Malcolm Gladwell in this lecture looks at two different kinds of genius.
The two he chooses are the decipherer of an ancient text and the man who sold Fermat's last theorem. The one he sees as a genius, the other he sees as a guy who is really smart, but not a genius, but also really stuborn.
Gladwell believes we need to focus more on creating smart people who are stubborn, and less on individual genius.
The world is becoming more collaborative. We don't need to solve problems by ourselves, we can solve them together. But the skill that is needed is the ability to focus on an idea. He calls it stubborness.
He talks about true mastery requiring `10,000 hours'. To truly understand something and for the lightbulb to go off... it requires brute force of passion and commitment.
This is counter to the way we have been taught what genius is. We are taught that it is a luck of the draw, wow I wish I was that clever kind of thing.
There are very few geniuses who have spent less than 10,000 hours plying and obsessing on their trade. Lance Armstrong, Rodger Federer, Tiger Woods, Albert Eistein etc. weren't just lucky... they worked harder than anyone else. Talent plays a part, but passion, focus and stubborness make the difference.
Interesting ideas. Watch it.
5 comments:
"they worked harder than anyone else"
I kinda agree with this in general, but I disagree with this quote. I think there's an important difference between being great because you worked really really hard at something and being the best because you worked harder than anybody else.
There are plenty of players on the tour who I'd guess have worked harder than Federer.
ok, maybe Rodger didn't work the hardest but by all accounts he works pretty hard.
Lance and Tiger are well know for going well beyond what others are doing.
.... did I say Roger doesn't work hard?
My point is that we don't actually learn anything about relative work ethics of these people at the top simply by noting that they work very hard. it'd be astonishing if they didn't. We don't read books or articles about the other people cos they're not as good.
I can imagine some cyclists being annoyed by this talk cos all they do is train.
My advice to most pros wouldn't be to train harder.
Yes Stu, but you also don't meet many people at the top who have a bad work ethic.
I am not necessarily agreeing with Gladwell in full (did you watch the clip?) but I do prefer the Tiger Woods nice guy, good work ethic as an example to the John Daly fat bastard who sometimes works magic example.
Gladwell's example is more about the value of being passionate about something, of really fighting with it, and of the collaboration between lots of smart people to solve problems rather than the reliance on a couple of geniuses.
"they worked harder than anyone else"
is what I was responding to.
The fact that everyone at the top works really hard is exactly the reason why hard work doesn't explain the dominance of Federer. Hard work is a given.
note that I agreed. I agree that persistence was the major ingredient in Andrew Wiles solving Fermats last theorem.
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