You Can Achieve Whatever You Set Your Mind To — No, Really!
As sporting competition tends to induce ego-driven behavior, I assume I was not the only high-school athlete to bristle when a new kid on the team — one who had never played the sport before — was suddenly outperforming me and taking my glory.
Bruised and desperate, I commonly used the “natural athlete” defense. They were, and I was not, and that’s a life lesson. Several of my teammates were similarly “born with it,” whereas I treaded water. Sweaty and determined, proud even, but never notably improving my skills or athleticism.
Maturity softened the blow, and I accepted that a man like me — a body like mine — simply wasn’t meant to compete at a higher level. I stopped playing baseball, didn’t make my Division III college tennis team, and that was okay.
I simply wasn’t “talented.” Right?
Absolutely.
But strangely enough, it turns out that neither were they.
Athletes acquiring new skills at different speeds, and peaking at different levels of competence, is the rule. And genetically-coded capacity — otherwise known as “talent” — is generally the accepted cause. This is likely because the conventional wisdom of the “talent” argument goes a ways toward soothing the emotions of the less-accomplished teammate.
Only problem is, the conventional wisdom is dead wrong. The “talent” fallacy is so obviously false that it should have been dumped long ago, a failed theory best left for the trash man along with a Smith machine and the old food pyramid. Off to the dump where it can’t hurt you any longer. The Human Genome Project has yet to discover the “Sampras” gene, and you shouldn’t expect an RNA-modifying, grass-court specialist “Wimbletrex” pill in your lifetimes.
That new kid who just picked up a racquet and stole my starting spot? He got better — faster — because he practiced better. And practicing well is an acquired behavior — not an innate ability.
Which is good news for all of us.
You may not have the frame to be an NBA frontcourt player, but everything else is pretty much open to you. And I do mean everything — musical ability, chess, mastery of calculus. Because the speed at which you acquire skill, and the level of expertise you eventually achieve, is primarily a function of how intensely, and how wisely, you practice.
This is the groundbreaking conclusion arrived at by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson — Conradi Eminent Scholar and professor of psychology at Florida State University. In 2006, he and his fellow researchers published the weighty Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, a compendium of the first century of study on humanity’s capacity for achievement.
According to Ericcson, the argument that genetically inherited talent is primarily responsible for one’s capacities dates to 1869, from the pages of Sir Francis Galton’s landmark Hereditary Genius. Ericcson writes:
Galton clearly acknowledged the need for training and practice to reach high levels of performance in any domain. However, he argued that improvements of performance for mature adults are rapid only in the beginning of training and that subsequent increases diminish, until “maximal performance becomes a rigidly determinate quantity.” According to Galton, the relevant heritable capacities determine the upper bound for the performance that an individual can attain through practice, and reflect the immutable limit that “nature has rendered him capable of performing.” …
Galton’s arguments for the importance of innate factors for attaining the highest levers of performance were compelling and thus, have had a lasting impact on our culture’s view of ability and expertise.
Galton’s initial advancement of the “born with it” argument stuck, and it’s easy to see why. People hitting impenetrable plateaus of achievement simply seems to be what’s happening.
Ericcson notes that later studies strengthened Galton’s theory. People tend to achieve an acceptable level of performance at most everyday activities (typing, driving a car, playing tennis) after less than 50 hours of practice time. Following the acquisition of an acceptable skill level, the skill becomes “automated” — one no longer needs to actively concentrate on the task. At this point, the plateau is observed, and further improvement is well nigh impossible for most people.
But not all. The “born with it” theory forwards that hereditary factors allow some to reach the highest levels of achievement, but only following many years of experience. Chess masters typically need ten years of play before being able to compete at an international level. Musicians generally do not reach their peak abilities until 20 to 30 years of exposure.
So Galton’s theory simply appeared to be correct — we have dominant hereditary limits, and these are only achieved following extensive experience. Twenty years of practice may occasionally produce Pete Sampras, but more likely it just produces a competent, competitive player.
So where’s the theoretical flaw?
Look again — it’s there. And Ericcson and his fellow scholars have explored and examined it, and concluded that the flaw is sufficient to sink Galton’s whole enterprise. Ahem:
Why does the upper limit of human achievement in various activities continue to rise? If we are genetically limited by heredity and time spent practicing, why are we able to continually break records?
Why is what was once considered to be expert-level performance now considered pedestrian?
“I Found Longer Races Boring. I Found the Mile Just Perfect.”
Four minutes.
As of 1954, it was considered the upper limit of human performance. Then Sir Roger Bannister posted a 3:59.4 — “the Miracle Mile.”
It was not a miracle for long. The long-standing barrier was rapidly broken by several men.
In 2009, the four-minute mile is an expected ability of top runners, and Morocco’s Hicham El-Guerrouj holds the record at 3:43.13.
Olympic swimmers of the early 20th century put up times that would land them on high school junior varsity squads today.
Same top-shelf genes, but significantly less practice time, is consistently producing far superior results. The only answer? People saw what Roger Bannister was doing to prepare, and they copied it. They produced the same, or improved, performances.
Dr. Ericcson and his fellows asked a radical question. If the nature of one’s practice activity is of such crucial importance and if an individual is able to progress from an elite to being the world’s best solely through better practice, is it possible that the same individual advanced through each lower level of achievement the same way?
Roger Bannister progressed from elite to world record holder because of his preparation techniques. Did he also progress from competitive to elite because of his preparation? From novice to competitive? Is it possible his path from absolute beginner to record holder was entirely due to his practice habits?
Dr. Ericcson and his brethren study how the best of the best get better. The data, now piled high, clearly trends towards a common conclusion:
As a rule, experts practice things differently. Better than the rest of us, and similar to each other.
Genetics, heredity, and “talent”? The evidence simply isn’t there, or is overwhelmed by the practice factor.
So what are they doing? And can you learn to do it, too?
Nature Does Not Assign Your Upper Limit: The Theory of “Deliberate Practice”
Dr. Ericcson coined the term “deliberate practice” to represent habits that are conducive to achieving the highest levels of performance. One’s level of ability is very strongly predictive of how much time one has spent engaged in these types of activities — much more so than any genetic markers.
And you are absolutely capable of learning how to practice like the experts. While some aspects of deliberate practice are activity-specific, the core aspects will help you whether you are memorizing state capitals, playing the flute, or trying to execute perfectly balanced, mechanically advantaged clean-and-jerks.
First, two contributing factors that are not practice habits, but are absolutely necessary to performance improvement. …
1. Passion
Dr. Ericcson writes of his fellow researcher Benjamin Bloom, who concluded that:
elite performers are typically introduced to their future realm of excellence in a playful manner at a young age. As soon as they enjoy the activity and show promise compared to peers in the neighborhood, their parents help them seek out a teacher and initiate regular practice.
Want to improve? Be great? Passion matters. Rarely does an expert form who neither enjoys their mastered activity nor has a driving desire to improve. Pete Sampras likely found tennis to be a childhood love affair. He dreamt it, lived it, daydreamed it. Endless hours of practice are rigorous, and only the passionate tend to endure them.
Earl Woods wrote about consistently affirming that Tiger had developed his own passion for golf. He insisted that the boy finish his homework before practicing, and he noted that Tiger did indeed see golf as a reward. He insisted that Tiger call him at work, presumably an intimidating task for the child, so that he could ask his father if they could practice. Tiger Woods had a passion to improve that outweighed the rigors.
The less passionate? Ericcson writes:
Many individuals seem satisfied in reaching a merely acceptable level of performance, such as amateur tennis players and golfers, and they attempt to reach such a level while minimizing the period of effortful skill acquisition. Once an acceptable level has been reached, they need only to maintain a stable performance, and often do so with minimal effort for years and decades.
I, and likely you, never cared to be an excellent typist. I worked on it until it felt like “riding a bike” and then stopped trying to improve. My speed has not risen since, despite decades of experience.
Live it, breathe it, love it, or you probably will not get there, no matter what you do to prepare or how much experience you collect.
2. Opportunity/Access
Look again at Dr. Bloom’s quote:
As soon as they enjoy the activity and show promise compared to peers in the neighborhood, their parents help them seek out a teacher and initiate regular practice.
Again, this is not a practice habit, but an essential — and obvious — factor in the development of excellence.
Experts have likely received a remarkable amount of support from their parents and teachers. They have been driven back and forth to practice to receive the best available instruction, ferried across the country to enter various competitions, and some families are even relocated to be closer to the best teachers and training facilities. Says Bloom:
[A]ccess to the best training resources is necessary to reach the highest levels.
Why don’t the Olympic water polo players tend to come from New England? It isn’t because the gene pool is better in California.
Not too many top female scientists, athletes … female anythings, really, develop within Islamic countries. We don’t need DNA analysis to understand that isn’t hereditary.
Those two factors assumed, we arrive at …
The Habits of Experts
1. Practice is Work, Not Play
Remember those summer nights when you would shoot hoops, or ride your bike, or play catch until you couldn’t make out the ball in the dark anymore? It was heaven. It was also playtime for you.
Those five hours you spent launching threes, or on the tennis court “hitting” with a friend? You spent most of that time at play. Larry Bird and Pete Sampras spent significantly more of that time trying to improve. You missed a shot, grabbed the rebound, and went back to shoot again.
Bird? He missed a shot, then thought about why he missed it, and concentrated on not making the same mistake on his next attempt.
Two shots, the same ten seconds of exposure to the sport, but Bird got more out of it.
Not true, you say? You were practicing every bit as hard as Bird, but still got cut from your varsity team?
If you aren’t as good as Bird was, the likeliest truth is that you simply were not working as hard or were not as mentally engaged as you thought you were. Experts, across the board — musicians, writers, stock traders — provably and consistently spend the most time practicing in a manner that focuses on improvement. If you aren’t as good as the next guy, the simple truth is that he likely practices better and longer than you.
2. Constant, Consistent Concentration
Practice is a neurological activity. Concentrating on making every single attempt better than the last one is difficult and draining — for everyone. But it is necessary.
That type of awareness is not easy to perform, and the energy it requires is often a limiting factor. How limiting? Ericcson writes:
Expert performers from many domains engage in practice without rest for only around an hour, and they prefer to practice early in the morning when their minds are fresh. Elite musicians and athletes report that the factor that limits their deliberate practice is primarily an inability to sustain the level of concentration that is necessary … the amount of practice never consistently exceeds five hours per day. … In some domains of sports, such as gymnastics, sprinting, and weight lifting, the maximal effort necessary for representative performance is so great that the amount of daily deliberate practice is even further limited by factors constraining the duration of production of maximal power and strength.
3. Find Suitable Training Tasks That Promote Gradual Improvement
Experts do not approach practice by simply saying, “I’m going to go work on my game.” They instead present themselves with specific tasks that they can master in a matter of hours.
Working on your free throws? Don’t just start shooting. Give your self a reachable, relevant goal: “I’m going to work on proper follow through today. I will finish every shot with full extension.”
Ericcson writes:
Deliberate practice presents performers with tasks that are initially outside their current realm of reliable performance, yet can be mastered within hours of practice.
Olympic weightlifter? Don’t just work on your snatch — work on your scoop for a few hours, with a focus on nailing it every time. Work on maintaining back angle during the first pull. Pick something outside your current abilities, but shortly attainable.
4. Accurate, Rapid Feedback
Ericcson notes that, among doctors, surgeons tend to consistently improve throughout their careers. Family doctors? They tend to plateau. Why is this?
So you’re concentrating and setting proper goals? It doesn’t matter if you aren’t made aware — immediately after, when your actions are still fresh — if you’re actually performing them better.
You have to know what proper technique is, and then you have to know if you just did it. Surgeons improve because they know, instantly, if the surgery went well. Either they got the tumor out or they didn’t. They reattached the tendon, or they didn’t. Family doctors? They see a sick child, diagnose and prescribe the illness, and then do not see the child for months. Did the drugs work? Was the diagnosis right? If they do not know precisely what they did correct, and they do not know precisely what they did wrong, they simply have nothing to work with.
Feedback is an area where proper coaching comes into play. Your chances of rapid improvement at a task are greatly improved if a reliable source is telling you what just happened and if you should emulate that action or alter it. On your own, you simply have to be as informed and aware as possible regarding the activity. The introduction of video cameras in the training environment is a great resource, and absolutely recommend as a training tool for clients and coaches.
5. Always Avoid Automation
Getting “in the zone,” being “unconscious” — that’s for competition time. Practice must be the exact opposite, no matter your level of expertise. Never, ever let your practice time start to feel like “riding a bike.” Want to hit a plateau and get stuck? Automation is the culprit.
Let’s look at Ericcson’s quote again:
Many individuals seem satisfied in reaching a merely acceptable level of performance, such as amateur tennis players and golfers, and they attempt to reach such a level while minimizing the period of effortful skill acquisition. Once an acceptable level has been reached, they need only to maintain a stable performance, and often do so with minimal effort for years and decades.
Recall the typist example? I reached an acceptable typing speed, and then stopped thinking about how to improve my speed and accuracy. As a result, the skill has become automated for me. It takes me minimal effort to perform the activity, which is nice, but decades of experience have not and cannot increase my skill.
Experts never allow themselves to reach the automation phase.
This cannot be overstated. Conscious awareness of performing your activity is absolutely required to improve. Ericcson writes:
After individuals [reach a satisfactory level], they can generate their performance virtually automatically with a minimal amount of effort. In contrast, expert performers counteract automaticity by developing increasingly complex mental representations to attain higher levels of control of their performance.
What is Tiger Woods doing when he practices hours a day on skills he’s already mastered? He is avoiding automation, maintaining awareness of the movements and constantly refining them. He is subsequently, and stunningly, still getting better.
Allen Iverson is famous for skipping practice but being able to turn it on at game time. He is also known for putting up the same bad shooting percentage every year, and essentially having the same skills he had as a rookie.
Weakness to Strength
I recently spent an hour on a ball machine at the Roosevelt Island tennis courts, preceded by telling myself “I am going to spend this time improving my backhand.” Aware that this was not a specific enough goal, I first tried to pinpoint what needed work.
My first stroke, I was off balance. Teetered forward on my toes. I didn’t let that happen again.
The machine was capable of changing speeds, and I missed a faster paced ball because I hadn’t gotten my racquet back and my body turned in time. I concentrated on this skill, and while I may have hit some additional poor shots during the hour, none of them were the result of starting a late swing.
Sixty minutes later, I was mentally exhausted. And invigorated about the sport in a way I hadn’t been in years.
Also, I was noticeably better. And I haven’t turned back.
The possible benefits of the deliberate practice approach stretch far beyond the applications discussed above. The science, just decades old, is still in infancy. Could this extend to improved public education? Fewer traffic accidents? Ericcson concludes:
The emerging insights should be relevant to any motivated individual aspiring to excel in any challenging domain.
Born with it? Forget it. Just get to work.
It turns out we simply have had no idea how capable we are.
“Why does the upper limit of human achievement in various activities continue to rise? If we are genetically limited by heredity and time spent practicing, why are we able to continually break records?”
a better knowledge on how to feed onseself, how to train, how to rest and to recuperate, but what an athlet gains in performance, he looses as much as physical resistance, see how many of them get some muscles tears during their exploits
idem for the well trained brains that have some kind of difficulties to resist to an “annoying” ambiant atmosphere without making a “characterial” and emotional burst
the great artists have a more sensible approach to their environment, this is also their weakness, they can be more hurted
Anyway, not many have the energy and or such a inner force for an exceptional vocation, lots resign after a few consuming years, certain for the sportmen, artists that repeat themselves (or the same discourse) at the infini after that the found the “idea” that made them exceptional, some poets were “genious” for one periode of their life time (Raimbaud), philosophes that intuitively “perceive” some logical truth, keep on developping their system… uh, only scientists seem to get a slow but never endless progression
While it’s true that people can achieve beyond what they usually consider possible, it’s untrue that there aren’t limits… and you pointed it out yourself when you mentioned people might not have the frame to play at the NBA.
Well, it’s not just height or muscular composition [I'm a small woman - without enhancements of some sort, I'm not going to be benching the kinds of weights a man my size could bench] that varies amongst people.
I guess it helps to have family in special education to know that this is silly. The great thing about modern special education is that people who used to be just locked up for their lives can be trained to do far more than it used to be assumed. But that doesn’t mean that abstract reasoning could be taught to all people, given enough time.
Now you may think this is an all-or-nothing situation – a discrete disability, but like height, cognitive abilities are on a continuum. Those in special education may be the most obvious in their deviation from the norm, but it’s not like there’s a huge gap between there and the average… and no gap from the average to the extremes of the right tail.
Sorry, you’re not all going to be Einsteins, no matter how hard you work, and I’m not going to be an NBA player [heck, I'm not even going to be accepted as a pickup game player unless there's no one else available].
Teaching people how to most effectively get better in where they already have interest and ability is good, but it’s not kind to tell people who have no chance to compete that they could hack it only if they tried hard enough. It makes it easy to say “Oh, you weren’t motivated enough” – put the fault back on them.
It’s better to help people find out what they could possibly succeed at [e.g., if I wanted to find a sport I could do well in, perhaps wrestling - I'm pretty low to the ground] in addition to giving the proper training. Set people up for success.
While I agree with this to some extent, I think there are limits. We’ll take golf as an example. Tom Kite–remember him? Great golfer, great thinker. He was able to get around a golf course very well and won a good many PGA tournaments. He will be the first to tell you that he hasn’t nearly the physical gifts that a Tiger or a Nicklaus had, though he worked every bit as hard on his game. I’m not sure he put in the sort of practice that Tiger or Jack Did, but there’s no way he could have equaled their length of the tee.
Or Lance Armstrong…there’s no question that he worked harder than anyone else in cycling, but he would be incapable of doing the things he’s done without having a tremendous pool of natural talent. The things that set apart Tiger, Jack, Lance, and Jordan was that they worked harder than anyone else AND they had more talent than (just about) anyone else. It’s that combination of gift and drive.
But then there are the true freaks of nature. Does anyone really think they could do the things that Bo Jackson was capable of, no matter how long they worked at it? Did anyone ever read about the things Jim Thorpe could do?
Jeez, didn’t anyone here ever play D & D? You roll for your character attributes….Strength/Dexterity/Constitution/Intelligence….and some other stuff(it’s been 30 years, gimme a break). Three rolls each with a 6-sided dice. If your boy’s got a strength of 6 and an intelligence of 17, you’d best give him a magic wand and not an axe, or he’s in for a very short ride…
Why?
Because science and technology, even as applied to agronomy (our food), extend human capacities — ahem, yourself: life expectancy!
Example: by 1955 all Japanese garment manufacturers and community based tailors had to cut wholely new patterns, re-tool their machines for sizes never seen on their islands EVER, even during the Russo-, WWI and WWI industrial spurts and their aftermaths.
Why?
McArthur, that’s why. He Americanized Japan from schools to diets to you name it. And they got bigger.
Guess that should rebut your rebuttal to Galton. Nurture and nature are BOTH in the equation.
This may be the most valuable article I’ve ever found at PJM. Thank you so much for making me think about something I was taking for granted – writing practice.
We may all be born equal but if you didn’t notice it at the time, you missed it. Someone will always be faster or stronger or better at chess than others. Maybe it will be you. Maybe not.
I think that you need to define what you mean by “achievement”.
Sports, while a laudable activity, is hardly the ultimate expression of Man’s potential nor the venue of his ultimate accomplishments. It is doubtful that “everyone” can reach the heights of a Mozart or Newton. Far from it. This is a simple fact of life. That is not to say that we should stop trying to reach for perfection, it is to say we need to have some perspective.
The author makes a good point, and it is something I have noticed as a math tutor. All of my students needed extra help, and none of them loved math. They were all convinced that they just were not good at math. However, all of them became A or high B students within a month or two of starting tutoring. I still remember one girl who was convinced she didn’t have the math “gene.” I ran into her about a year ago over the summer, she ended up going to one of the countries’ top medical schools. She reminded me when we met that she “is not good at math or particularly intelligent, but just works had.” I laughed and asked her how she though I learned the math I was teaching her.
Someone on here commented that without certain genes we are not going to be like “Einstein.” However, this was a guy who had lots of difficulties with mathematics, verbal skills, and school at a young age. A statement like this implies that what Einstein did was easy for him, but that does not seem to be the way he described it. He seemed to really like physics, he described working as a patent clerk and day dreaming about physics, about what it would be like to run at the speed of light. He claimed that it was this day dreaming about physics that gave him his famous insight about special relativity. Bringing up Einstein actually seems to confirm the article’s thesis. Here is a man who we think of as the prototypical genius of the twentieth century. I believe time magazine named him man of the century. On closer inspection, he was a man who achieved great things in physics even though mathematics were difficult for him. If the person who we think of as the greatest genius of the twentieth century had difficulty with math, imagine what the rest of us can do?
With that said, I do think the author missed one thing. Parents need to try and help children find the things that they enjoy and will become passionate about. Certainly Einstein came from a family where education was extremley valued. When parents value a quality, it does motivate their children to obtain it.
Interesting. Hardly convincing for it relies on the idea that the one who ultimately performs better is he who practices better but says absolutely nothing about how one comes practice better than the other. Seems perfectly circular to me. Perhaps its the genetic endowment that allows one to practice better than the other?
Carol Dweck a prof. of psychology (I believe.) at Stanford has done related studies discussed in her book, Mindset, The New Science of Success. Her studies done with in elementary school children indicate that what you believe about ability greatly influences your success. People who believe success is talent based tend to achieve less than people who believe success is effort based. Kids who believe they are naturally good at math tend to not do as well at math as kids who think their math ability can be improved. Very interesting stuff. Here’s the website for Dweck’s book: http://mindsetonline.com/
So, someone with an average 100 IQ can become a competent physician if he tries, really tries? Do you have any idea what it takes to make accurate diagnoses, not occasionally but on a regular basis? The amount of knowledge that has to have been retained? All the factors that have to be, at the very least, considered? No. Everyone is not capable of doing everything…competently.
Young children learn by playing, and the joy of learning is not different from the joy of playing. And a lot of our abilities are acquired this way, before any formal schooling! In this early stage, the performance limit is the fun limit. Children deprived of fun are also deprived of development.
Later on, learning requires effort, and the reward is no longer a side effect of the play. It requires thriving to meet some standard, self-imposed or otherwise, which is why children benefit from schooling, if the discipline is rigorous enough.
For those of us not engaged in world-level competition, the practical question is whether purposeful and honest practice is a good investment or not. This article states that it is, and my personal experience leads me to agree.
Mongoose,
Mozart is a fine example. He was composing symphonies at age five — yet he had spent most of his waking life up until that point in front of a piano. His compositions at age five are comparable in complexity to compositions by a person of any age who had put in a similar amount of deliberate practice to the young Mozart.
Chris in Toronto,
How one comes to be better at practice than another is a good topic, but not relevant to the theory — anyone can be taught to practice properly (barring a special needs individual.)
ricpic,
A prominent example is London taxi drivers — people who show otherwise ordinary cognitive skills suddenly show tremendous ability in memory after working for a few years learning the challenging London street map.
Re Mozart, the popular perception of him still seems to be this idiot savant who published first drafts of his musical masterpieces. The movie “Amadeus” promotes this image. Though as noted, Mozart was writing music from his earliest years. From a letter to his father, Mozart wrote:
“You know that I immerse myself in music, so to speak — that I think about it all day long — that I like experimenting — studying — reflecting.”
And there’s no evidence to show that he published first drafts of his musical compositions. There is evidence that he re-wrote some pieces many times over (many early drafts of his work were discovered in recent years).
And Mozart and Einstein both believed the same thing, that in the end it was their enthusiasm for their subjects that mattered the most.
Mozart is a fine example. He was composing symphonies at age five — yet he had spent most of his waking life up until that point in front of a piano. His compositions at age five are comparable in complexity to compositions by a person of any age who had put in a similar amount of deliberate practice to the young Mozart.
Nonsense. Most people that practice piano the same amount of time as Mozart will never write symphonies part the level of Mozart, in fact very few will, something like .0000001% of the human race, to take a rough guess. People that professionally play (and compose) across decades of long lives do not even come close to Mozart accomplishments. As a pure, raw talent Mozart is a true phenomena unrivaled even by composers of his rank such as Bach, Beethoven or Palestrina.
I do not see how you can possibly use Mozart as an example of your thesis. It is a glaring counter example.
Peter G: I do not know what “recent scholarship” you refer too, but you are quite wrong to assert that Mozart constantly reworked his composition across the board, or that this was a common method of his. This is merely an assertion you make here. In fact if you look there are few sketchbooks, and the autographs have few corrections. The typical corrections occur in orchestrations made after initial rehearsals, performances, etc, or to accomodate performers, notably operatic singers. This was noted during his time, and is hardly the “creation” of some film someone made in the last few years. Believe it or not, popular opinion, particularly as expressed in Hollywood movies, of people such has Mozart have no real bearing on their accomplishments or place in history. One need only look at the incredible output of Mozart in the few years that he was a mature working composer to see that he could have scarcely had time for this sort of compositional method. In fact, Mozart in the main “composed in his head” before he committed to paper.
But more to the point, what possible difference would it make to the argument? Beethoven, of course, reworked and reworked his masterpieces, and did for many good reasons–the he was creating a whole new styles, revolutionizing music wholly new visions of expression, form, harmony and counterpoint. He was also quite deaf when he composed some of his greatest works. It is no wonder that he made sketch after sketch. The argument would still stand if Beethoven was used as an example rather than Mozart. If you think that an individual can achieve the same sort of accomplishment as Beethoven achieved by hard work and “positive thinking” you are dead wrong. He had a native creative genius, one he was born with, and one that cannot be duplicated. Civilizations get few such creators, one is lucky to get one at this level every couple of hundred years or. In Beethoven’s case, we have one of the great creative artist in history, at a level of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Phidias or Milton. The forces that create these people are mysterious, and not merely a matter of “practicing harder” and having a “positive attitude”.
The prodigious talents of a Mozart or a Beethoven are almost unequaled in history, which is rather the point. No amount of “practice’ or “dedication” will counter this, should the practitioner be at it for 200 years. Hence the fallacy of the author’s premise.
I agree with you to a point. There is no cure for tone-deaf, really.
I concur about science and technology. Equipment improvements can increase a competitor’s speed and agility. Why did Michael Phelps lose by over a second to a clearly inferior swimmer? The other guy had a better swimsuit that was able to help him channel more of his energy into forward progress, shaving seconds off his race time.
Anonymous,
A tremendous amount of the research on deliberate practice has focused on musical ability. Most notably, much work was done regarding the level of ability of students at top academies.
Across the board, the amount of time a student had spent in deliberate practice throughout his or her life was a dead solid predictor of his or her rank at the musical academy.
With singers, dancers, athletes, scientists, etc., absolutely no genetic markers have been discovered that point towards brilliance — whereas having an “Earl Woods” as a father and the accompanying access that provides, plus having an overwhelming amount of passion, is present in the backgrounds of all experts. Including the best of the best such as Woods, Mozart, etc.
After having been engaged for a long time in the kind of activities the author describes in a highly competitive field: Practising to become a musician and studying to become a composer. I have come to the conclusion that the people that become world class at something does what the author says plus a couple of other things. But nothing matters as much as this ability: The ability to not care about other peoples jealousy. The need to fit in, is what stops people from becoming Mozart. People don’t like to be incompetent, but they are even more scared about being really good, because that will put you in all kinds of danger. In my opinion, if you want to be great, I mean really great, genius level, you have learn to be able handle other peoples envy.
What a load of tripe. All born equal… blank slate… rubbish!
Look around you. Some people are bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, better looking, more dexterous, healthier than others. No amount of practice will make you an opera singer if you have a vocal range of one octave. No amount of practice will make you a guitarist if you have insufficient finger dexterity. No amount of practice will make you a basketball star if you’re four feet tall. No amount of practice will make you a nuclear physicist if you have an IQ of 70.
That’s reality. Face it.
Mark Spitz, and his current clone Michael
Phelps, are double-jointed big-footed
Aquamen, physiologically even further from
the Norm than basketball players.
Recent genetic research, as opposed to the
simplistic generalities I learned in the
1960s, and the PC everybody-equal propaganda
which replaced it, says that humanity is
a differentiated species; Too many changes,
too recently, (in evolutionary terms), for
things to have averaged out. Some people are
better than others, in many obvious and subtle
ways, including a single-minded persistence
which is just as genetic as big feet;
Fred Astaire had a long, lean, dancer’s body,
and he practiced his moves until his feet bled.
“Anonymous” …
I can point to this from the Mozartproject.org re Mozart’s revision style:
“Further, in recent years Ulrich Konrad’s painstaking research has revealed that, even though Mozart and his wife destroyed many of them, sketches or drafts remain for one in ten of his completed works. Then there are the sketches or drafts of works never realized, as well as quite a lot of works that had advanced to the fair-copy stage but were abandoned before completion — about one such for each four completed works, as Robert Marshall has pointed out. And Alan Tyson has shown that a number of completed works prove to have been begun, set aside, and then returned to months or years later. What is more, many completed works have now been shown to exist in two, and sometimes three or more, authentic versions that Mozart himself made for one purpose or another.” – Neal Zaslaw
I take your point that Beethoven had to revise more than Mozart because Beethoven was seeking musical innovations that required more experimentation. I used Mozart as an example because he is often cited as “the natural” of classical music composers. We could use Beethoven, the celebrated reviser, instead as the standard of musical genius, but as you say it won’t matter in this discussion. Your proof that Mozart and Beethoven owe their genius to their talent is based on the fact that no one else achieved their levels of artistic success. If we accept that they are the two greatest composers for the sake of this argument, how do we know that they didn’t also bring the greatest desire to their craft? How do we know they didn’t work the hardest? The fallacy I see here is this belief in genius, that very few have it, and only those who have it achieve greatness.
I don’t believe in “genius” myself. This doesn’t mean that I believe everyone has an equal chance to succeed at everything, only that when it comes to the possibilities of the human mind, the variances among humans is so slight as to be almost negligible.
I don’t believe in IQ either, or intelligence as commonly defined. I will agree that some people are better looking than others.
So if you’re not 6’4″, you’ll never be able to play in the NBA?
Oh Really?
Well have any of you heard of Spud Webb?
That’s right Spud Webb. He was 5’6″ and played in the NBA from 1985 to 1998.
Oh and let’s not forget he won the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk Contest with a vertical leap of 42″.
When asked how a guy, who’s 4″ shorter than the average American male, made it to the NBA, Spud answered, “Thousands of hours in the gym working on your shot, endless film and video study sessions, and constant practices with your teammates.”
The conclusions do not follow from the evidence given. There are unwarranted logical leaps here. Specifically, negative evidence, and self-selection bias are not accounted for. It’s post-hoc reasoning.
I’m also guessing that Mr. Steinberg has no children. One at most.
If this is true then there is no need for affirmative action then is there? You just need to HOPE that there will be CHANGE! What I have seen so far from this administration is the Hope that this Change doesn’t really work. This is a real nightmare and hopefully we all will vote him and those that support his policies out of office!
David Steinberg: we are not talking ao but how people “rank at music academies” We are talking abput the highest levels of human achievement in music. I do not know what “research” you are talking about, but it sounds to me like a mess of self congratulatory psudeo-science.
As a matter of fact, we do not produce a great many of even performer of the first rank, no matter how many people get honors degrees in tuba and thne University of Indiana.
We have spent millions, perhaps billions, in this country on music education in this nation, we churn out “composers” in our universities by the bushel, and give a great many of them relatively secure jobs, jobs that composers of the past would have marveled at. Yet we are porducing no composers of this stature. Period.
You are quite missing the point, Mr. Steinberg, so far as the highest accomplishment goes.
But besides that, if you thing that u can take some of less talent and have them practive away and be at the same level of someone of greater talent how also practices you are just plain wrong. There is such a think at talent. and when u see it side by side with your “hard working” achiever with “good attitudes” it can be heartbreaking. If you get a chance and you can, you should sit through auditions at a place like Julliard. It might show you something.,
There is such a think as musical talent, and this in more than technical mastery of an instrument. This is just the beginning of performing, there is much more to making music than this. I rather doubt the meaning of “predictor” in would be attested to by performers of the first rank. It sound to me something that academics and music professors have thought up.. At the highest level of of even performance, there are very few people in a given group in this nation that make it there.
Mr Steinberg:
Dismissing my argument (that some people have more talent for practicing effectively) as irrelevant “to the theory” is simply astonishing. You have completely begged the question, namely that everyone has an equal talent for effective study.
Furthermore, you are claiming that the issue is settled: “Decades of study on expertise prove that virtually anyone can be great at anything — “bad genes” are an excuse, not a cause.” That’s your essay’s subhead.
PwterG: I knew you would come back with Konrad,Marshall et al. This “research” is highly speculative, and “reconstructive”, and not accepted as gospel. It is based on one letter and a very small amount of “sketches”. In certain circles, it is felt that Konrad was being a bit of a sensationalist in order to boost his book of Mozart’s Fragmente. Konrad plays fast and loose with what one might call a sketch, in the sense that we normally mean sketches in musical composition. It is a pronounced epistemological problem in Konrad’s work. Marshall just goes on and rather uncritically repeats this stuff.
In fact ,Konrad admits that he can only find sketches for 10% of Mozart’s work, but what he does not say is that many those “sketches” he finds are not really sketches (I.e., where a composition is being worked out), but merely a note or a mnemonic about certain melody, or a writing out in piano score of a section, and of the 10% that Konrad finds, the “sketches” are not complete sketches of the either works. Does 10 bars constitute a sketch of a 15 minute work? Not is the sense that is normally meant by it. It is more a case of Mozart taking notes. In very few cases can we see Mozart actively composing in the sketches, in the sense that we can in almost every other composer. Is it s sketch to write out the parts in piano score, and write them out without correction?
Hardly.
In any event, these folks fail to address the sheer volume of Mozart’s work, and they ignore a lot of Mozarts own correspondence and conversations. They tend to want to discount or delegitimize a great deal of this and do so with rather dubious evidence. They make wholly unsubstantiated claims about supposed reams of sketches that were destroyed some how to “keep up the legend”. (This is a pretty comic assertion given the penery that Mozart’s wife fouund herself in after his death.) One really doubts that there was some cabal of Mozart’s circle attempting to project some false image about Mozart. Just who would these people be, and to what end would they want to do such a thing? Goodness, they did not even know where he was buried. It is far more likely that Konrad and Co. are projecting their own issues on poor Wolfgang.
The sheer volume of his output is daunting and is a problem for these folks to explain. For the time that he spent as an adult composing, no other composer produced as much work The Mozart. Not even Bach can make that claim. The operas alone fill a shelf larger than the entire output of a great many of composers, even those of high achievement. His collected works fill a large wall.
It just cannot be that there was this laborious reworking process.
And while I am on the subject, it has been all the rage in academic circles the last 40 years to somehow “humanize” (read “assault the greatness of”) the great composers of the classical canon. They have gone after Beethoven and Brahms too, and lately Haydn. I urge you to take with a grain of salt all this garbage. There are a great many in the “musicology profession”, if there is such a thing, that rather uncritically and reflexively pass this stuff around. It more has to do with PC, academic, “anti-establishments” politics than it has to do with real scholarship, and you will find that the community of working, preforming musicians (i.e., those that actually perform for a living, as opposed to work in a school somewhere,) pay them little mind. Just as there is an attempt to “deconstruct Dead White Men” in our English departments, our music departments to want to destroy our respect for the past. Mercifully, music exists outside of University departments.
As the the “passion they bring to it”, well, I think it is fair to say that there a have been many composers that brought “great passion” to musical composition but produced little of lasting value. It is unclear that all of the great composers brought a “passion” equal to the quality of their work. Bach or Palestrina come to mind. It was pretty much a workaday business and craft for them. What they did bring was prodigious talent, great taste, high artistry and creative genius. These are innate qualities, that no amount of passion or practice will give.
We could move the argument to Mathematics, or dance. There is such a think as innate talent and creative genius. I think it is a safe bet that if someone of mediocre mathematical ability were to go off for 100 years and “practice” they would never make the sort of level of achievement that a Newton or or a Riemann or a Euler achieved. It is hardly a matter of “passion”, at least not one of “passion” alone.
This seems a rather strange and specious argument. One might just as well say it had something to do with the lighting in their studies.
No, you are rejecting the glaringly obvious. They had greater talent;greater innate ability. And in the highest achievers, they had true creative genius. Certainly there is a lot of elbow grease, but so it is with all things. The point is that elbow grease and passion alone will not suffice.
One can not get around this. Hard work alone will not provide creative genius. If it were just a matter of hard work and “positive attitude” we should have a lot more of them. We do not. One has to acknowledge that those that a great among us have pushed the envelope of what the human is. It is mysterious, and,yes, often takes hard work, but it is not just a matter of will.
We live in an PC age, full of much mediocrity, where we imagine that we all are potentially “equal”. This is just not so in the broader reaches of the Human potential. Yes we are all are equal, or should be equal, before the court or at the ballot box, as our Founders maintained, but it is quite foolish to imagine that we are all equal in abilities, talent and aspect, and that it is meremly a matter of “attitude” and “hard work” that separates us. It might be true for lawyers or invetment bankers, but it is certianly not true for those fields that most highly express the potential of the Human.
If this were the case the history of the world would be altogether different.
PeterG; You do not believe in IQ? Well good luck with that. It is quite measurable.
It is not the sum total of human worth, and it certainly does not make one person a “better” person than another. But there is a measurable think called IQ. There is no doubt about this, at least not from a scientific POV.
Like it or not, some people are smarter than other people. Now some people are wiser than other too, and this often is not a function, or purely a function, of IQ.
What I am calling “creative genius”, BTW, is not IQ, to it often seems to correlate in one way or the other. I am not saying the Brahms, for example. had a “genius level IQ”, though no doubt he did, but rather he had “creative genius”, which is saying something altogether different. He could create startling new work with unique insights that illuminated something heretofore obscure; he could synthesized what was around and before him and at the same time point to an entirely new and profound musical expression that stands purely on its own merits. Creative genius really can only be “measured” by the quality of creative output. And certainly it exists. It is impossible to avoid the conclusions when faced with the great creators of the past.
In the case of Music, one must remember that the composers we remember today all existed in a world where there were many composer who were their contemporaries. For several ears we now have these lesser composers’ works. Go listen to them. It is quite evident that they have no genius. Go listen to Meyerbeer or Raff then go listen to Beethoven or Brahms.
A better comparison might be Beethoven against Mendelssohn. The latter being a fine and underrated composer, and a well cultivated prodigy well, certainly more cultivated in his youth than Beethoven ever was in his. He just cannot not stand up to the great creative genius that is Beethoven. This quality is glaringly obvious when one places their greatest works from similar periods of their lives side by side.
Perhaps the point here is that barring some major physical or mental impairment, we all can achieve a level of experitise that far exceeds our initial expectations. Will we all achieve Tiger or Jordan like status? Probably not, but if one is willing to work, that person can get better. We look at achievement gaps between the US and other nations in mathematics and it is interesting to note that the US attitude is one of attribution. You are born with it or not. In japan the idea is effective effort. Work at it and I can be good at it. If we encouraged this attitude, our children would compete on a global scale far better.
One last comment. My mother use the cliché reach for the stars. The idea is to dream big and you will achieve greatness. Perhaps not NFL or PGA greatness, but you can be great nonetheless.
Better living through chemistry?
Sorry, but as someone who has played many sports for years, i have to call BS here, at least as it relates to sports achievement. SOME PEOPLE DO POSSESS SUPERIOR PHYSICAL TALENTS REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY PRACTICE. How else do you explain the multi-sport star versus the single sport practitioner? The multi sport star has an natural talent for sport that isnt at the same level as the single practioner. Otherwise we would have a wealth of asian guards in the NBA. Asians are as dedicated to work and practice as any people on the planet; more so than most. This theory falls flat on its face and doesn’t pass the smell test among those who play and coach sports.
That was an unbelievably simple-minded review of a complex topic. And if the argument of the book is as simple as the last supporting sentence, I won’t waste my money.
“Why does the upper limit of human achievement in various activities continue to rise? If we are genetically limited by heredity and time spent practicing, why are we able to continually break records?”
Let me dismiss this oft-repeated and stupid argument with a straightforward analogy. Human height continues to rise (and it does), therefore height is not gentically heritable. That is the identical logic to the statement above and everyone knows it is nonsense when it comes to height. Here is a thought experiment: have the Shaq and Danny Devito impregnate 100 women each and see whose offspring turn out to be taller on avearge. Would you like to take a bet on that? Or perhaps the old canard that the average ability in X keeps increasing does not, in fact, say a damn thing about whether that trait has a genetic basis.
Perhaps there are few Asian guards in basketball because they are pushed toward other sports. For example, I believe that there plenty of potential white males who can sprint like carl lewis but they are currently playing other sports because our society likes to place people in near little boxes. You lost me when you single out an ethic group. And by the way, I’m not calling you a racist, I’m just expressing an opinion fir discussion.
Many thanks for this article, Mr. Steinberg. The 10,000 hour rule is one of my favorite topics.
I’m sorry that you had to endure the comments from the individuals who felt it necessary to point out the low odds of replicating Einstein’s performance if one’s IQ is two SD below the mean; or of playing in the NBA if one is a quadruple amputee. Sigh.
Bunch of BS…
You inherit many skills such as processing speed, fast twitch muscles, bone structure, tolerance of pain and drive.
Blank slate crap has been discredited for a long long time.
I wouldn’t place too much credence in the failure to find a gene for talent. That’s like saying there isn’t a gene for personality. We are more than just the sum of our genes.
That being said, I generally agree that we can excel in whatever we take seriously and pay attention to.
OK, there’s quite a bit to respond to here, but I’ll at least add that Michael Jordan, generally considered the greatest basketball player ever, was cut from his high school basketball team. And I’m not even basing my “blank slate” (which it isn’t) on physical talent.
“Anonymous” …
You really should put something in your tag that indicates who you are. I’ve got my first name and the first letter of my last initial (which you butcher in your reply), plus my full name in my email required by PJM … anyway there’s this …
To quote “Anonymous” … “Bach or Palestrina come to mind. It was pretty much a workaday business and craft for them.” What is this? Palestrina in the same sentence with Bach (presumably J.S.)? Come on. It’s like saying, “Fellini or Drummond” when discussing film directors, or “Coltrane or “Whomever” when discussing jazz musicians. Whom are you trying to impress here? For the record I made the name “Drummond” up. Regardless, it’s a “workaday business” in every art. Bach succeeded because music was his entire life, aside from fathering 19 children (which really doesn’t take that long if all you’re doing is the fathering).
Apparently you knew I’d quote the very people who would disagree with your thesis. Fair enough. I’d go along with your argument if you implied that enthusiasm or drive was another name for talent. I won’t go along with it if you think it’s all in the genes. Cheers, in G major.
I dispute nothing which the author says, but let us not overlook the inborn physical advantages of some high achievers. For example, the exceptional eyesight of athletes like Ted Williams and Bill Bradley is well-documented.
Chuck Yeager is another example. His incredibly acute eyesight allowed him to become aware of an oncoming enemy aircraft one second sooner than his opponent. When the two aircraft are closing one another at 600 mph, this is a huge advantage. Practice won’t get you there.
I agree and disagree.
I think both genetics, natural body shape, etc. all have an effect on your natural ability. However, I think most people underestimate the changes they can make in themselves through sheer practice or determination. Edison, if I haven’t been mislead by what I’ve read, was not a brilliant, eccentric genius. He was, however, determined. A determined student and determined thinker…and he’s one of the leading figures of our transition into the modern world.
I still enjoyed your column, Mr. Steinberg, because people do need to sit up and take notice that even if they aren’t born perfect for a role they wish to play, they can achieve it with enough work.
You inherit many skills such as processing speed, fast twitch muscles, bone structure, tolerance of pain and drive.
I do some cycling. While you can make yourself a better climber (by losing weight), and improve your endurance (by putting on the miles), Lance Armstrong will never be a great sprinter. Sprinters and endurance athletes are born that way, based on the ratio of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles.
Interesting discussion, both the story and in the comments. (What’s with the dreadful break to six pages… is PJM that hard up for bogus page-view counts for the advertisers or something?)
Anyway, while I agree with parts of David Steinberg’s analysis, I can’t accept that there is no innate bound to achievement. Even in non-extreme cases (normal range intelligence, normally formed body, etc). there are differences in mental and physical potential. Someone mentioned fast-twitch muscle distribution; there’s a perfect example, and an explanation of why 100% of the world’s fastest sprinters are descended from folks in one small region of one continent. Sprinting rewards ability more than talent or strategy; sprints are over too soon for practice on anything but raw physicality to matter. Marathoners, on the other hand, seem to come from all over. Here, strategy and practice matter more (note that world-class marathoners are often older than their Olympic-peer sprinters). At the furthest outreaches from the mean, innate (whether inherited or random variation) talent tells, because (presumably) all the people at the very highest level have worked very hard and only the finest gradations of proficiency show. (Think of the above-mentioned difference between Beethoven and Mendelssohn — although I’ll always have a soft spot for Felix for bringing Bach back from the wilderness. The difference between those two, significant though it is, is much smaller than the chasm that looms between them and the legions of forgotten 19th-century journeyman composers).
So no, you can plug and plug and another plugger might turn out to be the Ludwig Van to your Mendelssohn. Or worse. You might master calculus, but never win the Fields Medal. But where I do join with Steinberg is that, yes, YOU can learn to master calculus, if you’re of average or better intelligence. You can learn to play an instrument, or ten instruments; you can learn to write music. You can learn to fly a plane or run a marathon, as long as you have correctable vision and two legs respectively (actually there are wheelchair guys in marathons too. And flying planes). And a very key finding is that most people reach a level that satisfies themselves, then give up.
One pilot is happy to fly recreationally and safely. Another wants to win aerobatic championships. They approach learning and practice differently, and get different results. The true expert is sometimes a monomaniac on his subject, which can be more of a burden to those around him than it is to he himself.
In my twenties I did something that everyone who knew me considered physically impossible. I just decided I would do it and did not quit. Steinberg’s description of the mechanics of practice for the perfectionist rang true in this case. But if I did not have the innate ability to do it, I would still have failed. The point is, that innate limitation was considerably further out that anyone thought it was.
Peoples bodies all built differently and hence will prefer at a better peak performance all things equal from a talent standpoint. You can teach, coach, and mold, but some people just have better instincts which can not be taught. One can try to teach these natural instincts, but then it wouldn’t be a natural instinct would it?
@42 Ronnie Schreiber.
There is no question about the genetic element in running. The Olympic 100 meters have become dominated by people of West African descent, while the 10K and longer races are typically won by people from a fairly compact area in Eritrea/Ethiopia/Kenya. The notion that people of other genetic backgrounds simply aren’t practicing correctly is absurd on its face, especially considering the economic disadvantage of these runners. People from more developed countries should be able to leverage their economic advantages to practice better.
Compare to the winners in the “World’s Strongest Man” competitions. The winners there are predominantly from Northern Europe, or North Americans whose ancestry is of that same general area.
These different types of muscle development translate to the football field. Offensive linemen, who traditionally need strength over speed, are far more likely to be of N. European extraction (although this has changed with coaches demanding more mobile blockers) while the backs and receivers, who need that sprinter speed to outrun defenders, are almost exclusively of W. African heritage.
Given the insane amounts of money to be earned in the NFL, there is plenty of incentive for all to adopt the best practice methods. If it were just a matter of practicing correctly, the sheer numbers of European-Americans would produce a majority of players at the speed positions.
Dude’s never seen me try to run, or water ski, or hit a tennis ball, or chop a pepper. After 60 years, I have learned that there are just somethings I can’t do, and somethings, mostly involving sharp instruments, that I shouldn’t do. There really are differences between individuals that are genetic and physiological. Deal with it.
Everybody has a different configuration. Nuff said.
Someone above tried to use the trope that Einstein had trouble with school as a child?
No he didn’t. He was always very good at math [and some other subjects]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Early_life_and_education
He was a late-talker, true, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means [Thomas Sowell may be able to give you a little info on that]. He was always a top student.
To reiterate what many people say above:
1. Everybody can get better with some effort, as noted in the article. Many people can find something they can do well and succeed in.
2. However, the people at the pinnacle will have put in the effort, and also have genetic advantages [whether physical or cognitive abilities]. Oh, and they’ll likely have social advantages [Bill Gates went to some pretty nifty schools] as well. And perhaps a smidgen of luck.
So, doing well enough through hard work is in the grasp of most people [though not all], but it’s silly to make people think that hard work alone will get you to the very top. Or even in spitting distance of it, depending on the goal and your particular circumstances.
Thanks for a very useful thought-provoking article. Like many arguments that all one way or all the other, it isn’t entirely convincing. Just because we haven’t found the “gene” responsible for a particular talent doesn’t mean that individual physical or mental differences are not meaningful.
However, Mr. Steinberg’s formula for successful practicing, including the mental attitude, and his description of what it takes to motivate excellent performers, are right on target. These insights are extremely useful and should be studied by every teacher and every expecting parent in the US.
I’ll never play golf like Tiger Woods. I’ll never play basketball like Michael Jordan. Lord knows I’ll never be a Mozart. Having said that, there are activities I enjoy and I believe that concentrating on small components of those activities will improve my overall performance. I also believe 90% of life is attitude. I’ll take some positive ideas from this article.
Thank you, Mr. Steinberg.
I am not “trying to impress anyone”, I am making a measured argument based of the historical record.
Palestrina and Bach are indeed quite similar to in their notions of what a composer was They did not view themselves as “artists” but craftsmen, as did the milieu in which they worked. This quite an unremarkable historical observation. (The comparison with your construct of “Coltrane and ‘whomever’” is completely invalid as far as I can see, and rather nonsensical.)
(I will point out that historically and stylistically, there are a lot of similarities too, or a least Palestrina no small influence on Bach (Lasso too). In his church music, Bach very much was informed by Palestrina, adding the innovation of “common practice” tonality to the strict contrapuntal forms of Palestrina, and adding some nice touches to Palestrina’s notion of imitation. And it creeps into Bach’s secular works as well. Have a look at some of the “ricercare” type fugues in WTC I. So to say that they do not bear mention together, is indeed quite at odds with the facts.)
I really do not get the point of this last post. What are you defending, and how does personnel attacks on me help this defense? (And quite frankly, it is none of your business how I chose to post here. This is neither here nor there as far as the discussion goes.)
As to “genes”, well I am not putting forward the notion of biological and materialist determinism in great creative achievement. This is mostly a modern construct and I imagine that it will pass in time. I am not a “physicalist” in these matters, but am open to those who are having their chance to prove their points. As I said above, how we get these great creators is quite mysterious.
But your argument about genes is circular: Would not your “enthusiasm and drive” be genetic too? If you are not arguing from a materialist POV, what POV are you arguing from?
It seems that you just do not like the word (or the notion) of talent. But it is preposterous to imagine that there in not such a think as native ability, of course there is, all the world shows this.
Talent has nothing to do with “enthusiasm” or “drive”. Now its proper flowering most certainly does, or does in almost all cases. Some people have more ability than other people. period. Given the same level of “enthusiasm and drive”, material circumstances and opportunities being equal, the odds are very great that the person with the superior talent will outdo the one with inferior talent, and far outdo him. This is hardly mysterious no matter how unfortunate it may be.
As for genes, well a great many errant assumptions get pushed out from the field of Genetics, I grant you, but it is a field that is really in its infancy. There is obviously such a thing as inherited traits. Are you saying that genes are not the mechanism for this? If not, than what is? If the colors of a person’s eye’s is determined by genes then why would not other aspects of them, such as intelligence or mathemical ability, not be determined this way?
Yes there is a great deal of sneering in the current academic community about “nurture versus nature”, but I suggest that this is mostly PC cant. The nuture people are not making a very good scientific case for it; they seem to play around with a lot of statistics, often with very dubious methodologies, but insofar has they do hold to a materialist model, they have not come up with much of a theoritical model for it, or so it seems to me. Seems mostly politics to me. Very little of it seems to have much to do with hard sceince (e.g., physics biology or genetics).
You know , it is hard to get some of the core IQ data, and harder yet to publish about it or even speak about it. Look at what happened to Summers up at Harvard. Why? it leads to some very politically incorrect conclusions.
Interesting article, but some erroneous assumptions, one being that genetics don’t matter much. Not true! Numerous physiological studies have been done on Lance Armstrong showing he has exceptional lung capacity, plus an uncanny ability to metabolize lactic acid, but those alone are not enough. A lot of other cyclists have those same things going for them. The will to prepare (practice), as stated, is crucial. One must also possess the ability to ignore those (sometimes including oneself) who say you can’t. The will to study the competition, study the game, study the equipment, study the process, think and be smart are all critical as well. Equally important is the sheer determination, or heart, to be the very best, to win, to reach down inside and find a way to push oneself to the absolute limit & beat the schmuck who didn’t practice as much, or the one who ate a chocolate chip cookie when he shouldn’t have. It takes heart, mind, soul, & body, some of which ARE genetic. Very few people have all of those in the right combination to make an exceptional champion. Joe Montana wasn’t the biggest or fastest guy in the NFL, but he usually found a way to win, even, sometimes especially, when facing overwhelming odds against it. But he did have sufficient size & strength (genetics) to play against hulking beasts almost twice his. Most everyone said the NY Giants didn’t have a chance of winning the Super Bowl, but Eli proved them wrong. He and his teammates prepared, ignored the naysayers, played smart and won.
There’s a lot of talented singers & guitar pickers out there, but very few want stardom bad enough to do what it takes to get there. Talent can be developed, even improved with practice as stated, but heart & soul must come from within.
Mozart died young, as so Rimbaud, and many gifted artists, we don’t know if they would have had an interesting and productive life as elders.
Probably if they had lived nowadays they would have got HIV, cuz of their “dissolute” (dissipated)style of life
The very statement “I am limited” and the belief that proceeds it is the limiter. I have coached athletes most my adult life and I have seen talent go to waste, and champions emerge from mediocrity. I’ve also seen the stars line up occassionally and produce an athlete so sublime that one wonders if their accomplishments will ever be eclipsed. Take Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps for example. Obviously inherent gifts to start with but also an intense drive, perserverence, endurance, ability to manage the various aspects of life,focus, etc. History has proven out that no accomplishment is absolutely the end… if a human did it, it can be improved upon. The very belief in that makes it possible. That’s not to say that any average Joe can do what Tiger or Lance has done, because so many factors come into play (so many stars have to line up). But it does mean that eventually Tiger Woods feats will be matched and surpassed, by someone who strives to do so, and who has the resources to line the stars up. One trait is never enough. Talent is not sufficient. Mozart’s genius could have easily been untapped if his motivation was not manifest. A blend of talent, determination, management, luck, practice, and serendipity goes into each champion. No person is an island. It takes a village. And one cliche after another. These cliches exist for a reason.
Great article! I am so encouraged. Starting a new project that is requiring alot of skills is daunting, especially with all the preprogrammed excuses that our society offers! This article helps counter that.
I am sure that the article scares some people because, what would they do without excuses to avoid their passion? They would have to be brave, just do it, use wisdom, learn, and embrace it, come what may.
You might like the book Excuses Begone by Wayne Dyer. It has good research and good logic.