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For many years I held firmly to the belief that some people among us are extraordinarily gifted. They possess an extra serving or two of talent beyond what most people have.
My belief was that people were simply born this way. Über-people exist – genetically wired at birth to be great geniuses.
According to David Shenk, the author of The Genius in All Of Us, that notion is basically a myth that does not hold up to known standards in genetic science.
Born to be small. Born to be smart. Born to play music. Born to play basketball. It’s a seductive assumption, one that we’ve all made. But when one looks behind the genetic curtain, it most often turns out not to be true.
In the past decade tremendous strides have been made in genetic science and based on his research, the author asserts that environment plays a key role in genius.
W.A. Mozart, while extraordinary, was not born in a bubble. His father was a master teacher and a superb mentor who created and perfected an effective teaching system. A large part of Wolfgang’s future success, Shenk notes in the audio for this story, was due to the great teaching of his father.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan’s college coach would intentionally put Jordan on teams with weaker abilities so that Jordan would have to work harder, pushing him to the point of failure – where some real discovery begins.
Deliberate practice
A shared element between geniuses is a concept Shenk calls deliberate practice.
Great musicians, athletes, thinkers and artists are all passionately devoted to practicing. In this interview, Shenk labels this high level of intensity as practicing with rage.
The key concept however that really caught my attention was that geniuses utilize deliberate practice, pushing themselves to fail. Rather than getting upset at the (temporary) limitation, they learn how to improve and hone their skills by analyzing their failures and developing strategies to overcome them.
Of course, if you have been reading posts here at Horn Matters and at many other horn blogs, this is nothing particularly new.
What is new (to me at least) is that we now have a very good reason to practice with intense, concentrated passion – this is a strong factor in how geniuses gain their advanced skills.
We may not all make it to genius-land, but won’t it be fun to try?
