May 16, 2012

Why You Can Learn How To Juggle

I learned to juggle with three balls when I was about ten years old. My family was staying in Israel for a few months and I didn't have to go to school, leaving me with loads of free time and not sure what to do with it. So I decided to learn how to juggle. Pretty soon I was able to keep the three tennis balls aloft for quite some time...


Recently, I've started reading a new book called The Genius in All of Us written by David Shenk (you can get the book here). As the title already suggests, the author's main argument seems to be that we all have the capacity of becoming really, really good at something - so good that others might even think we're geniuses.

Not too long ago, it was generally still believed that some people are just more gifted, talented or intelligent than others and that there's not much you can do about it. "It's all in the genes", they would say. As it turns out, this perception is probably very wrong. The main difference between a Wimbledon champion and a tennis player who routinely bows out in the first or second round of a major tournament is not the level of talent they each inherited from their parents. It's how and how hard they actually work to achieve their goal. Here's how Shenk puts it: "...some people are training harder - and smarter - than before. We're better at stuff because we've figured out how to become better. Talent is not a thing; it's a process." (p. 9)

A while ago I started juggling again in my free time (which unfortunately is not as abundant as at age ten) and decided to learn how to keep five balls in the air for a longer period of time (I'm doing pretty well with four right now). Now that I know that talent is not an issue here, I should be successful in my endeavor fairly soon, right? Let's see what Mr Shenk has to say:
"It would be folly to suggest that anyone can literally do or be anything, and such is not this book's intent. But the new science tells us that it's equally foolish to think that mediocrity is built into most of us, or that any of us can know our true limits before we've applied enormous resources and invested vast amounts of time." (p. 10)
Enormous resources and vast amounts of time? Ok, you know what? I think I'm just gonna stick to reading books for now...

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