When Aristotle wrote the Art of Rhetoric the prevailing wisdom in Greece was that great speakers are born – that they are imbued with an innate talent that fills them with some other-worldly ability to appeal to people and inspire them and lead them.
The Art of Rhetoric (and, if you prefer, a Kindle Edition) is a book that basically shows – step by step – how to become a great, highly influential speaker.
The whole point of the book was to allow anyone to learn a skill that for too long had been considered ‘god-given’. And equally importantly, to show that this skill was indeed a skill, that it could be learned by anyone, and it was not some innate gift.
With Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell is making a similar argument – that most people who we consider as supremely gifted and ‘natural’ talents are actually people who’ve put in an inordinate amount of time (10,000 hours, usually across 10 years). Its this amount of focused effort that has made them exceptional and not any god-given talent.
Talent is Overrated is an equally good book that discusses the exact same “10 year, 10,000 hour” rule and focuses on the importance of putting in this effort and avoiding the trap of assuming that becoming world-class is outside of the realm of possibility.
The crux of these three books is that greatness is created through focused effort – and a lot of it. And that’s its accessible to absolutely anyone.
This last part is the toughest to accept because it means that if you aren’t top notch in your field there are only three possible reasons -
- You picked a field you had no passion for and it was just ‘too much work’.
- You never tried to improve yourself or did it half heartedly.
- You haven’t yet put in the requisite hours of deliberate focus and improving.
The whole concept that you are the person responsible for whats going on with your life is not as convenient as placing responsibility elsewhere.
Regardless of where you stand on this, you have to admit that the biggest stumbling block for most people is realizing that they can do big things.
As the Internet spreads its reach, and new technologies continue to make the world a smaller place, we’ll see more and more examples of exceptional people teaching what made them world-class. More and more people will realize that they can be great themselves and equally importantly will have the opportunity to act on it.
Basically the Internet is spreading the American Dream worldwide.
We are on the threshold of a world where an extraordinarily high percentage of people (relative to what exists currently, and what has existed in the past) become world class – where we can have a generation with dozens of athletes of the caliber of Michael Jordan, of ten times the top notch scientists we currently have, and a world where this pattern of excellence repeats itself across every sphere.
Filed under: evolution Tagged: | nature vs nurture
