Why there is no such thing as natural talent ...
WHY are some people so astonishingly good at what they do? In most fields of human endeavour, from music to sports, there are a few individuals who are dazzlingly better than the rest of us.
The Mozarts and the Messis force lesser mortals to wonder how they do what they do. Is it because of their innate abilities? Or is it mostly because they have put in thousands and thousands of hours of carefully targeted practice?
Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson, a professor at Florida State University, thinks it’s the latter. Together with science writer Robert Pool, he’s written this book to prove that to the rest of us. His belief is that it’s a particular type of training — what he calls ‘deliberate practice’ — rather than inborn genius, which is crucial.
His insights originally date from experiments he conducted 30 years ago with an ordinary undergraduate named Steve Faloon. Like most people, Steve could repeat seven or eight-digit numbers after they were read out to him. That’s not much more than the length of an average phone number. And yet, after 200 sessions with Ericsson and his training methods, Steve could consistently remember and immediately regurgitate 82-digit numbers. This seemed remarkable at the time, but the bar for similar memory feats has now been set much higher.
At the 2015 Taiwan Open Adult Memory Competition (who knew such events existed?), Mongolian Tsogbadrakh Saikhanbayar was able to recall a 432-digit number. Targeted practice, it turns out, can actually change the structure of the brain. Work with London cabbies has demonstrated what many of us have long suspected. Their brains aren’t quite like those of other people.
All the training required for The Knowledge increases the size of parts of the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure in the brain involved in the development of memories.
Other experiments with professional string players have proved that the region of the brain controlling the left hand is often significantly larger in them than it is in non-musicians.
The exceptional control they need to develop as their fingers move up and down the necks of their instruments has altered their grey matter.
Like all too many academic psychologists, Ericsson rarely shies away from stating the blindingly obvious. ‘Purposeful practice is, as the term implies, much more purposeful than... naive practice,’ he solemnly states. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?
As he continues to extol the benefits of ‘deliberate practice’ and dispense his often inarguable advice (‘If you find that something works, keep doing it,’ he suggests. ‘If it doesn’t work, stop.’), it’s difficult not to get a bit exasperated with him.
However, his ultimate message is an uplifting, optimistic one and should be applauded. The best in any given field don’t owe their achievements to inborn genius.
They have put in the effort and taken advantage of the adaptability of the human brain and body. There are no ‘special ones’ out there. We all have the potential for greatness.