The Atlantic has an article on Dan McLaughlin, the "average guy" who spent six thousand hours working on becoming a professional golfer
Seven-plus years ago, aged 30 and unsure even of which hand to grip a golf club in, McLaughlin quit his job as a commercial photographer, took in lodgers to cover the mortgage, husbanded his savings for green fees, and set out to make the PGA Tour, home to the world's elite golfers.
He created a catchily named blog to document his quest, and in short order the Dan Plan commanded magazines spreads and TV spots. Along the way, it drew an avid community of followers riveted by the spectacle of a regular Joe living out an everyman fantasy. No less captivated: a salon of leading figures from the science of learning and human performance.
What could you achieve if you committed to something completely, all-in, no excuses? How far could you go? For five years, McLaughlin cast everything else aside—career, money, even relationships—to put this to the test. But then his back gave out. He pushed himself to the limit and still came up short.
The article follows Dan's attempt to follow the idea, popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is the main factor in developing any skill to world class expertise.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday August 14 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
No. It demonstrates that not only are we not equal in the "Diversity is really important" sense, but also in the less-politically-popular "Different people have different aptitudes" sense.
Just anybody can not do just anything. Some are better suited to this, others to that, and so forth.
This should seem obvious, but we educate against it in much of the world. We tell kids "You can be anything if you work hard." You can't. Practicing a sport intensely will help a very few people become world-class athletes, sure, but the vast majority will only improve to their astoundingly sub-world-class aptitude and there plateau. Telling them they can "Do anything" or "Be anything" is extremely counterproductive.
The key word in the above is "Aptitude," because that kid (or adult) who will never be a sports star may instead have the aptitude to be a world-class researcher (Einstein--no sports star), leader (Mandela--also not a sports star), aid worker (Mother Teresa--no sports star), or star programmer (John Carmack--not a star at sports).
It is foolish to spend your entire waking life, 100% all-in, working to get down the path to a goal that for you, is a short or twisted path that will never arrive at that goal. The folks listed above would likely have never, never been world-class athletes regardless of the number of hours or quality of practice and training undertaken.
A bad car analogy would be if you need to get from Miami to Los Angeles and you had a nice, durable car that you could choose to use, but instead, you choose to really work hard at bunny-hopping to California instead. The world has some good (bunny hoppers?), sure, but your hopping isn't likely to get you to LA and it will probably be a huge waste of time and effort.
We need to encourage each other, sure. But to follow our aptitudes--not pretend that everybody is the same in aptitude. Google can fire people who say this, and cover their ears with their hands and loudly say "I Can't Hear Youuuu," but that's still a takeaway truth here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @04:55PM
BUT MUH E-SPORTS!