2007 World Skating Champion: Miki Ando
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?
Fascinating post! Relates closely to a lot of reading on the brain that I’ve been doing lately. I agree with what you said, and perhaps that initial momentum is born when they see the spark of an inborn talent that through practice can be developed to something incredible. This is why I pursued learning music rather than sports, because my first experiences displayed different levels of innate ability. I had a better baseline ability for music, and that in turn, is what I got more childhood compliments for, which built into motivation, momentum, etc…
Thanks Sean. Being devil’s advocate here…
Maybe you are confusing cause and effect?
1. Maybe people who are already good – practice more. Because they gain pleasure from the practice… they get to experience the feeling of being in the “flow”.
2. Maybe others don’t practice so hard because they already know that they’ll never reach the top of that field? They know that they are not “talented”?
For eg: Lance Armstrong. Practiced like crazy. True. But then medical professionals took measurement of each and every part of his body and found that he has the most optimal body for a cyclist. The stamina, the length of legs and the power in them etc – was perfect.
So did Lance become better because he practiced? Or did he practice because he was already talented?
Again, you’re confusing biology (his body) for talent. Biology and talent (among other things) are related, but talent can exist exclusive of superior biology.
The mix up is just because we start to see sportspeople and athletes at work, more than artists or thinkers, or musicians at work.
I’d love you playing devil’s advocate, and I want you to do so, but it’s important to separate the factors of biology (which is mostly body-related) and talent (which is mostly brain-related).
This of course, is what we all believe. Why? Because we’ve been told by our friends, relatives, and teachers that we’re talented or not.
Of course, it’s what I’ll show you to be erroneous. That talent is just a brain function, and nothing much else.
Thanks Sean.
Brain is made up of blood and nerves. To me, brain is biology.
When Einstein’s brain was dissected and studied upon, they found that it lacked the parietal operculum – and in compensation – the inferior parietal lobes were enlarged – the regions that have a lot to do with visual imagery and mathematics. Einstein was specially suited to think the way he thought. (For the life of me, I just can’t imagine sitting on a ray of light and seeing the world at the speed of light. And believe me, I have tried.)
The Polgar sisters did excellent with chess – solely due to extensive and excessive training.
But pick a 100 people at random and give them the same mental training the Polgar sisters received. And they all won’t all become the best. It’ll be easier for some to become chess geniuses than others.
I actually agree with you – that talent has to be built. Where I disagree is “anyone” can become talented in anything.
Yes, your mind nerve wirings can be changed with effort. But there are limits to it too. And not everyone has the capability of becoming grand masters.
The fight between nature and nurture is still 50-50 and well poised, in my humble opinion.
And so we come 5000 years back where the first philosophers gave an excellent advice: Know Yourself.
Know yourself. Know what your nature given abilities and strengths are. And work on becoming the best at those. Because it’ll be a lot harder to go against nature (note: I didn’t say impossible).
I agree that the brain is biology. But if you actually look at how the brain learns, then it’s a matter of ‘neurons’ and ‘synapses.’
Is one brain better than another?
We’ve never known this for a fact, because we’ve always measured brains later in life. For example, Susan’s brain was measured after she became a grandmaster. So was Einstein’s brains.
The synapse is the gap between not learning, and learning. It’s the chasm.
But theoretically at least I agree that we all don’t have the same brains. Whether the brain can’t be trained to get to genius level depends on a lot of factors.
If you imagine the brain to be a hard disk. Then a hard disk can be formatted in different ways. And software is required. You may have a similar hard disk to mine, but if you’re running Photoshop 3.0 and I’m running Photoshop CS3, then there’s no comparison. And if two people are running Photoshop CS3, but one person has a 10-year knowlegdge of design, then again, it’s not the problem with the hard disk.
I disagree with the nature part. I can’t prove everything of course, but I can prove the things I know. E.g cartoons, writing, speaking, dancing etc. That I can prove that I can train anyone who’s willing to be as good (or close to as good) as me.
The reason why you can’t see what Einstein sees, is not because of your brain. It’s because of your experiences in life (your software). And amazingly, the brain is lego-like. If you study how it works, you’ll see something that’s amazing. The brain, or parts of the brain can be ‘expanded’ like a lego block. And there’s scientific proof for this.
Susan Polgar is an example of this. She uses her ‘fuseform gyrus’ (the part of the brain that is used for face recognition) to remember chess moves. Your brain remembers faces too. That makes you a genius. Now if you could enable your brain to do the same: Namely to remember millions of ‘chess moves’ or millions of ‘pieces of data’ in clusters, then you too could be a Susan Polgar.
This discussion becomes tough because people go off in all different directions. They’ll talk about muscular strength (athletic strength) or endurance (marathon runners) or issues like Physics and light (scientists). It’s a vast topic.
The point is: Can you draw cartoons as well as me?
Are you as talented?
That I can prove. 🙂
Thanks Sean.
>The point is: Can you draw cartoons as well as me?
>Are you as talented?
>That I can prove.
I would love to be your guinea pig A. 😛 Tell me what to do sensei.
Go to http://www.wordtoons.com and you’ll find how to draw cartoons with the alphabet.