Talent? Who needs talent? (A transcript)

[mbarker]

Howard Tayler "Talent? Who needs talent?"

From http://www.youtube.com/user/uvulib?hl=en (and commentary here http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/09/talent-focused-practice-and-artistic-success/)

This is a combination of materials from the slides and from Howard's talk. My summary of the key points:

1. Compliments about talent or innate ability usually are insults, ignoring the time and work that has gone into the "natural" effort.
2. Saying "you must be smart" makes people give up. Saying "you must have worked hard" encourages people to do more.
3. If you believe you are in control of your success, you are more likely to succeed.
4. A million words, 10 years practice -- This is how experts become experts.
5. Practice is not the same as work. Work focuses on satisficing, "good enough" -- doing what you know you can do well. Practice focuses on optimizing, "stretch goals" -- failing, and learning from your failures how to do new things.
6. Learning curves and plateaus mean that when we try something new, we learn very quickly. But when we are good at something, we are likely to be stagnating -- and need to start over again.
7. Passion and perseverance will let you practice and keep going until your work gets those insulting compliments, "You have a real talent for this" or "I wish I had your gift for this."

Part 1

[Introduction and bio skipped -- but if you watch the video, you'll recognize Howard. He's the one right in the middle, with the dark pants, dark shirt, and much brighter head. And a nice smile, too.]

I am an e-famous i-celebrity.

Left-handed compliments

• Did you get a haircut? You look thinner.
• Hey, you clean up pretty nice.
• Gorgeous photos. You must have a nice camera.
• Did you draw that? You are so talented!

So-called "compliments" that misplace the credit are actually insults.

You must have really expensive paint. The model is 1.5 inches tall, eyes are less than 1 mm across -- does the quality of the paint job really depends on the paint?

Telling me I must be using really expensive paint is like telling a famous author she must be using a really fancy typewriter.

If it's not paint, what is it?

• innate talent
• aesthetic eye
• really good brushes
• the sculpture
• 18 years of painting miniatures, critically reviewing work, and then trying to get better at it?

Be careful what you wish for

• I don't draw this way because of talent. I draw this way because of eight years of practice.
• If you really wish you could draw like this, the Wish-O-Matic genie is going to force you to draw something every day for years.

Discouraged yet?

• You all want to graduate and go on to do great things.
• I've just told you that it's going to take longer than you thought it was.
• In reality, it's probably going to take even longer than that.

Simple Motivation

400 students given a IQ test. Randomly divided into two groups. One group is told "you must be smart at this." The other group was told "you must have worked hard this."

Asked to choose a second test and offered a "more challenging" (harder) or "easy" (similar) test, what happened?
The majority of the "smart" group chose the easy test. 90% of the "hard work" group chose the harder test!

Part 2

Given a third test that was much harder -- two grade levels beyond their level -- what happened?
The "smart" group gave up. The "hard work" group tried it, then went back and studied afterwards. Said it was their favorite test!

Finally, given a fourth test, the same as the first -- what happened?
The "smart" group did 20% worse than on the original test. The "hard work" group did 30% better.

When my wife and I read this article... we changed the way we parent.

What did we just learn?

• First, the obvious: praise your children for their efforts, not their abilities.
• Believing that a task requires innate ability or talent provokes failure.
• Believing that the same task requires hard work provokes success.
• The difference? You can control how hard you work, but you cannot control how talented you are.
• If you believe you are in control of whether you succeed or fail, you are more likely to succeed.

How many of you feel talented? Anybody feel talented? Oh, come on, you gotta be good at something.
All right. How many of you feel like... or have had a situation where you've done something and somebody has said, "Oh, you really don't have much talent at this." Any of you ever done that, been there. Ow, that sucks. That is so awful.

Now I'm not making the motivational speaker rounds telling people if you believe it, you can do it, because that's a lie. What I'm telling you is, statistically speaking, if you believe that hard work makes a difference, you are more likely to succeed than if you believe you just have to be talented. You see the difference between the two? There's the reality over here backed up by statistics -- because we all know that statistics never lie -- and then there's the motivational speaker angle.

Back to the "Hard Work" Thing

• "You've got to write a million words, perhaps more before you get down your first true word." Henry Miller
• "Your first million words are for practice. They don't count." David Gerrold
• "If you get paid for some of your first million words, go ahead and start practicing cashing the checks." Unknown Writers of the Future guest, quoted by Bob Defendi

Isn't Innate Ability Important?

• Of course it is.
• Can you identify it?
• Can identifying it help us predict exemplary career performance?

World Cup Soccer -- August versus September. Slight statistical difference. Coaches select for that, giving a training advantage. The effect is noticeable, even though the small initial size difference has vanished.

Is that interesting? Is it tragic?

If there is an innate ability factor to be found, it is statistically insignificant compared to training.

Part 3

"... the search for stable heritable characteristics that could predict or at least account for the superior performance of eminent individuals has been surprisingly unsuccessful." Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer

Translation?

"Science is having a hard time finding this 'talent' thing." Howard Tayler

"The belief that the striking differences between expert performers and less accomplished performers reflect innate abilities (talent) is so strong that the failure to identify the specific talents necessary for expert performance in a given domain is viewed, at most, as a temporary problem until the relevant talents are discovered. The conviction in the importance of talent appears to be based on the insufficiencies of alternative hypotheses to explain the exceptional nature of expert performance." Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer

Okay, Translate That!

• Everybody (including scientists) keeps believing talent is critical for superior performance despite the fact that Science can't identify talent.
• We are doing this because of the lack of a better explanation.

A Better Explanation

• Practice and experience lead to maximal performance.
• Some kinds of practice are better than others.
• Work ("experience") is NOT the same as practice.
• Deliberate, focused practice is better than work.

In short, Practice Makes Perfect.

How many people have heard practice makes perfect at a time in your life when you did not want to practice anymore? I hate to tell you, but Mom was right. And not only was she right, your piano teacher was right, your violin teacher, your soccer coach was right. They were all telling you that practice makes perfect. Unfortunately, they were also telling you that you were gifted -- or that you weren't -- so you are getting a mixed message.

Various examples -- 10 years seems common.

Spending That Decade: Work Versus Practice

o Work is reward-based
-- When working, you avoid doing what you're worst at.
-- "Good enough" gets the reward.
o Practice is goal-based.
-- Focuses on weaknesses.
-- Turns weaknesses into strengths.
-- Rewards are greatly delayed.

You avoid doing what you're worst at. Oh, am I ever guilty of this. When was the last time you saw a really, really lavishly detailed background scene in Schlock Mercenaries? Sometimes, it's on Sundays -- usually I find a way to shortcut that. You compare my artwork to say Phil Folio's artwork, when he does a lavish background, you stare at that picture for 20 minutes. You need to get his stuff in print and look at... there's all these little... I don't do that, that's hard. I haven't learned to do that yet, so it remains hard, so I don't do it.

"Good enough" gets the reward. Which part of the words "Schlock" and "Mercenaries" imply that I'm gonna spend a lot of time going the extra mile to get paid.

Rewards are greatly delayed. You've seen this. I'm sure you have. You practice at something, you realize "I'm getting a little bit better," but nobody paid me. And then 10 years down the line, when you've got a career in that field, you look back and say, "Boy, all that practice doing -- I'm pulling something off the top of my head -- doing differential equations on the back of a napkin, that really paid off."

The rewards are delayed, and sometimes you look at what you've been studying or whatever for years and you look back and you say, "Boy, that just never paid off." So why practice?

Ascent, Arrival, and Ascent
[graphic showing initial slow rise straight line, fast curve to a plateau, and a second smaller curve to a slightly higher plateau. Labels indicate central fast curve is practice, while the slower curve is full-time involvement.]

I promised you full-time position holders that I had bad news, and here it is.

You start discovering you have an interest in, we will say, coding for computer thingies -- how's that for non-technical -- and then you go to school for it and study computer science and boom -- learning curve! -- and then you get your first job. And they say, "Look, kid, I know you know how to program in C#, but now we're looking at C bleeding edge sharp." Or whatever this new language is. And there's another little learning curve, and then you end up out here on this other plateau. Granted, you're really good at what you do, but you're probably not world-class good at what you do. And in fact, even if you are world-class good at what you do, you may still end up there.

The Plateau Effect

• You've worked with this for years, and realize you're not really getting any better at it.
• You've practiced this for a long time now, and it's just not improving.
• You feel like you're stagnating.

Any of you feeling that? Noticing that? Got any of that going on? I do. Boy, do I ever.

Reasons for the Plateau

• It happens to everybody and it does not mean you aren't talented. See that graph back there? Don't panic.
• Work is not the same as practice. You've been dodging the hard bits.
• Practice won't help if you're not practicing the right things in the right way.
• At least you've noticed the stagnation. Time to do something about it.

The first step to solving a problem is admitting you've got a problem.

I'm looking at my background art, you're listening to this slide presentation, and you're saying, "Okay, you've admitted that you have a problem. Are you going to solve it?"

The second step to solving a problem is deciding if you're going to solve the problem, and I haven't decided that.

Part 4

How do you move off the plateau? How do you break this? Well, you break this practicing right.

Moving off the Plateau

• Tackle something really hard.
• Fail often. Learn from it.
• Talk to an expert, then listen.
• Get advice on how to practice more effectively.
• Don't be afraid to "reinvent your game."

Tackle something really hard. For me, that would mean sitting down and instead of trying to draw a caricature, trying to pencil a portrait of someone. I've never done that before. I know, you're saying, "Wait, you've got a career as a cartoonist. You've got a career in the visual arts. And you've never tried to pencil someone's portrait?" It's true. I did what I got paid for, and then I kept doing that, and I stopped getting any better after about 2007. So I'm plateaued. I may have gotten a little better.

Fail often. That sounds like fun. Fail often, and then learn from it.

Talk to an expert. Talk to someone in your field who is better at this than you are. Show them your work and don't say, "Mister, do I have a chance in this business?" Say, "Mister, what's wrong with what I've done, and how do I fix it?"

I've had many a conversation -- and I'm going to name drop again -- with Phil Folio, and I love his artwork, and he talked to me at one point, and he said, "You know, when you draw people with clothing, they're pretty much just wearing spandex underwear." Well, yeah, that's because drawing wrinkles is hard. And Phil said, "All right, so get yourself a fashion design book and learn how to draw some bleeping wrinkles." I think those were his exact words. As for what I did, I went out and got a fashion design book, looked at it, and I swear... in three pages of flipping through those sketches, I realized this fashion design book, this fashion illustration book, these people are using a shorthand very similar to the cartooning shorthand. But they're using different squiggles than I do. So... man... so that's how you draw the crotch of pants! I just sit crotch on the Internet. And I looked at that, and I thought, wow. So I started drawing things differently, and I gave Captain Tagon a new uniform. Why did I give him a new uniform? So that I could sneak my practice into my work, still get paid, and decide whether or not I liked it. Turns out I like it. The whole cast is going to be getting uniforms at some time in the future. You can thank Phil.

Don't be afraid to reinvent your game. Somebody was telling me the other day that Tiger Woods -- best golfer in the world? Maybe. Tiger Woods. Really good golfer, probably one of the 10 best in the world, sat down and said, "You know, I'm just not getting any better." And so he's reinventing his game. Going back to basics, learning how to hold the club again, learning how to swing again. Tiger Woods? Come on, just go out there and get paid. He doesn't want to get paid; he wants to be the best. And that's really the difference between the people who end up at the top of that plateau and the people who keep ascending throughout their careers. It has nothing to do -- or statistically very little to do -- with innate ability. And everything to do with finding the right ways to practice what it is you want to be good at.

Advice for Creative Folk

• Don't bother looking for something you think you're good at. It'll just make you lazy.
• Pick something you have a passion for. Do what you always wanted to do. Work, practice, and perform with that passion.
• Odds are pretty good you pick something you actually have a talent for. Forget the science -- you'll know it's true when people start insulting your years of hard work by saying "You are so TALENTED."

Don't bother looking for something you think you're good at. Have you ever done that? Anybody ever done that? I did that, so... Am I good at this? Can I be an artist? Am I good at this? Can I be a music person? Am I good at this? Can I be a male underwear model? Okay, maybe that one requires some innate talent and a lack of self-esteem. [At this point, Howard poses, hands on hips, smiling for the camera.] On the Internet -- what have I done? But don't do that. It'll make you lazy or it'll get you discouraged because someone will tell you, "Well, you're not good at that."

Second, pick something you have a passion for. Pick something you really like. RJ, do you like martial arts? You love it. And you're TA'ing now in the class, and punching people every day. RJ is one of my close friends. If you're trying to get to me, you have to go through him. Just so you know.

RJ, you just have a gift for hurting people. Wow, that's not a gift, that's two in a half years of regular classes.

Practice after class? Wait a minute. Class is supposed to end and then I'm supposed to go home and do something fun. The thing about a passion is you keep doing it. Tackle something hard. Find the parts that you suck at and learn to stop sucking.

"The dynamic range of raw human ability is tiny compared to the range of practiced human accomplishment. Though your talent might let you make some noise at first, only diligent practice will get you heard." Howard V. Tayler

That's where the online bits stopped.

Comments

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

First bit of advice: The good news is that you can start almost anywhere. The bad news is that you have to start. Pick a place and start working on it. If it goes easily, you might want to look at some other parts that are harder for you.

Second bit of advice: focus on what you like. What genre, what parts of those books or stories? See if you can write something like that. Then do it again. Keep looking at what your models are doing, and how you might do something like that.

Third bit of advice: listen to yourself when you're talking to people. You'll probably find that you tell little stories about your life. Make a list of those. Sit down and write some of them up, trying to put the same excitement that you would in face-to-face conversation into a written version.

Hope this helps.

[jinkang.livejournal.com]

Hope this helps.

Yes and no. And no, I am NOT here to argue. Haha. Just asking for your opinion. How do 'you' practice? That and hoping you might have some insight I can glean off.

I am thinking of picking 10 books (http://johndbrown.com/2009/02/more-10-to-20s/) from the bookstore. Perhaps this Saturday. That will definitely pin point the 'type of book' I want to write.

Now the parts...would you say the parts are defined such as... voice, flow/structure, dialogue? I guess I'm asking 'what are the parts?'

Many times how-to books tell you to work on the writing, practice more! But--here, it's perhaps because I haven't had that eureka moment--I always stumble on what exactly I should be doing. Do I write dialogue after dialogue after dialogue until the characters seem like real person?

I even read somewhere that, while people discourge you to 'copy' word for word what professional authors published, many pros also started out that way: simply type out the paragraphs line by line. Something else I might do, I suppose...once I establish who I want to imitate, exactly.

Heck, even if I want to write Discworld like books, I know my humor is bone-dry to pull it off; nor would it work if I were to imitate Lois McMaster Bujold: I simply do not have the wordsmithing skill Lois has.

And yet the thought of Christopher Paolini publishing a book like his first novel somehow makes me keep going; I, too, can copy Lord of the Rings.

Sorry the rant. I have been 'trying' to write for past 15 years with miserable results. On and off, mind you. I'm thinking it's about time I start learning 'smarter.' Then hopefully in another 10 years, I might produce something sell-able. (I keep hearing about 10 years a lot, nowadays.)

[jinkang.livejournal.com]

Lots of grammar mistakes but it's 4 AM in the morning here and I just finished documentation, bane of all developers. Arg.