Talent? Who needs talent? (A transcript)

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."

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"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.