 hours. Most people never go past the first paragraph in that amount of time.
And how do I know that?
When I first started, it used to take me 2 days to write an article. And often, that article never made it to the finish line. I’d trash it, and start over again. Most people think I’m exceptionally good at writing. I am. But it’s not because of the breakfast I’m eating.
It’s because of persistence, and practice. And those little secrets I learned along the way.
What’s funny about it?
Nothing.
It’s a guy on a boat. And an island in the distance.
Now don’t think of a funny line.
Instead think of something disconnected.
What’s the last thing you’d expect to see in a scene like this?
Put it down in the comments.
If you think of a great caption, that’s fine.
If you don’t, let’s just put down something that’s disconnected to this scene.
Making ‘funny’ work for you, is simply a matter of three core steps
Step 1: ‘Recognising disconnection.’
Step 2: Then putting the ‘disconnection’ down on paper.
Step 3: Then finding a connection that makes it funny.
Ok, over to you. Let’s have a disconnection in the comments.
Let me get you started.
Link ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food’.
Close your eyes (This is important)
What picture do you see?
Yup, make sure you close your eyes when you think of ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food.’
What picture do you see?
Post your comments. Whatever they are. (Doesn’t have to be funny).
Have you ever seen fairy lights on a Christmas tree?
Each bulb is connected to each other.
Yet if one bulb fuses…
The next one seems to fail.
And then the chain seems to break.
So if you started out with five hundred lights on your Christmas tree, the failure of one bulb could take away the glow of about fifty bulbs.
In your brain you have about a hundred billion ‘bulbs’ called neurons (give or take a few zillion)
These neurons are pretty darned useless by themselves.
But turn on a memory, or a skill, and these neurons light up.
Now what’s really important is the understanding of how ‘talent’ and neurons are connected
Let’s say you can draw really well.
When someone gives you a pen and a sheet of paper, and asks you to draw something, a set of those lights fire up. And when you look at the firing up, it seems that all the lights fire up at one go.
But in reality there’s a gap.
The neurons fire up in different sequences for each thought or skill
So if you’re drawing a cat, it’s firing one set of lights.
If you’re drawing a dog, it’s quite another set.
If you’re drawing a girl in a bikini. Heck yeah, it’s a whole different set.
But the firing up of the neurons depends on the database in your brain
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same political drama unfolding, and can draw ten thousand political cartoons that are totally different from each other. The cartoons still reference the same drama.
But the cartoons differ in terms of gag timing, in style, in size etc. And that’s because of the pathway that each cartoonist’s brain is following.
So what’s really happening in their brain?
Think of the fairy lights on the Christmas tree.
And imagine they were not all yellow lights.
Imagine instead that the lights had the ability to mix (like you mix colours on paper)
So as you turn on the switch, a set of red lights ignite and race to turn on.
At the very same time, the yellow lights ignite their sequence.
And at one point, the red and yellow lights meet at a junction.
And you get an orange.
This is the genesis of an idea
Bulbs of different colours mixing at one specific point.
It’s how the neurons in our brain work.
Now instead of just red and yellow lights, think of millions of shades of lights (millions of neurons).
And they’re all racing, and meeting at different junctions.
And mixing
Mixing and creating different shades.
Red mixing with blue.
Blue mixing with yellow.
Yellow mixing with green.
Suddenly there are millions of shades. Shades that all culminate to create a neuron dance.
And the neuron dance ends up with you saying “Eureka!”
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same drama
And each draw one, two, even ten funny gags.
It’s because of how their bulbs light up.
But the question remains.
We can indeed fire up millions of neurons in our brain. We can reference vast memory banks.
But why can’t we come up with gags?
Why can’t we be funny too like that cartoonist or comedian?
Maybe it’s just that we’re not talented enough.
Maybe it’s just that cartoonists think in a different way.
And it’s true. They do think in a different way
In fact, somewhere along the line, their brains worked out a neuron dance with one added combination: the combination of how to make something funny.
So what’s happening here?
Remember that fused bulb?
The bulb that prevents about fifty lights from coming on? That fused bulb prevents the lights from igniting in your brain. When we replace that bulb, suddenly all the lights are aglow.
All the fifty bulbs come alive.
What we have to do then, is to find that darned fuse bulb. And make sure we replace it pronto.
And when that bulb is replaced, then we have a new dance.
A neuron dance that enables us to think ‘funny.’
Pretty cool, huh?
So how do we start to think ‘funny?’
Let’s find out, in the next post, shall we?
Imagine you have a computer at home
And this computer is linked to another two computers.
And let’s say you wanted to search for a file named ‘monkey’.
If you initiated a search, guess what you’d get?
You’d get what you searched for: Namely all the files named ‘monkey.’
So if you have no files named ‘monkey’, you’d get zero responses.
Now let’s suppose you tried to do the same thing when you were online.
Let’s just say you typed in the word ‘monkey’ on Google
You know what happens next, don’t you?
You get 186,000,000 responses.
That’s 18.6 million responses
But that’s not the cool part. The cool part, is that the responses are visual, and textual, and there are thousands of variations on the topics. Topics that range from what monkeys eat. To where they live. To how monkey are connected with spiritualism. If you can think of the word ‘monkey’, and think of another word that’s not even remotely connected to ‘monkey’, you’ll find it on Google.
Smarter people are not smarter.
They have a database in their brain.
A database consisting of millions of ideas, concepts, and learning beyond what the average Joe seems to have.
Because of that database…
A smart person can answer questions out of left-field.
A smart person can literally see things that others can’t see.
A smart person is able to take completely disconnected situations, memories and learning and merge them together to make sense instantly.
So will reading a million books make you smarter?
Yes it will. A lot smarter than you are right now.
But just having a database is not enough.
Google has a database. But that’s not enough.
What makes Google smarter, is the ability to recognise the pattern of the keywords.
So that when you type in keywords, Google brings up a close match to what you’re supposedly looking for.
And it also brings up several matches that you hadn’t considered.
Your brain works in a similar fashion
When you have a problem to solve, and you put that problem to your conscious brain, it does a brain-wide search. It brings up connected and disconnected memories, situations and learning.
Which means that that if you spend six years reading up on ‘monkeys’, your brain is more than likely to make hundreds of connections with ‘monkeys’ and something random—like ‘coffee.’
This random mix is what we refer to as um, creativity Most people who appear smarter work in this manner
Someone asks them a question. Or put forward a challenge of sorts.
And their brain races wildly through their personal database.
Linking connected and random memories, situations and learning.
And it comes up with a superb answer.
And their audience is astounded at how smart they are.
But in the end it’s the database.
If their database can’t access data on ‘monkey’, then it accesses nothing.
And it makes them look very chimp-like, doesn’t it?
Note: The obvious graphic to put at the top of this post would be a real monkey. But because I can access the term ‘monkey’ in my brain, I can think of soft toys, or dunces, or bananas. Or a zillion other things. Spend some time thinking of the word ‘monkey.’ You’ll be amazed at how many associations you have with this single word.
When you look around you and see talented people you may run into a common misconception.
You may believe that those considered ‘talented’ or ‘creative’ require less practice.
Makes sense, huh?
If you’re already talented, where’s the need for practice?
You already have what it takes.
Your brain is genetically engineered towards your talent.
You should be coasting downhill, while the others struggle.
Yet the evidence all around you, points to the exact opposite situation.
The top athletes in the world practice long hours.
The top artists in the world seem to be stuck to their palettes.
The best speakers go over their material, time after time, after time.
The best figure skaters do their routines hypnotically.
In fact, when research was done on the top figure skaters, here’s what the researchers found.
They found that the mark of the top skater is the ability to do their spins and jumps.
And that the absolute crème da la crème skaters did more jumps and spins, when practicing.
The researchers found that the slightly lower-ranked skaters did just a little less practice.
And took more breaks in between their jumps and spins.
Less practice, eh?
And yet we strongly believe that talent is inborn.
Because if talent were indeed inborn, then where’s the need to practice?
Where’s the need to do yet another jump and turn?
Surely even at the highest level of sport, one figure skater would be so overloaded with talent, that it would be impossible for others to catch up. Surely it would be impossible, no matter how many hours of practice their competition puts in.
Talent or creativity is the result of many, many hours of frustrating practice.
Because when we have courses, like say Article Writing for instance, I can tell you who’ll be the star of the course.
I can tell you within days of the course beginning, who’ll write better articles than anyone else.
I can tell you, even without knowing that person’s background, or capability, or any so-called talent.
I can tell you based on momentum.
The ones who consistently write better, faster, and with more panache are those who practice.
Day in, day out. Week in, week out.
The momentum builds on itself.
Suddenly patterns emerge.
Suddenly the achievement is higher.
Suddenly the pats on the back increase.
But is momentum alone enough to create a factor of skill?
Obviously not.
However, it is one of the most critical factors, as compared to everything else.
Because whom would you rather believe?
The perception of the average person on the street—who believes in inborn talent?
Or the figure skater doing yet one more practice jump and turn?
Patterning is simply a factor of:
1) Recognition.
2) Repetition.
3) Layering.
Recognition comes first
Imagine you’re in a city you’ve never been to before. Around you are cobbled stone streets. Hey, you’re in Rome.
But you’re hopelessly lost. The summer sun has long set, and you desperately want to get back to the hotel. But you can’t figure out where you are. This situation, as you’ve already worked out is a lack of recognition.
Of course, you know what comes next
You go back to the same cobblestone area the next day. And the day after. And then suddenly, you’re not even thinking about the way back to the hotel. Ah, but you are. Your brain has worked out a temporary map. And the repetition has helped you to get back.
Layering of course, is something we don’t pay attention to, at all
But it’s layering that really makes the difference. You see, recognition and repetition are core parts of your learning. But layering takes it to another level.
The first time you were lost, you didn’t see the beautiful flowering tree
Or the green paint on the window. You didn’t see that pizza place around the corner. But now you do. Your brain is beautifully layering colour, odour, sound, texture and tons of other stuff, that you’d find impossible to explain. And in a way impossible to re-create.
How do we know that we couldn’t re-create it all?
Because if someone told you to simply draw the scene, you’d only be able to re-create some of the scene. You’d miss out on many elements. You’ll miss out that faded poster on the wall. You’ll miss the ornately carved park bench. You’ll wonder how you didn’t see the bright red post box.
And if someone were to take you on this magical mystery tour...
The tour of the faded poster. The ornately carved park bench. And the bright red post box.
Then you’d enter the first phase: Recognition.
Of course, you’d see it again and again: Repetition.
And you’d start to recognise details. Far more details would enter your brain every single time. Aha!: Layering.
Now add recognition, repetition and layering at high speed.
And you have patterning.
Patterns are why you see a chair and know it’s a chair.
Why you listen to Chopin’s Prelude No.4 you’d remember it, if it was played to you again and again.
Why you see a child, and know it’s not your child.
That’s patterning.
Which is why you could recognise the Rubik’s Cube at the top of this page.
Your brain had seen it enough times, to tell you that it was indeed not any old cube.
But a Rubik’s cube.
And if that picture wasn’t of an actual cube, but a cake designed like a Rubik’s Cube.
Or furniture. Or just about anything. You’d still recognise the pattern.
Aha, you’re a genius.
Recognise the pattern.
And you’ve cracked the code.
But there’s still more work to be done.
It’s not enough to recognise a pattern. Or to crack a code.
But let’s leave it for another post, shall we?
For now I’d love it if you had any life stories, or comments or questions.
Feel free to fill in the comments box.
You’re in your friend’s kitchen.
And you see a chair.
And you sit down on that chair.
How do you know it’s safe to sit on that chair?
But even more interestingly, how do you know it’s a chair in the first instance?
Your brain worked out the pattern, didn’t it?
It figured out, that if the chair looked like a chair, then it must be a chair.
The chair you picked may be orange, and you’ve never sat in an orange chair before, but hey the brain still sees it as a chair.
And even if the chair didn’t have four legs. Even if it had just one central beam, your brain still sees the chair as a chair.
This is the simplicity of patterning
You see the chair. You sit on it.
A five-month old baby sees it.
And slams into it. Bumps into it. Stares at it.
Isn’t sure what to do with it.
The patterns are clear in your brain. The patterns ain’t that clear in the brain of that baby.
Which brings us to why some people seem so talented
They just see patterns we don’t see (not yet, anyway!)
But here’s the really frustrating part.
If you ask a ‘talented’ person what they’re seeing, they can’t explain what’s really happening.
So if you asked the famous artist Picasso, what patterns he saw before he drew a masterpiece, he may not have been able to give you an answer. And yet, he was seeing patterns.
But patterns at such high speed that most talented people can’t tell you what they’re seeing.
These um, talented people simply draw, or sing, or dance.
They can’t describe to you the pattern (in most cases).
So how do we know it’s a pattern after all?
Because of the repetition.
Picasso’s first drawing may not look exactly like the next, but try as he may, the next drawing will have an overlap of the first.
A dancer may do a completely different dance routine, but hey, there’s the style coming through. And what is style, but a pattern?
Artists, dancers, heck even criminals follow a pattern.
But because we can’t see the pattern at normal speed, we think it’s talent.
Yes, you have a talent for spotting a chair.
Yes, you have a talent for sitting down on a chair.
But can you explain that talent to me?
No you can’t.
Because it’s happening too fast in your brain.
And that’s exactly what’s happening in the brains of so-called talented people.
But let’s do the impossible in the posts to follow, shall we?
Let’s slow down patterns so that you can see them.
Aha…now that would be something eh?
Then the so-called talent wouldn’t be so magical after all.
But how do we slow things down? That’s the question.
And yes, there’s an answer.
Amazing as it may sound, there’s a simple, logical answer.
But hey, that answer will come in another post.
For now, look around and see your magnificent brain. And how it seems to recognise patterns all the time.
You are indeed talented at recognising patterns.
But we’ll go one step further. We’ll do stuff that seems impossible.
Like draw cartoons. Or write jokes. Or do things that seem um, quite out of your current league.
Watch this space.
And feel free to ask questions. Your questions will help me.
Do you like sushi?
Or do you hate it?
Or would you simply avoid it?
You see sushi is a common dish across the world today.
But there are people who don’t have fun around sushi.
To them, sushi is something scary, and different from steak and potatoes.
Steak and potatoes is what they love and understand.
But what’s all this sushi stuff got to do with understanding how people learn?
People learn with patterns
Talent has a direct co-relation to an understanding of patterns.
So while one person is able to learn through audio, the other person struggles.
One person is looking for ’sushi learning’, and the other wants ’steak and potatoes learning.’
And our world is all ’steak and potatoes.’
Look at the Internet. Look at our schools. Look around us.
We have audio, some video, and loads of text.
What if I wanted to learn through ‘cartoons’ instead?
What if I learned ten times faster through mind-maps?
That kind of learning doesn’t exist.
So the learner runs into a mind-block.
That block prevents people from going ahead.
Suddenly, they’re told that they’re not talented.
Suddenly, they feel a bit frustrated.
Suddenly, they decide that ’sushi’ isn’t for them at all.
But what if sushi weren’t presented as ’sushi?‘
And presented as something else?
And they enjoyed the ’sushi meal’, thinking it was something akin to ’steak and potatoes?’
At that moment, their brain has recognised a taste it likes. A new pattern.
Now they’re more than likely to eat ’sushi’, when at first they completely detested it.
The ’sushi’ didn’t change. The method of presenting the sushi changed.
And suddenly there is an interest.
An interest that leads to desire.
Desire that leads to fancy.
Fancy that could very well lead to obsession.
But it all started with the change in the way the pattern was presented.
When the pattern changes, the behaviour changes.
And the blockages to learning, reduce. Or completely vanish into the yonder.
Which reminds me…
This post is all about words. Or ’steak and potatoes’ learning.
Time to put in some video. And cartoons. And mind maps. And whatever I can get my hands on.
Time for some ’sushi learning.’
P.S. I couldn’t have found a better picture to illustrate ’sushi learning’ than that gadget above.
Sadly the product is no longer available. I guess it was too pricey at $89 for 256mb
We all believe that Einstein was talented.
He wasn’t.
He just hit his forehead a lot.
The Slap On The Forehead: What does it mean?
Einstein wasn’t talented. He developed pattern recognition. He worked out a pattern.
Once you see the clarity of the pattern, it’s like night and day. You’re not bumbling around in the dark. Suddenly everything seems easy. In fact, you wonder why everyone else doesn’t see it the same way. Why are they bumbling in the dark, you wonder.
Every ‘talented’ person has had this ‘aha-moment’ several times in their life. They are doing something—often something disconnected to their ability—and then it hits them. The pattern becomes super-clear.
And they hit their forehead.
That hitting of forehead is a moment when the brain recognises a pattern that others have failed to see. Any ‘talented’ person will tell you that the pattern has existed forever. And that they’ve just failed to see it. Of course, so have the others around them.
Because the ‘talented’ person is the first to see the pattern in this specific way, they are called ‘talented.’ But truly talented people know and recognise the forehead moment. They know it’s the moment that they finally recognise a new direction. Or to put it another way, another pattern.
You can do this while driving a car
Let’s say we wanted to go from my house to the city in peak traffic. No matter how bad the weather, I can get you to the city from my house about 40 cars ahead of anyone who sets out at the same time, from the same destination. It doesn’t mean that I’m talented at driving. It means that I’ve recognised a pattern.
I’ve worked out exactly the spots you need to change lanes. Yes, the exact spots. Changing lanes at those specific spots will get you about 40 cars ahead. Which is handy, when you’re in a hurry. But you know what? How do you get 600 cars ahead?
It’s called ‘taking the bus’.
The bus has its own freeway unhindered by traffic. It can get you to the city 600 cars ahead.
Now you don’t see that as a talent, do you? But it is? It’s the ability of the brain to recognise a pattern.
Pattern 1: Do what you’ve always done. Pattern 2: Change lanes at specific points and get 40 cars ahead, every single time. Pattern 3: Get on the bus, and get 600 cars ahead. Every single time.
This pattern recognition is what we call the forehead moment.
That duh sound you hear, is the new direction unfolding.
Once you work out the new direction, nothing is the same.
And other car drivers either follow you (like they did with Einstein)
Or they take the bus.
Or they call you talented, and do what they’ve always done
In the early 1970s, men’s tennis was dominated by Americans.
In your wildest imagination you would not believe that a Swede would change all that.
The name of this Swede was Bjorn Borg.
In less than 10 years, Borg made an entire country ‘talented.’
Some of the most impressive tennis players like Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and dozens of other players sprouted from the Swedish woodwork.
About the same time, a woman called Martina Navratilova surfaced from Czechoslavakia. She too, started winning everything in sight.
And then, magically, the Czechs became talented.
The very same phenomenon surfaced in India
Before the year 1985, the Indian cricket team was considered to be a second-class cricket team.
Then from nowhere, they rose to win the World Cup against all odds. And from then on, you’d be slightly mad if you had a one-day tournament, and didn’t have the Indian team as an active participant.
What causes an entire country to suddenly be talented in a sport?
Surely it can’t be inspiration. If it were inspiration, then any one from any country could simply be inspired to do the same.
You see there’s quite another factor at work.
It’s called pride.
Or a lack of wimpiness
Because so-called talent requires hard work. There’s not a single ‘talented’ musician who doesn’t put in many, many hours of hard work. There’s not a single speaker, dancer, writer, athlete, teacher who simply ambles in, and oozes talent.
Talent is the culmination of so many factors, that it almost seems magical.
And unique.
And that’s because we see the expression of talent in a matter of minutes. We see a person draw a cartoon in a few seconds; write an article in an hour; play a difficult piece of music in a matter of minutes. And they seem to be so talented.
Yet the reason we aren’t talented, is because we’re wimpy.
Most people give themselves the permission to be untalented.
And we don’t have to look to the Bjorn Borgs or Martina Navratilovas to find so-called talent.
If you look around you, you’ll find some families seem to be overly talented.
They seem to be involved in the arts, writing, music and somehow seem to be so very creative.
But stop and think about it for a second.
What stops your kids from being as talented?
What stops you from being more talented?
It’s the stupid, nonsensical belief that people were born with talent.
That one country is more talented than another.
That one family is more talented than yours.
Don’t tell that to the Swedes Here’s what Bjorkman, himself a world No.4 has to say: “We were so good that we spoiled everyone at home. There was no way we could keep winning Davis Cups, have No. 1s and Grand Slam singles champions.
We played the Davis Cup semifinals last year and were not even nominated for the top five teams in Sweden. I think people do forget some of the achievements we still create in tennis because they compare everything to the past.”
And here’s what Bjorn Borg himself has to say:
“We are struggling with the junior tennis in Sweden, but we’re working very hard to improve that. They’re also struggling in Australia”.
“But I think this goes in a circle. Sweden produced players for many, many, many years, unbelievable players. It’s impossible to continue to
do that forever”.
“But I’m sure Swedish tennis and Swedish juniors, we will be back. But it’s going to take quite a few years.”
Can you spot the wimpy-talk in the language?
Talent doesn’t arise from wimpy talk.
It arises from action. And patterns. And layering. And emotions.
“I think” is not a powerful emotion. It’s a doubt. I think is wimpy.
Recognise that in your own life. Cut out the wimpy talk and get moving towards creating real talent.
Because talent starts with emotion. If you don’t believe you can do it, you never will.
Benjamin Zander, famous orchestra conductor and co-author of the ‘Art of Possibility’ has a story to tell.
Benjamin had a twenty-five year old problem.
He had thirty students that were going to go through two semesters of training with him. The students were all instrumentalists and singers. They were going to learn the art of musical performance, including the psychological and emotional factors that stand in the way of great music-making. Yet, in twenty-five years, he wasn’t able to get the class to do what he wanted them to do. Namely, to take risks with their playing. They’d always be so anxious to succeed, that they’d stay on the straight and narrow.
And then Ben (and his wife Roz) came up with an emotional super-charger
They decided to give every single student an A. No matter what they did during the year, the student would get an A.
Of course, this seemed unfair. Should the slacker get an A, even though another student has put in ten times the effort?
Technically this seems weird, but look at the emotional ramifications.
Imagine if you could learn to draw cartoons, and there was no such thing as a bad cartoon.
Imagine if you could write an article, and there was no such thing as a bad article.
Imagine you could paint a picture and got an A.
You can’t imagine it, can you?
But ask a cartoonist, or a reporter, or a painter to do the corresponding tasks above, and they’ll do it without too much of a frown.
And if you look back into their history, you’ll find something consistent.
You weren’t told that you were a great cartoonist. Your drawings weren’t put up on the fridge. Your parents didn’t get you a whole bunch of drawing books, and let you paint on the walls. You were instead told, that art was for the other talented people. That no one in your family was an artist. That it’s ok if you can’t draw. And that’s not what happened in the house of the ‘cartoonist.’
In that house, the cartoonist knew one thing. That he or she would get an A if she drew something.
That the mother and father, and teacher, and grandparents—even the dog would be all excited when you did your cartoon.
That when you went to school, your friends would egg you on to draw cartoons.
That your cartoons happened to be a chick/guy magnet and got you prominence.
All the while the brain is going: Hey this is good.
Emotions of success fill your brain.
Failure pops in, says hi, but the success is so overriding, because suddenly you’re seeing yourself as an A student already.
And hey, now you’re talented.
But how do we know this to be true?
Words and actions have enormous emotional ramifications.
If someone tells you you’re really good at ‘cartooning’ for instance, a couple of things happen. 1) You begin to like that person more.
2) You begin to see your own work in a new light.
Liking that person more, means you get pre-disposed to impressing that person. So if the person says: “You really dress well” then you’re more than likely to dress well each and every time you go to see that person (even if you’re quite casual otherwise). And then, in the process of dressing well, you feel better. And you see your own dressing in a new light. You can now spot smart casual from casual. You are now suddenly progressing along the line—if only to impress one person.
Of course, this leads to other people noticing your new ‘talent.’
This starts a bit of a Domino Effect. You think, there you are. And therefore you become what others believe you are.
And this magnificent journey begins with a simple comment, or series of comments.
Comments that make you feel good. Comments that make you smile. Comments that end up with your ‘talent’ becoming a chick magnet.
The A starts in a single moment.
Which brings us right back to Benjamin Zander and his students.
He got each student to see themselves at the end of two-terms. And to write a letter to him saying: “Dear Mr. Zander…I got my A because of…”And in this letter they had to give as much detail as they could; the story of what would have happened during the year; and what would have happened to the student as a result of this A grade. And everything needed to be written in the past tense.
Would you live up to your A?
Would you live up to be a ’smart dresser?
Would you live up to being a superb cartoonist?
You see, it’s all emotion. Because Zander’s students haven’t achieved anything. But do you have any doubt about the outcome? That’s the power of emotion. That’s the power of your brain. And that’s why talent is a myth.
Final Note: Watch the video below. As a result, I’m not only talented in B notes and C notes, but listen to classical music every day as well. And I would not call myself a classical music lover. Well, now I am.
There are many ways to define talent. Most of them are wrong.
Here’s how one dictionary defines talent:
1.
a special natural ability or aptitude: a talent for drawing.
2.
a capacity for achievement or success; ability: young men of talent.
3.
a talented person: The cast includes many of the theater’s major talents.
4.
a group of persons with special ability: an exhibition of watercolors by the local talent.
Natural ability? Don’t make me laugh. A capacity for achievement? Are you saying one person has a better capacity than the other? On what basis? Special ability? Special, why special. Does this mean no one else can do this specific task? Or have this talent?
The problem with the definition, is that no matter where you look, you find ‘talent’ or ‘creativity’ to be defined in a way that’s horribly inaccuarate. Because the real definition of talent (and I’m typing this at the top of my head—because I’m so um, ‘talented’) runs something like this:
Talent is the combination of many emotions, memories, patterns and repetitions, implemented at high speed
You see what’s happening in this definition. We’re talking about emotions, and memories and stuff that doesn’t automatically assume that one person is ‘more gifted’ than another. That one brain doesn’t necessarily have less powerful hardware than another brain. But before we go into the depths of ‘hardware and software’ of the brain, let’s look at the concepts of emotions, patterns, memories and repetition. And what high speed has to do with all of these factors.
People believe they’re good at drawing…or bad at drawing
How this this crazy notion come about? How did we get it into our heads that we were good or bad at something? I’ll tell you how.
Let’s take drawing, because most people simply can’t draw…
So why can’t they draw? Is it because they’re not talented? Let’s see, shall we?
Imagine a skill you’re good at: Like walking around a banana peel, for instance.
Imagine someone put five banana peels in your path.
Or ten. Or twenty-five. Or even fifty.
Would you be able to avoid the banana peel, and walk right along?
Silly question, eh? But what’s the banana peel got to do with your brain?
The brain recognised the danger of the peel. It recognised that the peel could create damage.
You could slip; fall; hurt yourself; even die.
So the brain pays attention. It prevents you from stepping on the peel in the future.
Drawing, on the other hand, doesn’t cause you to slip; fall or hurt yourself.
So your brain has no need to pay attention.
Yet, imagine you did a drawing as a child.
Imagine that every time you did that drawing you were slapped.
Not just slapped hard across the face. But ridiculed. And punished.
What are the chances you’d become really outstanding at drawing?
Pretty slim, huh?
So let’s take the exact opposite. Let’s say you did the drawing, and your mother was really excited. She showed it to everyone. She told you (and told the world) how talented you were. She brought you more crayons. More paper. More encouragement. And despite being ‘lousy’ at drawing, she felt no intimidation when showing you—a little child—how to draw.
And so the stirrings of talent begin.
You become talented.
You draw more.
You use drawing as a weapon to get attention.
You spend more time, understanding the medium and patterns better.
You get more attention. You draw even more. And the attention feeds on itself, resulting in more effort, more training.
And voila, you’re an artist.
You see it’s stupidity that causes us to believe in talent.
Talent is nothing but a seed, well watered.
Which is why most of us have a ‘talent’ to speak almost one language.
Most of us have a ‘talent’ to press door bells, and speak on phones.
Most of us have a ‘talent’ to recite and write our alphabet from one end to the other.
Which brings us back to drawing
Surely drawing is a lot more complex than reciting and writing the alphabet.
You think so? Tell that to a three-year old child.
Watch as she struggles with just the letter A. Or B. Or the combination of A, B and C.
So what makes her talent grow?
It’s the banana peel of life.
Her parents know that that child will ’slip and fall’ if she doesn’t learn her alphabet.
So they make the alphabet fun. They show the child a cat. And say the letter C.
They show the child a ball, and you guessed it, it’s the letter B.
And soon, every child becomes a genius at the alphabet.
And you know what, if you are a genius at the alphabet, I can indeed teach you how to draw using NOTHING but the alphabet.
And could you then become a genius at drawing?
Hmmm…food for thought, eh?
So what are your questions? Because as you can tell, this is indeed going to be a long, long series.
