"How to be a genius"

[Profil]

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~djtaylor/genius.htm

Probaly gives someone, other than me, inspiration.
It explains in a shallow way why practicing is so important.

So get rid of bad habits as fast as you can.

[adraude]

fun read. though, it ain't that big news, that great achievement only comes through hard work.

[sktrdie]

fuck being genius, I am who I am.
The guy on the link is soo full of shit, real geniuses don't think they are better than other people, and also who the hell knows he's a genius, it's a relative subject, nobody can decide if you are a genius or not, only your actions will tell.

[Elwell]

sktrdie, did you even read the article?

[Ilaekae]

...and just why would a true genius do that? :confident

[Idiot Apathy]

Mm, a good read. Helped center some of my thoughts.

Oh and sktrdie: Whaaaaa? ... I'm with Elwell, did you read a different article maybe? Only the intro references the author, and ... uhm he doesn't claim to be a genius, in fact the article is meant to debunk the myth of 'genius'.

[tensai]

nice article -

a summary for the lazy (not to be geniuses) or the busy (perhaps on their way to be geniuses):
So what does create genius or extreme talent? Musicians have an old joke about this: How do you get to Carnegie Hall from here? Practise. A sober look at any field shows that the top performers are rarely more gifted than the also-rans, but they almost invariably outwork them. This doesn't mean that some people aren't more athletic or smarter than others. The elite are elite partly because they have some genetic gifts - for learning and hand-eye coordination, for instance - but the very best rise because they take great pains to maximise that gift.

[stephen]

good stuff!

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Talent*Practice=Skill??? This is outrageous!

[tensai]

some other sections i thought were interesting:

So what does create genius or extreme talent? Musicians have an old joke about this: How do you get to Carnegie Hall from here? Practise. A sober look at any field shows that the top performers are rarely more gifted than the also-rans, but they almost invariably outwork them. This doesn't mean that some people aren't more athletic or smarter than others. The elite are elite partly because they have some genetic gifts - for learning and hand-eye coordination, for instance - but the very best rise because they take great pains to maximise that gift.

Bloom, in fact, came to see great talent as less an individual trait than a creation of environment and encouragement. "We were looking for exceptional kids," he said, "and what we found were exceptional conditions."

Rather, they were encouraged as children in a general way to explore and learn, then supported in more focused ways as they began to develop an area they particularly liked. Another retrospective study, of leading scientists, similarly found that most came from homes where learning was revered for its own sake.

This has led scholars of elite performance to speak of a 10-year rule: it seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused work to master something and bring greatness within reach.

So what do elite performers attain through all that deliberate practice and sensitive mentoring? The creme de la creme appear to develop several important cognitive skills. The first, called "chunking", is the ability to group details and concepts into easily remembered patterns.


So is the ideal of innate genius dead? If not, should we kill it? Certainly a clear-eyed analysis shows that "genius" is really a set of exceptional skills cultivated through disciplined study. We should probably shelve the notion of genius as an innate, almost irrepressible gift and speak instead of expertise, talent or even greatness - terms that hint at the work underlying supreme accomplishment.

[Seedling]

Profil, thanks for sharing that! *bookmarked*