Knocking on Heaven's Door - Lisa Randall [190]
Lately it has become fashionable to question innate creativity and talent and attribute success solely to early exposure and practice. In a New York Times column, David Brooks summarized a couple of recent books on the subject this way: “What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had—the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills.”71 Picasso was another example he used. Picasso was the son of a classical artist and in his privileged environment was already making brilliant paintings as a child. Bill Gates too had exceptional opportunities. In his recent book, Outliers,72 Malcolm Gladwell tells how Bill Gates’s Seattle high school was one of the few to have a computer club, and how Gates subsequently had the opportunity to use the computers at the University of Washington for hours on end. Gladwell goes on to suggest that Gates’s opportunities were more important to his success than his drive and talent.
Indeed, focusing and practice at an early stage so that the methods and techniques become hard wired is unquestionably part of many creative backgrounds. If you have a difficult problem to solve, you want to spend as little time as possible on the basics. Once skills (or math or knowledge) become second nature, you can call them up much more easily when you need them. Such embedded skills often continue operating in the background—even before they push good ideas into your conscious mind. More than one person has solved a problem while asleep. Larry Page told me that the seed idea for Google came to him in a dream—but that was only after he had been absorbed by the problem for months. People often attribute insights to “intuition” without recognizing how much lead time of detailed studies lies behind the moment of revelation.
So Brooks and Gladwell undoubtedly are correct in some respects. Though skill and talent matter, they won’t get you very far without the honing of skills and intensity that comes with dedication and practice. But opportunities at a young age and systematic preparation are not the whole story. This description neglects the fact that the ability to focus and practice so intently is a skill in itself. The exceptional people who learn from what they did before and who can hold the accumulated lessons in their heads are far more likely to benefit from study and repetition. This tenacity allows for concentration and focus that will eventually pay off—in scientific research or any other creative pursuit.
The name of Calvin Klein’s original perfume, “Obsession,” was no accident: he became successful because (in his own words) he was obsessed. Even if golf pros perfect their swing over countless repeated attempts, I don’t believe everyone can hit a ball a thousand times without becoming exceedingly bored or frustrated. My climbing friend, Kai Zinn, who works on difficult routes—hard 5.13s for those in the know—remembers the details and moves much better than I do. When he does a route ten times, he therefore benefits far more. This in turn makes him much more likely to persevere. I’ll get bored and move on and remain a midlevel climber while Kai, who knows how to learn efficiently from repetition, will continually improve. Georges-Louis Leclerc, the eighteenth-century naturalist, mathematician, and author, succinctly summarized this ability: “Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.” Though I’ll add that it’s also rooted in impatience with lack of improvement.
SCALING A HILL OF BEANS
Practice, technical training, and drive are essential to scientific research. But they are not all that is required. Autistics—not to mention some academics and far too many bureaucrats—frequently demonstrate high-level technical skills yet lack creativity and imagination. All it takes is a trip to the movies these days to witness the limitations of drive and technical achievements without the support of these other qualities. Scenes in which animated creatures fight other animated creatures in hard-to-follow sequences might be impressive accomplishments