Seriously. How many people think they‘ve missed their opportunity tobe a musician, or an expert golfer, or even a chess grand masterbecause they didn‘t start when they were young? Or because they simply lacked natural talent?Those people are (mostly) wrong. According to some brain scientists,almost anyone can develop world-class (or at least top expertise)abilities in things for which they aren‘t physically impaired.Apparently God-given talent, natural "gifts", and geneticpredispositions just aren‘t all they‘re cracked up to be. Or at leastnot in the way most of us always imagined. It turns out that ratherthan being naturally gifted at music or math or chess or whatever, asuperior performer most likely has a gift for concentration,dedication, and a simple desire to keep getting better. In theory,again, anyone willing to do what‘s required to keep getting better WILL get better.
Maybe the "naaturally talented artist" was simply the one who practiced a hell of a lot more. Or rather, a hell of a lot more deliberately. Dr. K. Anders Ericsson,professor of psychology at Florida State University, has spent most ofhis 20+ year career on the study of genuises, prodigies, and superiorperformers. In the book The New Brain (it was on my coffee table) Richard Restak quotes Ericsson as concluding:
"For the superior performer the goal isn‘t just repeating thesame thing again and again but achieving higher levels of control overevery aspect of their performance. That‘s why they don‘t find practiceboring. Each practice session they are working on doing somethingbetter than they did the last time."
So it‘s not just how long they practice, it‘s how they practice. Basically, it comes down to something like this:
Most of us want to practice the things we‘re already good at, andavoid the things we suck at. We stay average or intermediate amateursforever.
Yet the research says that if we were willing to put in more hours, and to use those hours to practice the things that aren‘t so fun, we could become good. Great. Potentially brilliant.We need, as Restak refers to it, "a rage to master." That dedication tomastery drives the potential expert to focus on the most subtle aspectsof performance, and to never be satisfied. There is always more toimprove on, and they‘re willing to work on the less fun stuff. Restakquotes Sam Snead, considered one of the top five golfers of thetwentieth century, as saying:
"I know it‘s a lot more fun to stand on the practice tee and ripyour driver than it is to chip and ptch, or practice sand shots withsand flying back in your face, but it all comes back to the question ofhow much you‘re willing to pay for success."
There‘s much more to the brain science around this topic, ofcourse--I‘m just doing the highlights. And a lot of the research isnew, made possible today by how easy it is for researchers to get timewith an fMRI or PET scan. And I stretched just a little... there issome thought that to be, literally, THE best in the world at chess, orthe violin, or math, or programming, or golf, etc. you might indeedneed that genetic special something. But... that‘s to be THEbest. The research does suggest that whatever that special sauce is, itaccounts for only that last little 1% that pushes someone into theworld champion status. The rest of us--even without the specialsauce--could still become world (or at least national) class experts,if we do the time, and do it the right way.
Where this ties into passionate users is with the suck threshold andkick-ass (aka "passion") threshold. Your users will typically fall intoone of the three categories in the graphic: expert, amateur, ordrop-out. The drop-outs decide that during that "I suck at this" phase,it isn‘t worth continuing. They give up. Is that something you can workon? Do you know what your attrition rate is?
But the most troubling--and where we have the most leverage--is with the amateur who is satisfied with where they are.These are the folks who you overhear saying, "Yes, I know there‘s abetter way to do this thing, but I already know how to do it this[less efficient, less powerful] way and it‘s easy for me to just keepdoing it like that." In other words, they made it past the suckthreshold, but now they don‘t want to push for new skills andcapabilities. They don‘t want to suck again. But that meansthey‘ll never get past the kick-ass threshold where there‘s a muchgreater chance they‘ll become passionate about it. The further up thatcapability curve they are, the higher-res the user experience is!
Can we help make it easier for them to continue on the path to becoming expert? Remember, being better is better.Whatever you‘re better at becomes more fun, more satisfying, a richerexperience, and it leads to more flow. This is what we‘re trying to dofor our users.
Oh yes, about that never too late thing... most of us can kiss thatOlympic ice skating medal good-bye. And at 5‘ 4", my basketball careeris probably hopeless. But think about this... actress Geena Davis nearly qualified for the US Olympic archery team in a sport she took up at the age of 40, less than three years before the Olympic tryouts.
And if the neuroscientists are right, you can create new braincells--by learning (and not being stuck in a dull cubicle)--atvirtually any age. Think about it... if you‘re 30 today, if youtake up the guitar tomorrow, you‘ll have been playing for TWENTY yearsby the time you‘re 50. You‘ll be kicking some serious guitar butt. Andif you‘re 50 today, there‘s no reason you can‘t be kicking guitar buttat 70. What are you waiting for?
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