And how whining about not having any talent is your own personal way to hide the fact you’re retarded.
This is really the first of the WorkHate articles, and yet I plan to make it about the seventh. That’s because the topic is on my mind now, but if you read this topic before reading those other topics, this one will possibly not make sense. This may not be true as of yet though, as I haven’t even written the topics I’ve yet to write that will precede this, so we won’t know until they come into existence whether or not this topic makes sense without them.
This topic is about determination.
Some people seem to think the world gets divided into two areas; talent and effort. These people are Naruto fans and let’s face it, none of them have either. Talent is said to be the natural ability to grow. Natural is the key word here and in a sense all it is an absence of effort. People are seen as naturals when they get something much faster than anyone else. They just seem to get it faster. Sometimes they’ll work only a little bit and then in what took you a few years to master they’ve done in months. Sometimes they’ll even get it looking at it first time.
It’s said to be genetic. ‘It’s in their blood’, people will argue. There are just some people out there born to be winners. Some people just ‘get it’.
Talent is lazy. It doesn’t need to try.
Effort is the hard work. The blood, sweat, tears and repeated failures. The not getting it at all but still going at it with all your heart. The not giving up. The daily training. The weekly practice. The losses that fuelled you on and that one victory that made you think it was all worthwhile. Then comes the repeated victories as you get the hang of it, then the reputation, then the championship. It’s around here you’ll get someone say it.
“That guy’s got so much talent.’
Oh, what blissful irony. It’s as if someone’s spat in your face, added their saliva to your blood, sweat and tears, assumed you never trained as hard as you did, or more likely, as hard as they did. The losses clearly weren’t a factor and now ipso facto, neither are your accomplishments.
It’s a sign that they never got it, and probably never will now.
This has probably gone a bit harsh, but it’s my first self help article so rambling may be included. A lot of those who talk about talent probably aren’t saying it with the intention to be negative, yet that’s the sting behind the insult. The next time you say that some people have it and some don’t, be aware that while you’re knocking them for having talent, you’re also knocking all their effort as well.
Talent and lack of it is something mentioned all the time I found to people talk to whenever they haven’t got round to starting some new sport or hobby they so desperately want to do. They like to think there’s some complicated component that they’ve not had installed into their human body at birth and, because of it, they just don’t work the same as the artists or the singers or the doctors. They like to think some grand hand of destiny was walking along on its fingers someday and just happened to see that guy over their and figured ‘humph, thou tiny mortal fleshling clearly has the makings of an artist. Let us lead him unto a grand destiny of hours sitting in front of a white sheet of paper and making it look pretty.’
Hell, I’d like to think just reading that paragraph would make some people think a little better onto the true nature of talent.
Talent is really a word that comes from noThink. It’s something that’s assumed to be there and whilst genetics could be used to explain for biological defects such as type two diabetics, it really doesn’t work the same when it comes to a category such as personal hobbies.
Unfortunately, talent is like religion. I can’t completely deny its existence with objective evidence. It becomes impossible to decide if a person was born to play a particular role or not in life simply because we have no access to anything that controls the fourth dimension. I would like to believe talent doesn’t exist though.
What does exist is efficiency of effort. This is the closest thing to talent there ever was. This is why a person seemed to ‘get it’ much faster than the other guy, why he just appeared to be a ‘Natural’ to the guy that sweated the blood and the tears (bwhuh?) and, ironically, it’s partly the fault of the guy saying it in the first place. After all, he may have be the one to give the talented guy the shortcut.
I suppose before I get into efficiency of effort I should make a distinction before someone makes a comment about it. There are people who suffer from complications. Brain damaged, missing limbs, a chemical imbalance. There are things which put people at a natural disadvantage and, let’s face it; there are things that put people at a major advantage. Whilst the effects of a savant cannot be discounted in either a positive or negative way, I can’t allow them to affect this article in any major way. I don’t mean to offend anybody, but what I’m doing here in comparing a ‘talented’ artist to the guy who says he can’t draw, not the physical capabilities between Charles Xavier and Superman.
There’s a saying in athletics. ‘Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.’ I’d really like to wrap it up there and call it a day folks it’s been great, but let’s go on a little. The reason there are people out there who ‘get it’ a little faster, or a lot faster, or don’t have to put out the blood, sweat and tears do so not because their blood is slightly thicker and somehow full of genetic abnormalities that somehow produce superhuman powers of ‘getting it’, but because of their method of ‘getting it’. That’s it. I really hope I could leave it there. Blaming talent (and I won’t think of it as praising talent) is ultimately nothing more than failing to criticize your own method for its inability to grasp the subject at hand or being slower at it than that guy over there.
Your method, to be even simpler, is how you decide to do something. That’s all, I really couldn’t be any clearer about this fact without going into mechanical detail but that’s all there is to it. Yet everyday I see karaoke singing contestants told they just don’t have this so called x-factor. I see people call artists talented; musician gifted. I see people give up on their efforts because they believe they just don’t have the knack.
Time for some personal anecdotal evidence.
My artwork sucked. I looked back on the work I did when I was fifteen and all I could say about it was that it was doodley and kind of disturbing. I had no skill with the hand and pencil. My creative talent seemed to be in words and occasional sharp wit. I loved my comic books, but I couldn’t draw Spiderman without him looking weird and though my parents still have the number sign I made when I was eight nailed outside by the front door with pride it wasn’t the masterpiece that would win whatever claywork prize there is for masterpieces.
Since I didn’t have the talent when I was eight, and certainly didn’t have it when I was fifteen and couldn’t even get mouths right when I was twenty, what is it that I have now at twenty five that enables me to draw reasonably well? And before anyone starts to think of the children, I’ll point out that the same answer is the reason why my niece has gotten so good at gymnastics by the age of eight that she got the hardest worker certificate at the end of the year.
The answer is determination.
Oh, we’re back to that title, ain’t we? Yes. This time I’m blaming determination as the reason why I’ve got good at something. This isn’t really the best of answers now as you could argue that no matter how determined, if you keep sharpening one stone against another in the hopes of making a mirror you’ll never get anywhere, but I’d like to think my point could be made with exactly that.
Determination is not stubbornness.
Stubbornness is itself admirable to an extent but there will always be a sadness following the boxer who stayed standing even as he lost consciousness. Determination differs by being not the desire to just keep going, but the desire to keep going and achieve your goal at any cost.
That’s what we have here. Not effort, not stubbornness, not talent. Just determination. The desire to achieve a goal and determine a suitable method in order to reach it.
So how do we do this? Simples. If something’s not working to your intended goal, change it.
Okay it’s not that simple. Well it is. But you’ll be a hundred monkeys on a typewriter if you just keep changing things. You have to be more efficient than that. So how can we be more efficient?
Learn from others: This is the big one. We’re a civilization now that’s a few millennia old. Before then we were less evolved creatures who were still learning. Learning is the key to doing everything, even changing our own genetics. There’s lots of ways to learn from others. The babies learn to climb the stairs with the help of those daddies who just showed us how to do it on the way to the toilet. The children learn from the comments the teacher makes about the pretty pictures we drew. Our nieces learn from our uncles who put them through a series of physical challenges starting with climbing the stairs to moving onto the bridge position. Look to how the guy who seems to be getting it right does something. Never be afraid of copying. Without copying you’d have never learned to walk. You can add your own style later.
Learn from books. Wow gee, did you know here are whole repositories of information out there. I hear they’re called libraries or something and you know what? They make you smarter. D’uh. For some reason it appears to be an asset of common sense that getting smarter does not mean getting more artistic or getting fitter. I’d like to believe that all self improvement be it creatively, mentally, physically or spiritually is just a form of getting smarter.
There are books out there that teach people to be artists starting with your shittest piece of portrait art. And let’s just not stick with books. There’s an internet out there (Gasp! You’re on it!) containing information on how to sing from your diaphragm. This is one of those vital pieces of info that alone makes someone sound less tone deaf.
Think of something you can’t do but would like to right now. Is it something you’ve given up on in the past or just classed as impossible and haven’t tried? Got it? Now type the following into Google (don’t say you’re not by a computer) ‘How do I learn to *insert the activity here*’.
What did you get? Was it useful? Possibly not. But possibly it just led you to that one piece of information you’ve been lacking that’s held you back all these years.
And if you didn’t find it, can you blame talent for that right there and then? I’m hoping by now it should be more or less obvious that it’s merely your search method that has failed. You just need to put something better into Google.
Determine your method. This is where your first bit of effort should really go. Maybe by this point you’ve been like a child and been going by the automatic pushings of those around you. Parents who praised you. Teachers who have noticed you. Even training coaches who have been shouting commands at you that just happen to work and, let’s not forget, those talented individuals who made you just that little bit envious. This is the back to basics where you determine what you want to do as your goal, think what things are preventing you from doing it, deciding how you’re going to fix these problems and what resources you’ll want to be able to do so.
Learn from yourself. Hopefully this article is a bit of a slap in your face on the path to determination. We’ve all made this mistake simply because we took the term talent for granted. Now I hope you’ll have the determination to see where you went wrong. Look back at your mistakes and admit that they were a failed method. Look to your successes too and wonder why you succeeded at that particular interval. No, it probably wasn’t all luck. Think of the method you used at the time and how it can be adopted into your new goal and training program. Think what went spectacularly wrong the last time you screwed up as well. How can this be avoided? Ask yourself. I SAID ASK YOURSElF!
Always seek to improve efficiently. It’s not enough to choose an efficient method. We must adapt it constantly. Our biggest fault lies in this area. We get a path and we stick to it. We won’t look for the next path and jump across to it because it means giving up the current path. We don’t just run on the grass and play a little to help us unwind. Then we get to the end of the path and wonder why that guy who just keeps doing his own retarded thing is so popular with the ladies. There is always a way to improve something. Just try not to get too frustrated or worked up at this particular never ending path
Have confidence. Confidence can be a matter of perspective. It can be the fear that you’ve pushed past to decide to make the change that urns your life around, the confidence to trust a teacher with your training schedule, or the confidence in pursuing the option that you believe is best for you. None of these are particularly incorrect. Just having the confidence to follow them may be enough. Just make sure you have caution with your confidence. A teacher that isn’t getting you the results you want shouldn’t be your teacher anymore and we all know we’ve made decisions that were clearly wrong yet we kept going anyway in the hope that it would work out. If something ever doesn’t work out for you, stop and reconsider it before deciding whether it’s worth your precious time.
Keep track of your changes and effects. Our brains like to mess with us. We’ll forget reasons why we’re doing things or we’ll make excuses as to why we’re still following the wrong course of behavior whilst believing it’s the right course. The fix for this is simple. Write it down. Get a journal or something. Write the goal down clearly. Write the steps to making the goal. Determine what at that point you don’t want the goal to become and how you’ll know the goal is complete when it’s not complete. Reread the journal every so often and make sure you’re still on the right track or if you watch to switch your inefficient method for a better one. Mark your progress as you go along. Simply marking your progress is all the confidence boost you’ll need to have when you forgot that a few months ago you were only able to bench press 40kg and now you’re on 100kg.
Determination probably isn’t best defined as the confidence to follow through on an efficient method to achieving your goal which you work continuously at, but I wouldn’t mind if it was. Just remember, no boxing champion held the belt without first holding a skip rope. No artist ever drew a head without drawing a shitty circle first. We all must start somewhere but whether we start by climbing a ladder and getting tired or taking the time to build an elevator and rise to the top depends on the determination of the person on whether or not they want their lifetime wasted or not.
Further discoveries:
http://www.drawright.com/ – An excellent site based on the book that finally taught me how to start drawing ri- erm correctly. If you ever thought you could never draw, you’re wrong and this will teach you why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqmwA0m7e6s – Just a youtube video. Nothing more. However it just so happens to be the youtube video that explains why all those people get angry on those singing shows when they think they’re a perfect singer when they’re not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic – I didn’t talk about these during the article, but Mnemonic devices are the key to having a great memory. Don’t think you have the knack of remembering stuff. This’ll help.
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