It's amazing sometimes how easily people (including me) have been conditioned to give up on things because they don't have "natural ability" at that.
It's especially funny when you get good at things you've always been terrible at by accident, for example through play.
Conversation
Schooling, even for so-called gifted students, infantilizes and saps confidence. The very idea that you need to be "in school" is such.
The effect is so draining that even people who are used to deliberate practice - musicians, athletes, etc. - experience learned helplessness.
1
5
When you sink awareness into the thing you are doing poorly - not blocking feelings of inadequacy, nor emphasizing them - suddenly you start seeing mistakes.
If you start correcting these mistakes, obviously, the technique improves.
1
2
Even the most banal form of ineptitude is good practice. I've always been rather poor at pouring tea from pots. I splash it everywhere.
I focus on what I'm doing, instead of thinking "here I go being clumsy again", and, oh, I'm holding the pot like an idiot, aren't I? Oops.
This Tweet was deleted by the Tweet author. Learn more
I didn't read a how-to guide or get coaching. I simply paid attention to my hands and the teapot, like anyone would. It wasn't complicated.
And what sort of world do we live in? One replete with "how to do <incredibly simple thing>", because people lack the confidence to try.
1
1
Conceitedly telling people their innate characteristics, as if you're some kind of expert on that - whether it's smart, slow, clumsy, strong, pretty or whatever - teaches them to behave as if nothing they do will ever change those things.
1
2
Sure, most attributes are heavily determined. That does not make evaluating people to their face skillful behavior.
Furthermore, a maleducated high IQ individual is still probably an idiot. That's the whole point of the IYI meme, and it's a valid point. Conditioning is key.
1
2
Fitness & competence rely on cultivation. "I don't have the talent" is often code for "I don't know how to train this".
Some skills are opaque and hard to cultivate. Most really aren't. Of course, lots of people flock to the opaque ones because they're harder to evaluate, too.
1
1
The world has a surfeit of hucksters and shills, many of whom are deeply insecure, because there are a few areas where almost nobody is skilled or wise.
(If you need help identifying them, it's the topics that produce the most intellectual fads and overnight book deals.)
1
2
Still, if you aren't of the group doing truly avant-garde stuff (or finance), you don't have to go the route of confronting uncertain outcomes and complex probability webs.
Most skills worth a damn are real simple, but require consistent practice to improve. Even pouring tea.
1
1
Priors for this thread:
- Being considered "gifted", "clumsy" and a range of other unhelpful things most of my life
- The terrible book The Talent Code (credit to for forcing it on me)
- Lots of meditation - helps, massively, with the awareness part of practice.
1
1
I'm joking bout Talent Code. It's just written in the US business style that makes me want to stab the author with a feather pen.
That, and there is a better summary of deliberate practice in just a paragraph of Rest, a much better and more necessary book. So read that instead.
1
1