Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Adult geniuses and 10,000 hours rule
Adult geniuses and 10,000 hours rule
We’ve an exclusive club of poets on the internet. Poets were hand-picked from different poetry forums to become members of ‘the pub’. Members are mostly from US, Europe, Asia, and Africa in that order. Actually we’ve only two Asians and one African-African. Although ‘the pub’ was created by an American poet we call Ming, one of the founding members is Victor Claude.
Victor is sixty years plus and a Nam Vet (American soldier who fought in the Vietnam war). Besides the wisdom that comes naturally with old age, Victor has other gifts such as the ability to tactically end hot debates on the pub; like debates between theists and the majority of the atheists, war, Gaza, and so forth.
But by far the most extraordinary of Victor’s gift is his ability to write poetry. His poems are clear, meaningful and easy to read. From cinquains to acrostics, Victor is a master of them all. And members are grateful to him for his contributions to the forum. Currently, he’s the poet of the month for his excellent limerick, “Seven Fish in a Bog.”
I’m telling you Victor’s story in an attempt to answer readers’ questions that trailed the piece I wrote on how geniuses are developed. Most of them argued that since my focus in that article were children, is there a way adults, starting from now, can attain genius status? Below is one of such letters:
“Dear Prof. I couldn't help writing to you about the above titled (Genius is 100% preparation) article in Weekly Trust of Saturday Feb 28 2009. I was impressed with the analysis. But my main question is: how does one start being a genius when one is already an adult?
“I am an adult, married with three children and struggling to balance a job (in a Bank), married life, and still pursue a PhD. Could you kindly come to my rescue with some points on how to be a genius or half genius? All I want is, to be good in my job, study area, learn and master two or even three languages (including my mother tongue), be proficient in computer usage, apart from the banking rudiments, be able to write good research papers or articles and be generally intelligent or knowledgeable.
Kindly come to my rescue.”
To answer the question of how an adult can get extraordinarily good (what we call genius) at what he does, let’s study what Victor Claude says about himself:
“I began to write poetry 35 years ago as a means to remain sane. It is still therapeutic, but it has become much more than that. I have always been fascinated with words and their ability to communicate meaning. I write daily, even if what is produced is not what I would call excellent. Excellence only comes through practice in any endeavour, writing included. I am still practicing--Still practicing.”
There’s almost a consensus by members of the pub of Victor’s genius, members look forward to his poems, he writes with so much clarity and simplicity and he posts more poems than any single member. How did Victor get so good? Victor jumps off the page amongst members of the pub (some of who are prodigies, professors, writers of many books on poetry, and teachers of poetry) because he does one thing: he writes poems everyday for 35 years. He practices.
But it doesn’t help you much to learn that you can attain genius by practicing, does it? But what if we reduce the ‘practice’ to science so that you can follow the steps and become genius? Or better still, what if there’s a formula or a minimum level of practice you need to achieve to become a world-class expert in anything?
Here’s the simple minimum prerequisite for becoming a genius: practice what you do for 10,000 hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin writes:
“Study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needed to know to achieve true mastery.”
If we apply this rule to Victor’s case, you can see he’s attained more than 10,000 hours. Let’s say he dedicates one hour per day to think, write, clean, and revise his poems, that’ll total more than 12,000 hours of poetry writing.
But don’t panic you don’t need 35 years to clock 10,000 hours. If you practice nine hours everyday, it’ll take you only three years; but if you need to achieve the expertise in five years, you need to practice for five and a half hours everyday. Some of my friends doing research in the life sciences told me they’ve embarked upon five-year mission. I wish them good luck.
We’ve an exclusive club of poets on the internet. Poets were hand-picked from different poetry forums to become members of ‘the pub’. Members are mostly from US, Europe, Asia, and Africa in that order. Actually we’ve only two Asians and one African-African. Although ‘the pub’ was created by an American poet we call Ming, one of the founding members is Victor Claude.
Victor is sixty years plus and a Nam Vet (American soldier who fought in the Vietnam war). Besides the wisdom that comes naturally with old age, Victor has other gifts such as the ability to tactically end hot debates on the pub; like debates between theists and the majority of the atheists, war, Gaza, and so forth.
But by far the most extraordinary of Victor’s gift is his ability to write poetry. His poems are clear, meaningful and easy to read. From cinquains to acrostics, Victor is a master of them all. And members are grateful to him for his contributions to the forum. Currently, he’s the poet of the month for his excellent limerick, “Seven Fish in a Bog.”
I’m telling you Victor’s story in an attempt to answer readers’ questions that trailed the piece I wrote on how geniuses are developed. Most of them argued that since my focus in that article were children, is there a way adults, starting from now, can attain genius status? Below is one of such letters:
“Dear Prof. I couldn't help writing to you about the above titled (Genius is 100% preparation) article in Weekly Trust of Saturday Feb 28 2009. I was impressed with the analysis. But my main question is: how does one start being a genius when one is already an adult?
“I am an adult, married with three children and struggling to balance a job (in a Bank), married life, and still pursue a PhD. Could you kindly come to my rescue with some points on how to be a genius or half genius? All I want is, to be good in my job, study area, learn and master two or even three languages (including my mother tongue), be proficient in computer usage, apart from the banking rudiments, be able to write good research papers or articles and be generally intelligent or knowledgeable.
Kindly come to my rescue.”
To answer the question of how an adult can get extraordinarily good (what we call genius) at what he does, let’s study what Victor Claude says about himself:
“I began to write poetry 35 years ago as a means to remain sane. It is still therapeutic, but it has become much more than that. I have always been fascinated with words and their ability to communicate meaning. I write daily, even if what is produced is not what I would call excellent. Excellence only comes through practice in any endeavour, writing included. I am still practicing--Still practicing.”
There’s almost a consensus by members of the pub of Victor’s genius, members look forward to his poems, he writes with so much clarity and simplicity and he posts more poems than any single member. How did Victor get so good? Victor jumps off the page amongst members of the pub (some of who are prodigies, professors, writers of many books on poetry, and teachers of poetry) because he does one thing: he writes poems everyday for 35 years. He practices.
But it doesn’t help you much to learn that you can attain genius by practicing, does it? But what if we reduce the ‘practice’ to science so that you can follow the steps and become genius? Or better still, what if there’s a formula or a minimum level of practice you need to achieve to become a world-class expert in anything?
Here’s the simple minimum prerequisite for becoming a genius: practice what you do for 10,000 hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin writes:
“Study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needed to know to achieve true mastery.”
If we apply this rule to Victor’s case, you can see he’s attained more than 10,000 hours. Let’s say he dedicates one hour per day to think, write, clean, and revise his poems, that’ll total more than 12,000 hours of poetry writing.
But don’t panic you don’t need 35 years to clock 10,000 hours. If you practice nine hours everyday, it’ll take you only three years; but if you need to achieve the expertise in five years, you need to practice for five and a half hours everyday. Some of my friends doing research in the life sciences told me they’ve embarked upon five-year mission. I wish them good luck.
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