The Stuff of Genius

So, in the last post I made, (right down there, do you see it?) I mentioned all the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis.
That is random back story to what I wanted to share here:

I was listening to one of the shorts on RadioLab and they were talking about talent versus training and basically what constitutes a genius. And the expert in the field (a nueroscientist that writes a lot of popular books. I can't come up with his name off the top of my head. I should go back and relisten to that podcast to get the info right.) was basically saying that the popular conception of what genius is is incorrect.

He said basically anyone can perform a task at a "genius level" if they practice that task for 10,000 hours. He said that to him, the definition of a genius is just someone who so loves what they do that they are constantly thinking about it, practicing it, and trying it out in different ways, and that innate abilities only accounts for so much.

Ok. I prob should go re-listen to it now to be sure I got all that right.

Anyhow, after listening to that, I thought I would set myself the goal of producing 10,000 hours of creative writing. This is a lot. >.<

So I was thinking of starting with the 10,000 hrs number and then every time I work on a piece I can subtract the approximate amount of time I've spent on it.
With the ultimate goal being to greatly, dramatically improve my craft by the end of the 10,000.

Who knows how long it will take to accomplish this goal, but I think it's possible, and not unreasonable.
I definitely need practice just writing.
And finishing pieces. That's the worst for me. I can start a million snipets, but finishing them....that's something entirely different.




Edit: The podcast is RadioLab and the title, if you're interesting in listening for yourself is "Shorts: Secrets of Success" and is from 7/26/10.

The scientists name is Malcom Gladwell, and those books I mentioned are "Outliers" and "Blink."
Robert (host): "The question was how do you explain people of really exceptional, unusual talent?...What is the nature of being exceptional?"

Ok so to be more specific, what Malcom Gladwell actually says is that there are a number of factors of success that are beyond your control
He gives a few examples about how birthdays majorly affect success in a number of fields, for example on an average professional hockey team 17 out of 25 players are born in Jan - March, and he explains why that is. To be brief, when they first start all star teams at about age 8/9, the best kids would be the oldest, since they're pretty much the same. So the coaches always pick the kids with birthdays closest to the cutoff date (first 3 mths of the year) and then give them extra training. This continues until with all the extra training and attention after a few years, those chosen kids really are the best. This is called the Matthew effect from the biblical quote "To he who has much, more will be given".

Robert: "So, there is such a thing as getting an accidental boost,...but there's something even bigger and more important than good luck..."
The example for this is Bill Gates the "so-called genius behind Microsoft". Why so-called? (I'm paraphrasing Gladwell here ~>)When he was in 8th grade, for reasons no one can now remember, a parent bought the kids in the classroom he was in a computer that, instead of using cards (a very time consuming process that didn't allow real time programming feedback) could actually do this real time programming. So right away in 8th grade, Bill Gates has this advantage, but then at 15 he seeks out more programming time and finds out there's computers at the UW that were free to use from 2 - 6 am on weeknights. So what he does is every night, he sneaks out of his bedroom and goes and does this programming from 2-6 am every night, comes back, goes back to bed, and goes to school where he programs some more.

Gladwell: "So he's clearly a brilliant guy, and no one's taking that away from him, but he has this other thing, which, by the way, what's really remarkable about that story to me is: that when he does that, he's 15. So, he's a teenage boy and so, all of us here, know about teenage boys, right? Well, what does a teenage boy want to do?...Well, what is one of the things a teenage boy wants to do? Sleep!! Right? Here's a teenage boy who's willing to surrender his sleep, 5 nights a week, to program from 2 - 6 in the morning.
That! is what's special about Bill Gates."

Robert: "And it accumulates, right? It's 3, no, 4 hours a day, then 5 hours a day, and when he can make it, 6 hours a day and for years and years and years, now. Until he clocks in a lot of hours.....And Mozart I guess played the piano for lots of hours, and Tiger Woods just used to play golf for-"

Gladwell "-These people are all examples of what's called the 10,000 hour rule.Which is this notion that, a brilliant guy named Erickson, a psychologist, has kind of formulated this principle that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex discipline, it seems, almost without exception, that in order to be good, you must practice at least 10,000 hours."

Robert: "What sort of surprises me is that you put the Beatles on this list. Why are the Beatles-"

Gladwell: "-Because they go to Hamburg, before they come to America, as teenagers they go to Hamburg and they play, uh, they're the house band for this strip club and they play eight hour sets, seven days a week, for months at a stretch.
I mean it's incredible, you know, parenthetically one can not imagine a more dismal experience than playing, first of all, than playing in a strip club, but secondly playing in a strip club in Hamburg, and thirdly, playing in a strip club in Hamburg, in the fifties. I mean, can you imagine?"

Robert (paraphrasing): Yeah but there were other bands who didn't do that that you know, and bands that did do that who you don't know.

Gladwell (he jumbles the line initially): "It's a necessary but not a sufficient" (aka to be good you must have the 10,000 hrs, but it's not always enough to just have the 10,000 hrs.)

Robert: ".......so you have this talent + the persistence versus this Matthew effect, with the Matthew effect you start out with these little accidental differences and then coaches and situations magnify them so they get bigger and bigger, but with persistence, what seems to be happening here is that the accidental differences that may have given you advantages get narrowed when you add the practice, add the practice, add the practice.
Mozart at 13? Eh, you know, copying other people's work...practice, practice, practice, practice, Mozart at 17, better, Mozart 23/24, oh my god.So, Lennon and McCartney, eh, at 15/16/17 - but, when they make their jumps, they make leaps of a genius nature. Leaps that are not available to other people.
Issac Newton, he goes home for vacation, thinks about, 'oh, how am I gonna measure this?' - He invents calculus!
So, you are being accused of being a genius denier. Are you a genius denier or are you simply a genius dis-liker?"

Gladwell: "So, well, uh, there's really this thing called 'talent.' And (lots of stuttering) it's the magic dust, that gets sprinkled onto persistence, it turns a lot of hard work into something great, and the question is, how large a role does it play, and what does it consist of?"
(paraphrasing) I wrote this piece for the New Yorker, about reading a biography on Wayne Gretzky...greatest hockey player in the world...and he's 2 years old and watching hockey on TV and he cries every time the game ended.
"This is a glimpse into his future greatness, because, here he was at 2, and he loved this thing so, I mean he couldn't even play hockey, come on, he's two, he could barely walk, but he already has understood that he loves this thing so much, that, for it to end, is an unconscionable burden. It's like the world is ending and he's desconsolate.
So, what is Wayne Gretzky's talent? Well, part of it is his extrodinary vision, his coordination, his whatever, but, a lot of it is this guy loves this game so much, that he would do nothing but do it and think about it and engage it and do all those things. Now, is this magic dust called 'talent', is that all it is? Maybe. I don't think that's denying or hating genius though. I think that that definition of genius is far more appealing to me, than the notion that it's this, it's simply some sky-high IQ or -"

Robert: "This is the genius that just won't quit. It won't quit you.....It's the love of hockey....that will not speak its name."

Gladwell: "Why are people so hostile to the notion that what genius is, is an extraordinary love for a particular thing? We hear the ability definition of genius - the rare ability definition, and we think 'oh that's so plausible, totally, that's what it is.' But then we hear the extraordinary love definition of genius and we say 'He's a genius denier. Why are we so hostile to the notion that what separates the genius from the rest of us is that the genius loves what he or she does more than we do, but we have no problem at all that what separates a genius is that they have some some-"

(Robert cuts him off. But you've got the point, now right? )

Podcast Special

So, I have a long commute to and from work every day (about 40 mins there and 30 back, give or take 10 mins for traffic conditions) and I almost never listen to music, actually. But instead I listen to podcasts.
Here's a list of the Podcasts I lurve to listen to:

This American Life (from NPR) - weekly hour long shows on completely random but always fascinating topics. It's so good I can't even bring myself to delete the episodes from my iTunes after listening to them.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! (also NPR) - "The NPR news quiz game show" with a humorous slant. This show has yet to fail in the make-me-laugh-out-loud category. It's also a weekly hour long show. Informative and hilarious. My favorite game is where the "contestants" (comedians and newspeople like Mo Rocca) make up 3 implausible news stories (one of which is actually true) and a regular person caller has to guess which is the real news story.

RadioLab (also airs on NPR) - This is a really awesome science based show that picks a question or topic, interviews top scientists of the field on that topic, and presents that information in a un-dumbed-down but still wholly understandable way. Basically every episode gives you a deep "hunh" or "no way" or "brain melt" moment where everything you thought you knew about how the world and people work.....isn't exactly right.

Stuff You Should Know (from Howstuffworks.com which is owned by Discovery) - this podcast is kinda the halfway point between "This American Life" and "RadioLab" in that it looks at a seemingly random array of topics that are always totally fascinating and it applies science to break things down and explain it to you. Also, they are pretty funny. This is the podcast that got me addicted to podcasts.

Stuff Mom Never Told You (also Howstuffworks) - deals with issues pertaining primarily to young women and/or feminists and such. The "women's issues" podcast and deals with everything from "are men better at video games than women" to  economic issue to sex & dating topics of interest. I'd say this is the first "be in the mood" podcast on the list. Whereas the ones above I will listen to anytime in any mood and get carried away by them, this one and the ones below are more every now and then podcasts, not back to back for hours podcasts.

Stuff You Missed in History Class (also Howstuffworks) - This is just what the title implies, a podcast on various history topics, preferably ones that are under-covered in regular history courses. They do do popular topics as well, and, unless you're already an expert in the subject, they'll give you more and new interesting info. Sometimes the podcast can be a little dry, but generally, it's very interesting and they often have really fun topics. They just did one on Jewish Pirates and another on Women Pirates and they've got lots of series on Monarchs that are really interesting.

A Way With Words (NPR again) - This is definitely not a podcast for all or for continuous listening, but my pedantic self really enjoys it. :) It goes into the etymology of words and phrases, mostly they have callers that say "my grandma used to say such and such and where did that come from" or "my wife and I argue of the correct meaning/pronounciation of X". I love that kind of stuff.

WireTap (with Jonathan Goldstein) (from CBC Radio...aka Canadian NPR) - This is such a funny clever unique show. It's about Jonathan and the quirky conversations he has with his crazy friends, their misadventures, and sometimes really interesting short fiction stories. It's one Danny and I were addicted to listening to on the actual radio, when I was still in WA. 
This one is only at the bottom of the list because as far as I can tell all the podcasts are reruns that I've heard before. I haven't gone through them all yet, though.


I also have a bunch of language podcasts, but I've yet to get myself to listen to them. Basically, I downloaded a ton of them a couple years ago and haven't returned to them since. I've been meaning to get around to those, since I think it'd help if I actually want to get a handle on French/Japanese. But there are literally HUNDREDS of episodes of the above podcasts that are so......more fascinating.

I'm almost up to date with all of them, though, from about a year of listening in the car and around the house and working out.