I've long felt that my intelligence is only average, and I've always tried to compensate by working hard. It had been 20 years since my last calculus class when I returned to college, and I was quite worried I'd not be able to keep up. I worked my way through most of a small calculus book before starting the class, to refresh what I'd forgotten. During the class, I spent something like 5-6 hours per day during the week working on Calculus, and around 10 hours per day on the weekends. I worked and reworked every problem until I fully understood what was going on, comparing my answers to the answer key for the odd problems, and computer algebra systems for the even ones when possible. I worked so hard it would have been embarrassing to admit it to my classmates. Only a retard would have to work so much, I thought, but I was determined to be the best I could. I ended up at the top of the class.
The point is, if you're really determined, working hard can go a long way. The key is to try not to worry about the other people that make it look easy. Later I heard this quote:
"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all." - Michaelangelo
Reminds me of a quote from Teller of Penn & Teller (the magicians). I can't find the reference at the moment, but the point is that much of the time, tricks are only mysterious because most people are unable to imagine that maybe you just spent 6 hours a day for a month getting ready for it.
It had been 20 years since my last calculus class when I returned to college
The greatest problem with our educational system is to neglect the fact that students begin to forget immediately after graduation. All these years in k-12 education gradually turns to dust until only reading, writing, and some basic agelbra are left, and some career related knowledge.
Trignometry? Biology? Chemistry? These are subjects that all adults once know in their high school years, now all forgotten.
Instead of documentaries assuming we know chemistry, or trignometery, or biology, they introduced "DNA" as if we never been in a biology class. They only skims the top of the scientific knowledge cake because they never assume everybody knows.
Imagine the complexity and increased believablity of fiction and non-fiction if they have to wrestle with an audience that know those things by heart, even if they only took a chemistry class that single semester?
Alas, we forgotten and our educational dollars disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Your story reminds of a girl I dated in college. Her and her sister were #2 and #3 in their HS. They were straight A students in college. People assumed they were just 'smart' and they obviously were not stupid, but what they didn't tell people was just how much they studied. 24 hour study sessions were common. Multiple egg timers around the house they shared going off at all hours during exam time.
I was someone who had it easy in HS and almost failed out of college because I simple didn't know how to study. Watching these two taught me the level of effort required to really do well.
And they probably perceived you as really smart instead of dedicated. :)
I noticed something similar happens when I want to pickup some basic skill I wish I had, like juggling, shuffling decks of cards, or emacs or walking the slackline: first it seems impossible, then I insist for a few days, many hours per day, sleep on it, and then its trivial.
But most people won't go to youtube to learn how to shuffle a deck of cards, and probably consider that very nerdy.
The point to me is, don't care about the rate at which others go at all. It is completely meaningless. People see my art and they think it came easy to me. I've been drawing and painting for 20 years. It wasn't easy.
Lately, I weave in and out of painting, coding, and studying mathematics. The switch between the fields often has me feeling lost when initially starting back up into one or the other, since I sort of go through these manic cycles of learning rather than something continuous and balanced throughout. When I switch from painting to math or coding, I usually feel very dumb for a while, relearning all of the new terminology I have missed. It is often a significant blow to my ego, and over the years it has required me to develop sort of a thick skin to approaching sets of people who are technically minded, while my mind is still in the la-la land art world, and vice-verse.
But I mean, out of everything I have approached to learn to do or learn about, the one thing I know that is true for all of them is that nothing is actually simple. Doing calculus and memorizing formula to apply to a very specific set of a problems requires a strong memory, which younger people tend have the advantage on (not myself though, 26 and my memory is garbage). But actually understanding the concepts, and being capable of applying them after you take the class, that's different.
I surprised someone, in grad school I think, explaining how to calculate how large a container we would need to clean the espresso machine (it drips water through), based on some simple dimensions of the input container, and the flow rate. That's calculus. I knew a lot of students in engineering who did really well in the class, and are doing really well in their specific sub-field. But to actually understand what one is learning, that is different. Everyone can do it no matter what age, it just requires dedication and actually being able to think about what confuses you. And it is often a person's ego or fear of their ego appearing 'less than' that hinders progress in learning and doing. Or probably, it is always the case that that is why people stop learning and doing.
It is not difficult to ask simple questions. I mean last night I spent about 6 hours thinking about what a point on a number line actually is. Had anyone seen my notes, they would probably look like they came from a 1st grade maths class. But I'm connecting it to many other topics I understand - and that is something those people don't see, the tangential thought process that develops along with my learning and questioning. So when someone asks a simple question that may seem trivial, instead of scoffing at the fact that that person does not know the answer, I prefer to ask myself "Why did they ask that question?", or, "Why is it important that this thing is so clearly defined or understood - what about this thing is necessary or important to understanding of the whole?". And those are my favorite kinds of questions to ask in learning, because it keeps every topic interesting.
So what about when you have someone like me who works hard and still fails? I vary my methods. change my environment to make it easier, pay for training, do what ever. I examine what I did wrong, I still get it wrong, no matter what.
Let me share with you an anecdote: In undergrad, I took an intro computer networking class. Everyone else could understand what was going on. There was no assigned reading material and lectures didn't follow from any text. I always was the lowest student in the class, no matter how hard I tried. Everyone else could understand it quickly. I worked hard on that class but it didn't matter. Not everyone who works hard will show positive results, I guess. I more or less flunked my way through school. Sometimes I'd work hard, sometimes not. It didn't seem to matter.
Or, if I'm facing someone who has worked hard and is also very intelligent? I don't have a chance.
The rhetoric of these articles and the rest of these posts here have a coded meaning behind them: there are no disadvantaged people or students -- only stupid or lazy ones. It's a corollary of Survivor Bias. If you work hard, everything will be peachy-keen OK and nothing will go wrong. If you work hard and fail, you deserve only scorn.
For me, it was, never mind if you work so hard that ignored everything else, worked so hard to not get beaten by your parents, worked so hard to get mastery of material -- I must be still too lazy or stupid since I failed.
I don't know what it is that I don't have that everyone else does. I'm likely to not ever know.
This is a topic that I'm very familiar with so that's why I wrote a lot about it and sound perhaps a little crazy.
In my observation, a person with average native faculties in a given activity make themselves top 95th percentile of the general population in that activity, with dedicated and sustained practice. This applies to most specific skills - violin playing, chess, calculus, computer programming, golf, basketball, quarterbacking, painting, etc. Of course, the reason for this is the typical person in the population has not dedicated that much practice time to a given specific skill. You may be a great natural athlete, but if you have not spent at least some time learning throwing mechanics, a mediocre athlete who has practiced will be able to throw a better spiral.
However, it does not follow that "everyone can be a computer programmer for Google" or "everyone can be a professional quarterback." If you want to make it to a high-level in a high paying or high status field, you must compete against other people who are also practicing really hard and who also have great natural talent.
Personally, I have around natural athletic ability. I play flag football, and am likely in the top 95th percentile of QB ability. When I throw the ball around with friends at a BBQ, I can hit people in stride with tight spirals. But I could never, ever be a pro-QB, or even a QB in a competitive amateur league. My body simply does not have the appropriate build, and I simply cannot build the muscle strength to make the passes needed to be a great QB.
On the flip side, I have always had an innate knack for cognitive problems, I was always that guy in math class who got A's despite barely doing homework and not studying for tests. Now another person could also get A's in that class with only mediocre natural talent by studying very hard. They might think that, "Hey, I've worked hard, I got A's, I can do anything, I can get a job at Google some day." But if they go into the most cognitively demanding career, they will find themselves competing against the most naturally talented people, who also now have a financial incentive to work extremely hard, and the less naturally talented people will simply not be able to compete.
I find it unfortunate and self-serving, that so there are so many commentators and intellectuals, who are above average cognitively and (likely) mediocre athletically, who assume that the other people's failings at cognitive skills are due to lack of practice or lack of sufficient schooling. Meanwhile they assume their own lack of athletic ability is due to accidents of birth.
That said, it can be very difficult to determine if your having difficultly in a subject is really due to innate talent or due to lack of practice. When I took an intro computer science course, I noticed the professor was a completely horrible teacher (and lectures are generally a horrible way to teach math, computer science or any technical subject). The textbook sucked too. The people who did well in that class already had been programming on their own during high school. The people taking the class expecting it to be an actual introductory course, who expected that if you just followed the lectures and textbooks that you would know how to do the assignment, ended up doing very poorly. Even if they worked very hard, their total hours dedicated to understanding computer science was far below that of fellow classmates.
1) You have keen analytical and writing skills, intelligence is not a lack for what you want to achieve.
2) You suffer from victim mentality being too concerned about the abilities of others while easily dismissive of your own. No matter how much/hard you work, without being able to chuck this aside, every failure will be magnified and your successes will be mitigated to an irrational degree.
The fact of the matter is the road to mastery is paved with tons of mistakes, tons of situations where you will feel like an absolute moron. You have to learn to reframe those moments and treasure them, because they are signals that you are encountering moments of true growth. Learn to compete against your own competence and not others. You don't know what they've been through to get where they are.
Whenever something seems unreasonably tough, break it down into simpler problems to digest. Hack the art of learning itself. Don't look at the same problem until you're blue in the face, change it up so that there is a measurable degree of progress.
Your blockage is more emotional than intellectual.
Here is a question for you, do you enjoy learning new things?
I ask because I've mentored folks who have similar feelings and one thing that correlated with them was that they didn't actually enjoy learning new stuff. In particular they almost had a mental block when it came to learning something first in order to achieve a secondary goal.
One story I heard was a student who was failing English composition repeatedly. The person failing's attitude was "I have to have this to get my degree, but frankly I don't give a flying f*ck about English composition." Absolutely no amount of work, practice, tutoring, or study helped. The only thing that worked, was getting past the 'I have to do this but don't want to' attitude was to find some small way that learning composition could become an interesting thing to do.
Thus the question, and now a corollary, is there any subject area you know really well? And by "any" I mean "any" from an academic subject like Math to the back story of all the characters on "Twilight." If so how does that subject matter differ from the subject matter you aren't good at?
You don't deserve scorn for failing, it's ok. You might be suffering from some kind of anxiety, and you're being too hard on yourself for sure.
One piece of advice that might help you: when you're trying to measure your progress, instead of looking at the people who are ahead of you all the time, sometimes look at the people who are behind you. The people who you've exceeded, who you have done better than. It's an important part of motivation that's often overlooked. (This and a bunch of other really excellent advice I got from Seneca in Letters from a Stoic.)
Also, don't give up. You've only truly failed when you quit learning or give up.
Two recent articles in Current Directions in Psychological Science
criticize deliberate practice and argue that, while it is necessary
for reaching high levels of performance, it is not sufficient, other
factors such as talent being important as well.
So maybe the "just practice more" attitude is an oversimplification. But still, I think if you were really stupid or whatever, you wouldn't have been able to write such a good comment. The "beaten by your parents" thing makes me think of learned helplessness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
When you say you vary your methods, what do you mean by that? When you were in your networking class and it wasn't structured in a way you found convenient, could this have been demonstrating that you're overly dependent on certain learning techniques, and need to become adept with some new ones?
Your repeated references to hard work stood out:
> I worked hard on that class but it didn't matter.
There's a pattern you can fall into where you stare at the page and get stressed, and then come away hours later none the wiser but exhausted and feeling unduly virtuous from your hard but meaningless work.
Hard work doesn't count for anything of itself. Only when you're pursuing effective strategies.
> I'm likely to not ever know.
If you want to, you could dig up your syllabus notes or email the uni for a copy of them. Identify the topics, and see if you understand them. Get past exams out of the library and identify the topics in them. Find a mentor and go back over the stuff again until you have an easy understanding of each of the concepts.
I thought I'd share some hopeful words from the author in a Facebook followup to the article. My wife's a composer and has worked with several members of her (incredible) family.
"I didn't get to go into much detail in 800 words, but I agree it's more complicated than that. I don't think my kids all enjoyed practicing, but they have come back many times to say how much it changed their lives, including the three who did not go on to become musicians.
The youngest was my Suzuki failure... I felt guilty that I didn't have as much patience to work with her as I'd had with her sisters. She restarted lessons several times and limped along in classical studies for years, progressing, but not nearly at the rate as her sisters.
Then at age 15 she suddenly blossomed as a guitarist/singer-sonwriter and playwright, spending hours every day immersed in practice, and progressing quickly. It was as though all of those painful hours spent on violin and viola were coming to fruition in a way none of us, including her, had anticipated."
People who seem successful from the outside, are in general, very hard working and focused in their venture. I have few friends from high school who always got good grades and understood topics very fast. Being around such gifted students made me feel insufficient. I could never compete with them no matter how hard I tried. In my mind I was trying hard. Turns out, while I was slicing my waking hours between sports, hanging out, studies and socializing, they invested all those hours to study class materials, read supplementary materials, reading ahead for the class next day. To me, sports, studies and friends were equally important while they kept single minded focus on where they want to put their hours. It also turns out, the method is replicable. You can put single minded focus on anything and be reasonably successful. I believe it. Because I have seen it happen in my life. Albeit, there are talended people and hard work will always fall short of talent + hard work. But hard work will get you far enough.
Maybe the things you were putting a lot of effort into weren't things that helped you master those materials. It's possible to work hard with the intent of learning something, and never learn it, even though it's within your capacity to learn, if the thing you're working hard on doesn't help with learning the thing you're trying to learn. In fact, I think most of the effort people put into learning things in the standard educational system is wasted.
I mean, it's also possible you're struggling against some kind of mental handicap. But if your IQ was really 75 or something, I don't think you'd be able to write such long sentences.
It sounds like you should set your sights lower. You don't seem to have an aversion to trying or thinking. I'd hope the explanation for your failures is that you didn't acquire the prerequisites and are continually trying to fake or skip them. But that's unlikely. So, discover what you are capable of. There's no shame in trying and being average, instead of not trying and being below average.
The way you write already suggests intelligence. In what ways did you try to prepare for that networking class? It sounds as if they didn't provide anything for you to cling to if you weren't already familiar with the territory?
Maybe the other people in the networking class were either all very smart students that anyone would struggle to keep up with, or maybe they all had prior exposure to networking principles (eg. from LAN gaming).
This article appeals to our deepest and most widely-held educational values, which makes it all the more dangerous, being wrong in several ways.
The author rightly belittles the concept of talent but it seems to have found its way in through the back door: “Two of our four turned out to be musically gifted and before long were shuttled out of Suzuki to hard-core classical violin teachers.”
(Talent is just the way we describe people who have some competence in a field which is inexplicit; nobody knows why they are good, otherwise one could learn it.)
Another thing to point out is that apparently none of the children have developed careers in music or composition (yet), so it remains to be seen if they have any creativity intact.
Why might they have lost creativity in adulthood? Because of childhood coercion. Those long hours of practice -- children don’t do that without being forced. It can be subtle, such as the worry of a slight loss of parental affection, sibling rivalry encouraged, etc.
Children will play for hours on end and this is where true learning occurs. Some children are bright enough to make their ‘practice’ a form of play, so they manage to improve despite appearances.
Creative adults continue to play, it’s just that the subject matter appears more serious. But progress remains open-ended, with stops and starts, switching between activities, and unpredictable (not ‘guaranteed’) results. The unpredictable nature of achievement follows from a law of epistemology: we can’t predict future knowledge (including our own).
Paul Graham has mentioned similar issues several times in essays posted on his personal website. For example, he wrote in "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005),
". . . . In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.
"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. . . . "
"Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments early on, when they're trying to find their niche.
"Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well."
And in "The Anatomy of Determination" (December 2009),
"In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent."
Mathematician Hung-hsi Wu wrote an article more than a decade ago, Basic skills versus conceptual understanding: A bogus dichotomy in mathematics education, American Educator, Fall 1999, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 14-19, 50-52,
to point out that any distinction between understanding a topic and having basic skills in the topic is a "bogus dichotomy." The two go together like two sides of the same coin.
I studied violin at Juilliard with the great Dorothy DeLay. She taught the greats such as Perlman and Midori, and she insisted that 'talent' was nothing more than a 'mood.' I will always treat her viewpoint on this as gold having taught so many youngsters over the decades. So, work hard, and think big of yourselves as your reward (although that can be so hard to do!)
Interesting to consider, though not discussed much in the article: quality of practice is paramount. Thoughtful and deliberate generates incremental progress. Casual, mentally checked-out practice isn't practice at all. Some discussion & sources here: http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/25/the-myth-of-practice-makes-...
One mantra tossed around of late is "_perfect_ practice makes perfect," meaning not to never make mistakes, but to be conscious and analytical when you do.
One of my personality traits is that I don't like taking shortcuts. In fact, I hate taking them. I much prefer doing things "properly" and thoroughly. From painstakingly teaching myself programming to not incessantly 'cheesing' in SC2 to washing the dishes multiple times to brushing my teeth slowly.
I am often ridiculed by my wife, and I always wondered where I got this from. This trait is something I want to teach my kids, but I never knew quite how.
Until I read this article and it reminded me that I too did the Suzuki program, into classical violin after. I remembered practicing a lot - and I remember getting frustrated frequently.
I also remember the short burst of adrenaline I would feel, and the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment, when I get that 'trill' just perfect or when I perfected my vibrato.
Even though I have since put down the violin, I feel the same accomplishment when I tackle something hard (in programming) and I eventually figure it out.
I need to remember to thank my parents for insisting that I keep at the violin, even when I was very frustrated and wanted to rage quit.
Genius is not a thing, but a process. Genius need the proper environment to cultivate talents like our well endowed genetically engineered corns need fertilizers and pesticides.
It doesn't matters if you have an IQ of 200 when you're born several thousand years too early. You never make use of your genius, except to make lot of babies and become the chief of your tribe, if you're lucky.
Granted, there's lot of people who are innately smarter than you, but chance are they're also stuck in various positions of life where they can't become a genius like a job at wal-mart, or having children too early, or is stuck in a hut in a third world country somewhere.
If you're reading this, chance are you have the money and the time to rearrange your environment and your behaviors to achieve mastery. The hard part is figuring out how to do that and how to sustain that.
> It doesn't matters if you have an IQ of 200 when you're born several thousand years too early. You never make use of your genius, except to make lot of babies and become the chief of your tribe, if you're lucky.
If you're in a stone age tribe, that is probably the most important thing you can do. Just because some stone age chieftain can't figure out how to smelt iron doesn't mean that they failed or are wasting their talents.
If anyone is curious as to the research on this topic, check out Carol Dweck's book "Mindset." It has a ton of examples from academia, sports and business on fixed vs. growth mentalities and how that plays into a person's success in life.
In light of evolutionary psychology, talent is a combination of domain-specific neural adaptations and illusions. We know from data mining and machine learning that more data equals better results. Since one example of machine learning is neural networks (i.e. you), we know that more data (i.e. practice) leads to improved performance. For example, we know that the brain implements certain cognitive adaptations multiple times in differing but co-adaptive formats. If you had four neural clusters dedicated to spatial visualization and your friend had only three, you would be better at geometry. But if your friend practiced a lot, he could repurpose chunks of his neocortex to use his three clusters and then some with finer heuristics, with the result of beating you in geometry even though you had more "talent" and potential at equivalent practice rates. Moral of the story: don't worry about talent, practice makes better, kids.
Well, yes and no. I remember reading, when I was in my teens, about a star guard in Louisiana who spent 8 or 10 hours a day playing basketball during his summers. I realized then that "adequate driveway player" was about where I was and would remain; I didn't have the drive to put in that kind of work. I realized also, though, that a) my body probably wouldn't stand up to that kind of intense work, and b) even if it did, I would be a much better but not much more than high-school JV quality.
"Me, I want to be a natural. I want to show up at the first class and discover I have a knack for whatever it is we're going to study - pottery, Japanese calligraphy, racquetball, oil painting, flute. I don't mind work, as long as it comes easily, with guaranteed results. But I'm usually the class dunce, or at least that's what it feels like as I struggle to keep up after the going gets tough. Eventually I quit, loath to spend precious effort on what could be a mediocre outcome."
Interestingly, this is exactly compatible with what Andrea Dwork writes about in "Mindset" [1]: people whose identity evolves around being "smart" or "talented" are often less willing to take on risks or big projects than those who have grown up being praised for their efforts.
I would say you have to consider the competition. (how competitive is the market you want to participate in). If you compete with very hardworking people ('everybody in the field works hard') then talent will be a differentiator. If you compete in a competition/market where for some reason hard work is not yet common then your hard work can be your differentiator. Choose your fights wisely.
In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because *after a while determination starts to look like talent*.
My girlfriend is a violinist and violin pedagogue. Everybody has always called her gifted but she has resisted every time and said: it is all about having the gift to be able to do 4 hours of intense practice each day from an early age.
Not everybody has the ability to practice this hard.
[+] [-] unoti|13 years ago|reply
The point is, if you're really determined, working hard can go a long way. The key is to try not to worry about the other people that make it look easy. Later I heard this quote:
"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all." - Michaelangelo
[+] [-] gliese1337|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordan0day|13 years ago|reply
I really think that this ability to doggedly focus, practice, and maintain this level of effort is, itself, a talent.
I mean, I can't study for 10 minutes straight, much less 10 hours. It's certainly a talent I wish I had.
[+] [-] kiba|13 years ago|reply
The greatest problem with our educational system is to neglect the fact that students begin to forget immediately after graduation. All these years in k-12 education gradually turns to dust until only reading, writing, and some basic agelbra are left, and some career related knowledge.
Trignometry? Biology? Chemistry? These are subjects that all adults once know in their high school years, now all forgotten.
Instead of documentaries assuming we know chemistry, or trignometery, or biology, they introduced "DNA" as if we never been in a biology class. They only skims the top of the scientific knowledge cake because they never assume everybody knows.
Imagine the complexity and increased believablity of fiction and non-fiction if they have to wrestle with an audience that know those things by heart, even if they only took a chemistry class that single semester?
Alas, we forgotten and our educational dollars disappeared in a puff of smoke.
[+] [-] matwood|13 years ago|reply
I was someone who had it easy in HS and almost failed out of college because I simple didn't know how to study. Watching these two taught me the level of effort required to really do well.
[+] [-] swah|13 years ago|reply
I noticed something similar happens when I want to pickup some basic skill I wish I had, like juggling, shuffling decks of cards, or emacs or walking the slackline: first it seems impossible, then I insist for a few days, many hours per day, sleep on it, and then its trivial.
But most people won't go to youtube to learn how to shuffle a deck of cards, and probably consider that very nerdy.
[+] [-] wting|13 years ago|reply
The truth is people learn at different rates, and compensating intelligence with effort works a lot of the time.
[+] [-] ramblerman|13 years ago|reply
Just out of curiosity, how old were you when you took up calculus, and did you go back to college full time?
[+] [-] gitelep|13 years ago|reply
Lately, I weave in and out of painting, coding, and studying mathematics. The switch between the fields often has me feeling lost when initially starting back up into one or the other, since I sort of go through these manic cycles of learning rather than something continuous and balanced throughout. When I switch from painting to math or coding, I usually feel very dumb for a while, relearning all of the new terminology I have missed. It is often a significant blow to my ego, and over the years it has required me to develop sort of a thick skin to approaching sets of people who are technically minded, while my mind is still in the la-la land art world, and vice-verse.
But I mean, out of everything I have approached to learn to do or learn about, the one thing I know that is true for all of them is that nothing is actually simple. Doing calculus and memorizing formula to apply to a very specific set of a problems requires a strong memory, which younger people tend have the advantage on (not myself though, 26 and my memory is garbage). But actually understanding the concepts, and being capable of applying them after you take the class, that's different.
I surprised someone, in grad school I think, explaining how to calculate how large a container we would need to clean the espresso machine (it drips water through), based on some simple dimensions of the input container, and the flow rate. That's calculus. I knew a lot of students in engineering who did really well in the class, and are doing really well in their specific sub-field. But to actually understand what one is learning, that is different. Everyone can do it no matter what age, it just requires dedication and actually being able to think about what confuses you. And it is often a person's ego or fear of their ego appearing 'less than' that hinders progress in learning and doing. Or probably, it is always the case that that is why people stop learning and doing.
It is not difficult to ask simple questions. I mean last night I spent about 6 hours thinking about what a point on a number line actually is. Had anyone seen my notes, they would probably look like they came from a 1st grade maths class. But I'm connecting it to many other topics I understand - and that is something those people don't see, the tangential thought process that develops along with my learning and questioning. So when someone asks a simple question that may seem trivial, instead of scoffing at the fact that that person does not know the answer, I prefer to ask myself "Why did they ask that question?", or, "Why is it important that this thing is so clearly defined or understood - what about this thing is necessary or important to understanding of the whole?". And those are my favorite kinds of questions to ask in learning, because it keeps every topic interesting.
[+] [-] sown|13 years ago|reply
Let me share with you an anecdote: In undergrad, I took an intro computer networking class. Everyone else could understand what was going on. There was no assigned reading material and lectures didn't follow from any text. I always was the lowest student in the class, no matter how hard I tried. Everyone else could understand it quickly. I worked hard on that class but it didn't matter. Not everyone who works hard will show positive results, I guess. I more or less flunked my way through school. Sometimes I'd work hard, sometimes not. It didn't seem to matter.
Or, if I'm facing someone who has worked hard and is also very intelligent? I don't have a chance.
The rhetoric of these articles and the rest of these posts here have a coded meaning behind them: there are no disadvantaged people or students -- only stupid or lazy ones. It's a corollary of Survivor Bias. If you work hard, everything will be peachy-keen OK and nothing will go wrong. If you work hard and fail, you deserve only scorn.
For me, it was, never mind if you work so hard that ignored everything else, worked so hard to not get beaten by your parents, worked so hard to get mastery of material -- I must be still too lazy or stupid since I failed.
I don't know what it is that I don't have that everyone else does. I'm likely to not ever know.
This is a topic that I'm very familiar with so that's why I wrote a lot about it and sound perhaps a little crazy.
[+] [-] bokonist|13 years ago|reply
However, it does not follow that "everyone can be a computer programmer for Google" or "everyone can be a professional quarterback." If you want to make it to a high-level in a high paying or high status field, you must compete against other people who are also practicing really hard and who also have great natural talent.
Personally, I have around natural athletic ability. I play flag football, and am likely in the top 95th percentile of QB ability. When I throw the ball around with friends at a BBQ, I can hit people in stride with tight spirals. But I could never, ever be a pro-QB, or even a QB in a competitive amateur league. My body simply does not have the appropriate build, and I simply cannot build the muscle strength to make the passes needed to be a great QB.
On the flip side, I have always had an innate knack for cognitive problems, I was always that guy in math class who got A's despite barely doing homework and not studying for tests. Now another person could also get A's in that class with only mediocre natural talent by studying very hard. They might think that, "Hey, I've worked hard, I got A's, I can do anything, I can get a job at Google some day." But if they go into the most cognitively demanding career, they will find themselves competing against the most naturally talented people, who also now have a financial incentive to work extremely hard, and the less naturally talented people will simply not be able to compete.
I find it unfortunate and self-serving, that so there are so many commentators and intellectuals, who are above average cognitively and (likely) mediocre athletically, who assume that the other people's failings at cognitive skills are due to lack of practice or lack of sufficient schooling. Meanwhile they assume their own lack of athletic ability is due to accidents of birth.
That said, it can be very difficult to determine if your having difficultly in a subject is really due to innate talent or due to lack of practice. When I took an intro computer science course, I noticed the professor was a completely horrible teacher (and lectures are generally a horrible way to teach math, computer science or any technical subject). The textbook sucked too. The people who did well in that class already had been programming on their own during high school. The people taking the class expecting it to be an actual introductory course, who expected that if you just followed the lectures and textbooks that you would know how to do the assignment, ended up doing very poorly. Even if they worked very hard, their total hours dedicated to understanding computer science was far below that of fellow classmates.
[+] [-] brandall10|13 years ago|reply
1) You have keen analytical and writing skills, intelligence is not a lack for what you want to achieve.
2) You suffer from victim mentality being too concerned about the abilities of others while easily dismissive of your own. No matter how much/hard you work, without being able to chuck this aside, every failure will be magnified and your successes will be mitigated to an irrational degree.
The fact of the matter is the road to mastery is paved with tons of mistakes, tons of situations where you will feel like an absolute moron. You have to learn to reframe those moments and treasure them, because they are signals that you are encountering moments of true growth. Learn to compete against your own competence and not others. You don't know what they've been through to get where they are.
Whenever something seems unreasonably tough, break it down into simpler problems to digest. Hack the art of learning itself. Don't look at the same problem until you're blue in the face, change it up so that there is a measurable degree of progress.
Your blockage is more emotional than intellectual.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
I ask because I've mentored folks who have similar feelings and one thing that correlated with them was that they didn't actually enjoy learning new stuff. In particular they almost had a mental block when it came to learning something first in order to achieve a secondary goal.
One story I heard was a student who was failing English composition repeatedly. The person failing's attitude was "I have to have this to get my degree, but frankly I don't give a flying f*ck about English composition." Absolutely no amount of work, practice, tutoring, or study helped. The only thing that worked, was getting past the 'I have to do this but don't want to' attitude was to find some small way that learning composition could become an interesting thing to do.
Thus the question, and now a corollary, is there any subject area you know really well? And by "any" I mean "any" from an academic subject like Math to the back story of all the characters on "Twilight." If so how does that subject matter differ from the subject matter you aren't good at?
[+] [-] unoti|13 years ago|reply
One piece of advice that might help you: when you're trying to measure your progress, instead of looking at the people who are ahead of you all the time, sometimes look at the people who are behind you. The people who you've exceeded, who you have done better than. It's an important part of motivation that's often overlooked. (This and a bunch of other really excellent advice I got from Seneca in Letters from a Stoic.)
Also, don't give up. You've only truly failed when you quit learning or give up.
[+] [-] JesseAldridge|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cturner|13 years ago|reply
Your repeated references to hard work stood out:
There's a pattern you can fall into where you stare at the page and get stressed, and then come away hours later none the wiser but exhausted and feeling unduly virtuous from your hard but meaningless work.Hard work doesn't count for anything of itself. Only when you're pursuing effective strategies.
If you want to, you could dig up your syllabus notes or email the uni for a copy of them. Identify the topics, and see if you understand them. Get past exams out of the library and identify the topics in them. Find a mentor and go back over the stuff again until you have an easy understanding of each of the concepts.[+] [-] leviathant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namank|13 years ago|reply
Should be easy for you, working smarter is easier than working hard.
[+] [-] zubairshams|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kragen|13 years ago|reply
I mean, it's also possible you're struggling against some kind of mental handicap. But if your IQ was really 75 or something, I don't think you'd be able to write such long sentences.
[+] [-] jongraehl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tichy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tycho|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namank|13 years ago|reply
I would:
-start a blog.
-start working on a personal project in another hacker or designer. Find some at some mailing list near you.
[+] [-] zubairshams|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] chimpinee|13 years ago|reply
The author rightly belittles the concept of talent but it seems to have found its way in through the back door: “Two of our four turned out to be musically gifted and before long were shuttled out of Suzuki to hard-core classical violin teachers.”
(Talent is just the way we describe people who have some competence in a field which is inexplicit; nobody knows why they are good, otherwise one could learn it.)
Another thing to point out is that apparently none of the children have developed careers in music or composition (yet), so it remains to be seen if they have any creativity intact.
Why might they have lost creativity in adulthood? Because of childhood coercion. Those long hours of practice -- children don’t do that without being forced. It can be subtle, such as the worry of a slight loss of parental affection, sibling rivalry encouraged, etc.
Children will play for hours on end and this is where true learning occurs. Some children are bright enough to make their ‘practice’ a form of play, so they manage to improve despite appearances.
Creative adults continue to play, it’s just that the subject matter appears more serious. But progress remains open-ended, with stops and starts, switching between activities, and unpredictable (not ‘guaranteed’) results. The unpredictable nature of achievement follows from a law of epistemology: we can’t predict future knowledge (including our own).
[+] [-] tokenadult|13 years ago|reply
http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
". . . . In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.
"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. . . . "
In "How do Do What You Love" (January 2006),
http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
he wrote,
"Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments early on, when they're trying to find their niche.
"Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well."
And in "The Anatomy of Determination" (December 2009),
http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html
he wrote,
"In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination—partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent."
Mathematician Hung-hsi Wu wrote an article more than a decade ago, Basic skills versus conceptual understanding: A bogus dichotomy in mathematics education, American Educator, Fall 1999, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 14-19, 50-52,
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/wu.pdf
to point out that any distinction between understanding a topic and having basic skills in the topic is a "bogus dichotomy." The two go together like two sides of the same coin.
[+] [-] _nato_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mershad|13 years ago|reply
One mantra tossed around of late is "_perfect_ practice makes perfect," meaning not to never make mistakes, but to be conscious and analytical when you do.
[+] [-] marcamillion|13 years ago|reply
I am often ridiculed by my wife, and I always wondered where I got this from. This trait is something I want to teach my kids, but I never knew quite how.
Until I read this article and it reminded me that I too did the Suzuki program, into classical violin after. I remembered practicing a lot - and I remember getting frustrated frequently.
I also remember the short burst of adrenaline I would feel, and the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment, when I get that 'trill' just perfect or when I perfected my vibrato.
Even though I have since put down the violin, I feel the same accomplishment when I tackle something hard (in programming) and I eventually figure it out.
I need to remember to thank my parents for insisting that I keep at the violin, even when I was very frustrated and wanted to rage quit.
[+] [-] kiba|13 years ago|reply
It doesn't matters if you have an IQ of 200 when you're born several thousand years too early. You never make use of your genius, except to make lot of babies and become the chief of your tribe, if you're lucky.
Granted, there's lot of people who are innately smarter than you, but chance are they're also stuck in various positions of life where they can't become a genius like a job at wal-mart, or having children too early, or is stuck in a hut in a third world country somewhere.
If you're reading this, chance are you have the money and the time to rearrange your environment and your behaviors to achieve mastery. The hard part is figuring out how to do that and how to sustain that.
[+] [-] sown|13 years ago|reply
If you're in a stone age tribe, that is probably the most important thing you can do. Just because some stone age chieftain can't figure out how to smelt iron doesn't mean that they failed or are wasting their talents.
[+] [-] tchock23|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cafard|13 years ago|reply
That said, the best do work damned hard.
[+] [-] andremendes|13 years ago|reply
This almost hurt me phisically.
[+] [-] thinkling|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck...
[+] [-] nadam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] argumentum|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osivertsson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornporn|13 years ago|reply
Not everybody has the ability to practice this hard.
[+] [-] dschiptsov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliott99|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Gigablah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tubbo|13 years ago|reply
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