Category: Science

Here’s Funtwo (real name Jeong-Hyun Lim), the 25-year-old South Korean guitar virtuoso whose version of Pachelbel’s Canon has been viewed 58 million times on YouTube.

I love this video for two reasons: 1) it rocks; 2)  the mindset behind it. You would assume that Funtwo – whose playing has been compared to Hendrix and Django Reinhardt—would possess a little bravado. But it’s the opposite.

In fact, as Funtwo makes clear in this NY Times article by Virginia Heffernan, the very reason he posted it was to get suggestions on the mistakes he was making (that’s also one of the reasons he didn’t show his face). “I think play is more significant than appearance,” he said. “Therefore I want the others to focus on my fingering and sound.”

He’s still that way. “I am always thinking that I’m not that good,” Funtwo said “…Some said my vibrato was quite sloppy. And I agree that so these days I’m doing my  best to improve my vibrato skill.”

The conventional way to interpret Funtwo’s mindset would be to draw a moral lesson: to point out that Funtwo is a humble, virtuous guy. But in this case the lesson isn’t just moral—it’s neural. Funtwo’s mindset – attuned to errors, ever-reaching—is precisely the mindset that grows and hones skill circuits.

Meet 23-year-old Danny MacAskill of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is, as one commentator put it, ridonkulously talented. The sheer creativity is off the charts. (Who else would do the ride-atop-the-spiky fence thing?)

What’s cooler is to think about how MacAskill built those circuits.  

We’re seeing the result of 12 years of hard, deep practice (see this BBC article for details). MacAskill practiced several hours each day (10,000 hours, anyone?). Most of all, however, this kid is extremely skilled at persistence.

That sounds weird–to be skilled at persistence. But consider this: for the opening trick–the ride along the spiky fence–MacAskill practiced for eight hours before he got it right. Eight hours.

How many people would do that? You’d think after seven hours and 45 minutes, most of us might have said, “You know, this one might not be possible after all.”) Persistence is a skill circuit like any other–one that MacAskill has practiced a lot.  

This reminds me of the time I was about seven and my brothers and I built a plywood jump at the bottom of our driveway. I had a red Schwinn with a sparkly silver seat–hot stuff. The first jump I caught maybe four whole inches of air, and was pretty sure I was going to be the next Evel Knievel. The second jump I biffed pretty bad, nearly got hit by a car, and then we decided to play in the backyard instead. Persistently, I’m sure.

Good article here from the Sunday Times that gives some useful background on the world’s newest and greatest talent discovery. The takeaway: Susan Boyle has been singing a loo-oong time, and has worked extremely hard to develop her voice (see this article for more on that). I was really interested in the part where her coach said, “She always had a vision of herself as a singer.” It sounds like such a small thing — but it’s HUGE. 

We can hear the journey in this early track – Cry Me a River, reportedly from ten years ago. This performance to many ears is even better than what she sang on “Britain’s Got Talent” – shows that she’s got some serious range as a performer and no small motivation. Singing to a cat as a talent-accelerator: who knew?

Here’s a random-seeming question that pops up in the news from time to time: why do so many successful businesspeople have dyslexia?

A partial list:

• Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s
• Charles R. Schwab, founder of Charles Schwab Corp.
• Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways
• John T. Chambers, CEO of Cisco
•  Craig McCaw, founder of McCaw Cellular and Clearwire
•  Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop

A 2007 study by Julie Logan of the Cass Business School of London showed that 35 percent of the entrepreneurs she surveyed were dyslexic – a percentage she called “staggering.” (Dyslexia runs at 10 percent in the general population.) But why?

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Logan said in the New York Times. “…Dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

“Compensatory skills” is the same term physiologists use to describe the principle through which muscles get stronger – when we push them to their limits during exercise, they compensate by getting stronger. What Logan seems to be saying is that for this group, skills work exactly like muscles – their entrepreneurial circuits work well because dyslexia has forced them to practice and strengthen precisely those skills.

For instance, in this article, movie producer Hunt Lowry (“A Time to Kill,” “Last of the Mohicans”) talks about how he was unable to tie his shoes as a second-grader.

“I was Tom Sawyer very quickly on,” (Lowry) says. “It took a little bit of diplomacy to teach kids in second and third grade to tie my shoes and make it seem like it was a good deal.”

It’s an interesting connection, especially when you consider the skill set needed to be a successful entrepreneur: you have to attack problems and solve them. You have to be persistent. You have to be a good verbal communicator. You have to be able to read people quickly, delegate well, figure out who you can trust – all skills that would be developed in a motivated person who was prevented from using the normal communication channels of reading and writing.

In this light, Branson, Schwab, Chambers, Orfalea and the rest are not succeeding in spite of their dyslexia; they are succeeding directly because of it. Their condition is not just a disability; in fact it is also a kind of lever through which they have developed the skills that truly matter in their professions – an irony they seem to realize.

As Orfalea, who says he also has attention deficit disorder, puts it, “I think everybody should have dyslexia and A.D.D.”

I can’t quite get there. But what is true is that when it comes to developing skill, the human brain is amazingly adaptable.

I also wonder: what other disability-skill connections are out there to be found?

Update: here’s a good article on that question. (Thanks, Monica!)

With the Masters golf tournament starting up, it’s a good time to go ask a question. We know how amazingly talented Tiger Woods is right now. But what was he like when he started out?  When he was a little kid? 

Fortunately, there’s an answer:

The answer is, he’s pretty good. A decent swing, under lots of pressure.

On the other hand, though, Little Tiger’s not noticeably better than this equally young kid, or any of the dozens of other equally young kids (search “baby Tiger Woods on YouTube for a sampler). 

 

I think the thing to take away from these images isn’t the skill of Tiger’s swing—which, while good, isn’t that different from other similar-age kids who’ve had coaching (particularly when you consider that Earl Woods had introduced his son to golf before he could walk, and coached him well—to say nothing of the chutzpah to show off his son on national television).

The element that makes it different isn’t skill; it’s emotion. The moment happens about 25 seconds in – after Tiger hits the shot, he stares at the ball, watching the result of his  swing, completely oblivious to everything around him (no easy task, considering the seventies fashions). It’s not just focus or concentration. This tiny kid is utterly enthralled and absorbed by the physical act of hitting a golf ball and seeing where it goes. He wants to hit it again. And again. 

The look brings to mind a passage from a New Yorker story by Malcolm Gladwell (no small talent himself):

Before he was two years old, it is said, Wayne Gretzky watched hockey games on television, enraptured, and slid his stockinged feet on the linoleum in imitation of the players, then cried when the game was over, because he could not understand how something so sublime should have to come to an end. This was long before Gretzky was any good at the game itself, or was skilled in any of its aspects, or could create even the smallest of chunks. But what he had was what the physical genius must have before any of the other layers of expertise fall into place: he had stumbled onto the one thing that, on some profound aesthetic level, made him happy.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has said that all parenting advice can be distilled to two things: 1) Pay attention to what your kids stare at; 2) Praise them for their effort.

Dweck is talking about exactly this kind of stare – the moment a kid gets completely lost in a task, when they’re enraptured in a way that defies rationality.  That emotion fuels the effort that, over time (10,000 hours), builds the kind of skill circuits that produce a Tiger or a Gretzky.

This week, sports commentators will be explaining Tiger’s success by talking a lot about his “determination” and “will to win” – which is true enough. But beneath that – and far more important – is something even more primal and unconscious: a little kid who fell in love with a game. 

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Ray LaMontagne. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s a folk/soul singer from Maine who’s gotten big lately because of his amazing voice.  He’s also got  something I can’t resist – a great story. It has three parts:

I: Young Ray has a hardscrabble childhood, never plays music at all. He gets a dead-end job in a shoe factory.

II: In his early twenties, Ray wakes up one day, hears a song on the radio, and has an epiphany that he should become a singer-songwriter.

III: He goes out and actually does it. With zero experience, in one of the all-time musical Cinderella stories, he trains himself to sing, play guitar, write songs, and becomes a big star.  Leno, Letterman, Rolling Stone, awards, etc.

So here’s what LaMontagne sounds like:

[audio:http://thetalentcode.com/wp-content/uploads/01-you-are-the-best-thing.mp3]

And here’s the interesting part. Apparently he did most of his practicing by himself, in his apartment. He didn’t have much money, so he just got a bunch of old record and practiced by imitating them. The old records he bought were those of Otis Redding and Ray Charles, among others. He trained this way for several years, then started performing at coffee houses (several more years). LaMontange says he was terrible at the start, then got better. “I’m a really fast learner,” he told Roster magazine.

First of all, thanks for reading. I’ll be coming here from time to time to write about stuff connected to the ideas and stories within The Talent Code– and likely lots of stuff that’s not so connected. (more…)