“I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.”

In regard to Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus was hardly the genius in the family. That honor goes to his father, who was a brilliant pedagogue. (Khatz touched on this briefly)

www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-expert-mind

I just came across a 2006 article (from Tim Ferriss’s site) that invokes Capablanca to explain that “The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born.” Though, through the article’s 6 pages there is very little about Capablaca’s own history, there is a nugget that seems to be very AJATT related:

“Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player’s progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study. “

I must say I was deeply challenged by the “genius” of Capablanca. Like, where did it come from? I would always ignore the fact that he observed his father when he was 4 and just stick with the tournament results and from them he does look like a genius.

So, a VERY BIG thanks to Khatz, you definitely cleared that point, it was haunting me for YEARS(2-3 years, actually). Man, I don’t even remember myself learning chess moves from a book, I just didn’t have a book, I learned all of them except “en passant” from moves made by the computer when I was 5 (6?), does that make me a genius?

I’m starting to agree with Tony Buzan when he says that the whole world is just a baby. I hope wars won’t hinder the development of this great (human) race.
Anyway, I want to finish saying that like Dylan, I’m a chess player so it’s home for me too. 🙂

When I was younger, I played in chess tournaments and for a while I was improving so quickly (You get an official rating when you play in the tournaments so people know) even without the lessons that most other kids had, nor doing the study that they were, that some people were using words like prodigy.

The chess scene died down in my state and I started playing less often (By now I just play in an invitational championship once a year), my progress stopped for the most part. It’s because I was just playing so often at first that I was learning so much through experience and the pattern recognition that comes with it.

Anyway, funny to see a post about Capablanca, who I long admired, on AJATT. Small world.

Another thing I think I should mention here is the importance of attention and mental rehearsal. As a personal example, I do a lot of work with people (youth activism), and I get a lot of praise how I ”get” it, how I know how to work with people etc. but there’s no secret to it: Apart from doing it every day, I spend A LOT of time every day simply THINKING about youth activism, about leadership, team work, values, motivation, planning etc. I analyze it, brainstorm, ponder… let’s simply say that I do a LOT of mental heavy lifting, since, well, I LOVE youth activism, and I’m certain this has helped me learn and improve faster than the average activist. When you love something then you really want to become better at it and you dedicate a lot of your attention to it, and I’ve read somewhere (not sure where, I think it was an article by Malcolm Gladwell, I’ll try to find the source) that mentally rehearsing something has almost 2/3 the effect of actually doing that.

I think this can also be applied to the people we perceive as geniuses and their intelligence. I’d go so far as to say that intelligence is also sort of a skill/habit. The more you use it, the better you get at using it, which is what the geniuses have been subconsciously doing since they were kids.

Also, in learning anything, depending on just waiting for your brain to passively figure it out from past experience is, I think, not enough (for a really good speed of improvement). However, and this is very important, the step towards attention is a SMALL one. Attention, in this case, is not the sort of “frowningly serious” attention (i.e. boooriiing) we associate with formal learning, but simply, well, paying attention 😀 I mean, you know, when you play basketball, you’re not just wildly throwing the ball at pidgeons, you’re aiming at the basket, you’re thinking about your teammates, predicting your opponents’ next move etc. That also requires attention and thought, but not the boring kind (I think we really need new words. attention vs. funtention? focus vs. funcus? :). But during all this fun time you’re also (you could say inevitably) improving your skill, because you’re also always looking for new, bigger challenges (challenge = fun).

When he got a little older, she would find that he had gotten out of bed to go practice playing the piano…just because he wanted to. The kid had spent at the very least 10,000 hours on his music career, probably way more, yet somehow, people are amazed at how he did it all.

It’s pretty funny though, because the narrator said “he speaks Cantonese, a Chinese dialect, said to be the most difficult language in the world [dramatic intonation]”. Well, um, maybe he could speak Cantonese because his mother was an immigrant from Hong Kong?

There was another child “prodigy” on youtube who could speak 8 languages “fluently” (Her Japanese was the equivalent of これはリンゴです if that gives you a hint to her real level of fluency). Someone commented “every kid would be like this if they went through the work she did”. That comment was given a thumbs down by so many people that you had to click a special box to view it, as if it had said something vulgar.

Wasn’t there a research that said praising kids for their hard work rather than their natural intelligence makes them do better in the long run?

However, this is completely irrelevant when it comes to things like language learning. You wouldn’t learn a language to be “the best”; you learn a language in order to know and use the language. It’s not about gold medals it’s all about competence. And with the time and hard work, competence is achievable.

The same applies to sports, music, art, and pretty much everything else. People get too hung up on not being able to be “the best” due to some accident of birth and miss out on the opportunity to work hard and enjoy simply becoming good at something.

I know with all the work I’ve been putting into Japanese, if I ever get good enough that anybody dares to suggest that I have a talent for languages, I will probably bite their head off!

I’ve heard that child prodigies usually become more or less “average people” as they grow up. I wonder how this relates to our discussion. I dare say that even *that* is something different from talent, something acquired after being born.

I definitely agree that working hard is the way to become extremely good at something, but that you can’t deny that talent does play a part in it.

When you’re one of the best at doing something when compared to your immediate peer group, that feels good. It doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily try to improve; you can find examples of people who are content to stay the big fish in the small pond all over. On the other hand, if they do desire to improve, it may be years before they end up with someone in their peer group who is consistently better than them at whatever they do, and that’s years of discouragement-free study and habit-forming.

So in that respect, I’d call it more like starting with a 10m advantage in a 10km marathon. Sure it’s a tiny fraction of the distance, but everyone else starts looking at your back, while you start looking at an empty road. Anyone who works even slightly harder than you over the entire course is going to beat you, but they have to put in the work before they start feeling like winners, while you get it from the beginning.

I wanted to write a long reply to Khatz’s post talking about the importance of starting out on the right foot. Talking about how someone just dropped into the middle of Japan (ex pats) with as much immersion will not be as good as someone that has a guided path, with set sentences to follow early on to help in the beginning. I just kept erasing it, cause it never gets past the first 1000 hours (or 1000 games, or 100 books or 100 fights or 1000 miles of running etc.). Yeah, I think it’s important, but it’s for that head start to make things easier at the beginning. It’s still going to get tedious in time (hence the importance of fun, duh).

Yes, these guys with “innate” talent have an early advantage, but it just won’t matter in the long run if you all do the same thing: Do it every day, push yourself everyday. Now, if you have that head start, by all means exploit. But what probably happens is people who have natural advantages don’t push it as it gets tougher (say at the 100 hour mark or 1000 hour mark). It’s the guy/gal that pushes when the going gets tough that’ll succeed to the endgame.

Some things that give you that head start in Japanese: Heisig’s RTK (or variant). Grammar sentences (don’t memorize the rules, but use them as a head start), Vocabulary sentences, SRS. All these are tools, but they’re like the treadmill/clothes rack if they’re not used past the 10 hour, 100 hour or 1000 hour mark. These things and other advice offered on this blog and else is “The Water ™”, you’re “The Horse ™” being led to it. You are the one that decides “To Drink ™”.

Want some motivation? Listen to a guy called Mark Rippetoe. He’s a strength coach for a Texas University. This guy offers sound advice about training functional strength that is not beauty pageant bodybuilding. In truth, he can take pretty much any guy, despite any “natural” talent and make the guy strong (the trick is to use milk, not steroids, as your muscle gainer, who knew?). And here’s his analogy: Stock Car racing – You buy a car it gives you 100mph off the lot though some are slower and some are faster give or take 10mph. With tuning, changing the wheels you can get 130mph. With removing AC, backseat, other weights you can bump it to 140mph. Lower the shocks, spoiler, other items add just a bit more. The thing is each discernible boost in speed requires more time and effort than the previous gain. Whatever advantage was there off the lot has long sense disappeared the tuning, work and test runs. But you have to put in that effort. Oh yeah, Rippetoe preaches consistency, making progress, and other things that you can apply to language learning.

Anyway, yeah, it’s good to have items for the head start. That little analogy about going from Miami to Atlanta hit me a bit. Yeah, I think there’s a better way of approaching the beginning of Japanese than Khatzumoto lays out with respect to beginning sentences. He posted what he thought works, changed up things a bit along the way. I have too. But everything else is just doing it.

Even if I were to acknowledge the existence of some mysterious innate/genetic talent, it would make for an extremely small advantage when compared to the difference it makes to “keep at it for xx thousand hours”. It’s like starting with a 10 cm advantage in a 10 km marathon.