I actually had this exact discussion with my girlfriend
yesterday, she thoroughly believes that people are born talented and I believe
the exact opposite. That people develop all skills from birth in a complex
series of events and conditions. By developing in a nurturing environment more time
is spent learning task and as such this repetition means you learn faster and
develop these skills faster. This makes certain individuals seem like they are inherently
more talented when in fact they are just ahead with their learning. They have
been brought up learning these things from a younger age and been encouraged to
continue to learn them. I read somewhere that it takes around 10,000 hours to
become truly great at something that is the number of hours practicing before
you can consider yourself truly better than the majority. People seem like they
are good at creative things because it is likely that they enjoyed doing them
when they were a child.
Creativity is a lot
of the time taken away from children as they get older, because their parents
want them to focus on other things that they consider more important. By
nurturing a Childs interests, encouraging and pushing them to continue to
develop their skills they are going to put in more hours of practice and get
better. Take the example that most people have a proficient level of literacy
by the time they have finished high school, this is usually the level that it
stays at unless they purposely practice literacy task in their own time. Some
people seem more educated and “smart” because they have realised that it is
important to constantly learn and pushed themselves and as such have excelled
from the mark that the majority stops at.
Mozart is often seemed as an example of pure innate talent; this
is not because he was born with the ability to compose music and play. Babies
do not, however you look at it, come from the womb playing scores of music or
painting a master piece. They develop their hand eye coordination from a young
age and are push to practice. Mozart was born to a father that taught and
composed music for a living. He had been practicing for the majority of his
life and as such made Mozart practice for a very early age, obsessed with
seeing his son succeed. People look at his early work and suggest great ability
and talent; although good they were certainly not great symphonies and were
likely edited and revised by his more experienced father. By the time he
produced his famous work he was a young adult and had put in thousands upon
thousands of hours of controlled practice.
It is important to realise that this myth of talent is in
fact controlled practice and nurturing and a lot of the time pressure from a
young age to succeed. Skilful parents often have so called talented children
because they are brought up with their parent’s skills and develop these under
a watchful and keen eye. With this in mind talent is a myth, people aren’t born
with a keen ability to kick a ball or paint a picture just as much as people
aren’t born with a grand understanding of quantum mechanics. They learn. People
are responsible for their own abilities, whilst you might think you are not
good at something it is because you haven’t practiced it enough. You do not
learn something quickly. That is why children seem more extraordinary because
they are learning and absorbing so much information at a young age. Whereas adult
have more pressure on them to learn quickly and often have other commitments to
work and family. Children have none or little of these constraints, as such
have more free time and seem to have more raw talent.
When you understand that people limit themselves you can then
try to do something about it, by eliminating peoples fear of talent people can
then realise that by practicing something and allowing time for their skills to
develop they can become just as good as other people. Things are daunting that
you haven’t done before; you have to be in the right mindset to understand that
once the first hurdle is jumped and the basics have been understood, practice
is enjoyable and quick to develop. The only thing that limits your talent is
time, people who learn and understand this early have more time to get better
and become talented whereas older people will be limited to what they can learn
because time is against them.
The same thing can be said about creativity, children have
brilliant imaginations because they are learning so much so quickly that they
have a wealth of information to harness. Adult would continue to harness this
imagination but are nipped in the bud to focus on academics. I am not saying
that academics are not important, but people should not be scared of crazy
ideas. Creativity lingers on in those who have been allowed to imagine and
create and learn and absorb. Inventions and all the great things that have ever
been made and said have been from those who are creative. Who have the ability
to make new decisions because they have practiced and haven’t been stifled.
They have been encouraged to develop and learn from their ideas rather than
disregard them. This focuses their attentions on real situations and makes this
early imagination more applicable to the real world.
In terms of games, everyone is allowed to be creative and
share ideas. They understand through practice what works and what doesn’t, they
know what looks good and what doesn’t. Talent and creativity are measured by
accuracy, idea generation and ability to convey these ideas clearly and
precisely. These ideas are interchangeable and it all comes down to how you
have been brought up to learn and practice.
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