Genius and Hard Work

Some stuff claiming flow states short the long practice time learning curve.
 
mcmanigle said:
As long as this thread is being reincarnated (ha), some recent research out of Princeton analyzed the 10,000 hour "rule" and found that practice accounts for about 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions (including data on fighter pilots). So, important, but not the most important.

The original paper is here and a summary here.
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A lot of people jumped on that section of "Outliers" a few years ago when it first came out, and they totally misinterpreted it. From what I can tell, Gladwell was relying on a study done by Anders Ericsson on the role of focused practice in the mastery of highly skilled activities. What Ericsson said was that there was no mastery without focused practice, he did not say that there was no natural aptitude required.

I can personally vouch for that concept. I'd tried to learn to play two different musical instruments at different times as a child, both times I did nothing but struggle, and quit each time. As an adult, I decided I really wanted to learn to play something, and started self teaching on a keyboard. I did this steadily for about a year and a half, until I gave myself a case of tendonitis and stopped for a while, picking it back up about a year later. After another two years on and off, we bought a piano for my daughter, and I started taking lessons as well. I did that for two and a half years. At that time I was still struggling late elementary music, and not doing it all that well. I switched to guitar to see if that was better, and worked at that for another two and a half years. By the time I was done, I was still struggling with simple songs, and couldn't make a chord change to save my life. I probably spent 1500 hours on the keyboard and piano, and another 500 on the guitar, and can't play either.

I'm not sure why it is that some people have a hard time accepting the concept of natural aptitude in some activities. It's pretty obvious in the sports world. Everyone can see that someone who is a good marathoner isn't going to be playing on the offensive line in the NFL, and vice versa, there's no reason to believe it's different in other activities.

It appears to me that most people can learn to fly a light single, but that only a few of us are going to develop Bob Hoover type skills. It's also true that there are some who are not cut out to be pilots at all.
 
FormerHangie said:
A lot of people jumped on that section of "Outliers" a few years ago when it first came out, and they totally misinterpreted it. From what I can tell, Gladwell was relying on a study done by Anders Ericsson on the role of focused practice in the mastery of highly skilled activities. What Ericsson said was that there was no mastery without focused practice, he did not say that there was no natural aptitude required.

I can personally vouch for that concept. I'd tried to learn to play two different musical instruments at different times as a child, both times I did nothing but struggle, and quit each time. As an adult, I decided I really wanted to learn to play something, and started self teaching on a keyboard. I did this steadily for about a year and a half, until I gave myself a case of tendonitis and stopped for a while, picking it back up about a year later. After another two years on and off, we bought a piano for my daughter, and I started taking lessons as well. I did that for two and a half years. At that time I was still struggling late elementary music, and not doing it all that well. I switched to guitar to see if that was better, and worked at that for another two and a half years. By the time I was done, I was still struggling with simple songs, and couldn't make a chord change to save my life. I probably spent 1500 hours on the keyboard and piano, and another 500 on the guitar, and can't play either.

I'm not sure why it is that some people have a hard time accepting the concept of natural aptitude in some activities. It's pretty obvious in the sports world. Everyone can see that someone who is a good marathoner isn't going to be playing on the offensive line in the NFL, and vice versa, there's no reason to believe it's different in other activities.

It appears to me that most people can learn to fly a light single, but that only a few of us are going to develop Bob Hoover type skills. It's also true that there are some who are not cut out to be pilots at all.
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:yeahthat:

I differentiate between "talent" and "skill". Talent is something you are born with. Skill is something you can learn. In the music example, you can learn to sightread accurately with little talent. My mom is a good example. She learned to play piano as a child. She could, the last time we tried it still sight-read music better than I can (at least on piano). But she has no feel for it. The music is lifeless. I majored in voice for a couple of years because I enjoyed it and was quite good at it. I actually was handicapped in my discipline of learning to read music because my ear is good enough to hear something 1-2 times and have it. The voice juries at my school told me that both years as they advanced me to the next level: "Next year you have to learn to read music!".

I'm a Software Engineer by trade and I find the same thing in SW: you can learn a lot of skills and still be a poor programmer. Conversely, you can have a lot of talent and if you don't apply yourself to learning the skills, you'll be mediocre at best. At least in a team environment.

Hard work can make up for some of the difference and talent can make up for some of the lack of discipline. But the very best in any field have both.

John
 
Genius is not the ability to repeat things, genius is the ability to create things where nothing existed before.
 
Bobanna said:
Pilots, like bowlers, strive to repeat procedures again and again to obtain the desired result in varying situations.
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Vanilla GA pilots, there are more dynamic and more amusing ways to fly that are not boring and repetitive.
 
Bobanna said:
Pilots, like bowlers, strive to repeat procedures again and again to obtain the desired result in varying situations. I submit that "genius" is an inaccurate term for describing a pilot or a bowler. Of course, there are countless examples of aviation accomplishments, and many involve skillful piloting. I don't see the use of the term applicable to what a pilot does.
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I think some people's brains, through whatever means, simply have a propensity to work on problems of a certain variety and they are just wired to work on those problems at a very high level. Musicians, chess grandmasters, entrepreneurs, athletes, inventors, engineers, pilots, whatever. The brains of geniuses seem to be working on their obsession all the time. In some people it causes deficiencies in other areas of their lives.

Geniuses will practice a lot but the practice does not create the genius. And the practice is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the brain is doing behind the scenes - constantly thinking about variations, concepts, ideas, fragments of ideas, playing, replaying. I

Genius, to me, is a matchup of a certain brain with its perfect activity that really triggers the brain to just grab on and never let go. In some people it can become an obsession. It's always there in the brain even when not physically practicing. So 10,000 hours is just a small portion of the mental work involved.

My mind gravitates toward foreign languages. It isn't genius, but it is a propensity that surprised me in high school. It found a motivation to learn a language and my brain took over. I'd practice, forming sounds to myself, thinking about how to say this or that, watching and listening to others speak, reading, whatever. It just kept going and going and going. People said I was talented. I won awards, got scholarships, used it in my work, etc.. but it was just what my brain - for whatever reason - latched onto. Weird. But I think everyone has a "thing" that their brain leans toward.

:dunno:
 
Bobanna said:
I like this. Creativity is definitely a component of genius, perhaps the cardinal feature of genius. I would expand on "creat(ing) things" to include discovery of relationships, predicting observable events, or developing (creating) a framework or device that makes such an observation or explanation possible. Of course, there is a certain kind of genius in how things are presented or performed. Imagination is crucial to genius. I don't know how all this pertains to flying airplanes, but I am amazed by the large number of intellectual posts thus far. Blessings
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Information is information regardless of what it represents or produces. Everything has an information component.
 
mcmanigle said:
As long as this thread is being reincarnated (ha), some recent research out of Princeton analyzed the 10,000 hour "rule" and found that practice accounts for about 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions (including data on fighter pilots). So, important, but not the most important.

The original paper is here and a summary here.
Click to expand...

That's actually fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Maybe I'm glad I accidentally revived the thread! :)
 
I can attest to this. It has always taken me a little longer to pick something up than maybe the above average to roughly average cat.....when it comes to flying at least. For the folks in a similar boat, I have also found (on the positive side) that my understanding of some task is also as a result more robust when the light bulb goes off than some of the more "natural" folks out there. Probably not always the case, but when it comes to teaching someone something, I have found myself to be at an advantage because I have made most of the mistakes already myself, and have had to find my own way of understanding the correct solution.
 
Anything I touch with my hands I can learn fairly quickly. Anything that requires art, or slight improvising... Duck and cover. I am great at mechanical things, but I cannot do flair or make something beautiful. It is either useful, not useful, or it came that way.
 
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