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While some artists and musicians might resist the idea that innate talent may be a myth, the growing evidence in scientific research is pointing in this direction. A few weeks ago in “Innate Talent?” I featured author David Shenk.
He flatly states that in genetic science, innate talent does not exist.
In a fascinating interview at MarketPlace, author and table tennis champion Matthew Syed echoes this sentiment. He asserts that diligent practice and solid mentoring determine higher standards of excellence. Expert training, according to Syed, is a greater determiner than speed, strength, intelligence or talent.
Current genetics and neuroscience research back this up, he claims. The success in his own career came from a rich combination of advantages.
From a Publisher’s Weekly excerpt at Amazon.com:
[Matthew] Syed, sportswriter and columnist for the London Times, takes a hard look at performance psychology, heavily influenced by his own ego-damaging but fruitful epiphany. At the age of 24, Syed became the #1 British table tennis player, an achievement he initially attributed to his superior speed and agility.
But in retrospect, he realizes that a combination of advantages—a mentor, good facilities nearby, and lots of time to hone his skills—set him up perfectly to become a star performer.
He admits his argument owes a debt to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” but he aims to move one step beyond it, drawing on cognitive neuroscience research to explain how the body and mind are transformed by specialized practice.
In the MarketPlace interview Syed’s commentary aligns with David Shenk’s analysis, that in genetics research –
SYED: I suspect that no matter how long we probe into the DNA of these master performers we won’t find anything implicated in that sequencing. What we will find is extraordinary upbringings.
Vigeland: If excellence is all about practice, and the number of hours you’re putting in, is it possible to say how many hours it’s going to take to become the best of the best whether you’re a musician, or an athlete, or even a CEO?
SYED: The earliest, really, paradigm experiment that took place in this field was by Herbert Simon and William Chase, two academics who looked at chess players. And they discovered that nobody had reached grandmaster quicker than 10 years. And Malcolm Gladwell in his wonderful book “Outliers,” he says look – 10,000 hours is the magic number in order to get to the top. However, it’s not 10,000 hours of any kind of practice. If you don’t approach it with a voracious appetite, if you don’t clock up what Anders Ericsson, a very famous psychologist from Florida, calls deliberate practice, it’s not going to get you anywhere.
Vigeland: I think one of the practical applications here, you say the talent myth is dis-empowering because it causes individuals to give up if they don’t make early progress. And your answer to that is again, look, don’t worry about it, just keep practicing.
The interview continues with a very interesting experiment.
SYED: Yeah, in fact a brilliant psychologist, Carol Dweck from Stanford, has done some terrific research in this area.
She took 400 fifth graders and gave them some simple puzzles. And afterwards half of them were praised for intelligence, for talent — you must be really smart at this. The other half were praised for effort. Gosh, you must have worked really hard.
Then she gave them some more difficult tasks to complete.
Those who were praised for talent, for intelligence, when they come across these really difficult challenges and started struggling, they thought, oh my goodness, I don’t want to lose that smart label. And it actually zapped their ability to persevere on the task. Those who were praised for effort, when they came across this really difficult problem they thought great, I can demonstrate now how hardworking I am. And they really ratcheted up their enthusiasm, kept going.
So what Dweck argues very convincingly is that we must praise young people in any educational scenario for their effort and not for their talent, and try to embed what she calls the growth mindset.
Vigeland: So this is really a message to parents everywhere to stop calling your kid a genius and instead say, hey, good job for studying.
Spirituality
This dialogue presents an interesting paradox; while “talent myth” might be a common term used in this field of research, in the field of music it is a different thing.
To clarify – I would point out that of course people can be born with certain attributes that are advantageous in the right circumstance. In music however, the shining aura of innate talent is not so tangible.
Here are some tough questions to ask:
- Is this approach to training too existential and cold for us to accept?
- Is this discrepancy related to religiosity, that talent is something immeasurable like the spiritual soul?
- Is there some kind of middle ground?
- Does practice micromanagement kill the spirit of the music?
There is I think one universal point worth remembering.
Diligent, focused practice is a fast path towards achieving excellence. Intense concentration on the process – instead of on the outcome – can produce better results.
Additional reading:
- Listen to or read the entire Marketplace interview here.
- The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
(FREE 44-page PDF). Highly recommended.
- Matthew Syed’s book, Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
- A related approach to explore is determining what is a goal and what is a dream. I touched on this a while back in “Dream Big, Think Small.”
