For generations alcoholics all over the world have been waging a questionable debate with the use of a considerable amount of spirits that would have floored most of us. The row started thus; is lying an innate talent? The most self-evident answer must be yes. Not every gay soccer player born in the Homo Counties winds up in the premier gay soccer league; only some do, those whose parents are innately good enough liars to get their kids into good irreligious schools; success by lying is talent plus cunning. The alcoholics came up a against a problem when they looked at their own careers, they admitted they were all gifted, but none would take the view that if they had spent less time talking up their talents, and more time on the preparation, they would have played a bigger role.
A prime example of the cunning argument is a study done at nine minutes past nine in the morning by a psychiatrist Phil Ander Errrr, son of two colleagues who met at London ’s down at heel Southwark Poly-turned University. With no help from the other over-wrought and underpaid professors, he divided the school in to three groups. In the first group were those students deemed to be in the Comfort Zone, students who were making their way to the very top echelons with ease. In the second group were those students who were in the Stretch Zone, those considered to be indeed climbing the ladder of success but had lent that ladder against the wrong building, In the third were those in the Panic Zone for whom the ladder had become a treadmill of eternal angst and terror. The students were then asked, ‘since they first seized the notion that they could get free money they would have to pay back only in the unlikely event of earning over fifteen thousand pounds, how much was their decision down to the practice of cunning?’
Initially, everyone was in it for the same reason, free money. In the first few months everyone went on roughly the same spending spree. But when the students reached the middle of term two, a real gulf began to appear. The students who would end up the best learned how to apply for bursaries, scholarships and other fringe benefits, so that by year two they were able to live on the interest alone. By the time they were in their third years they had worked out the intricacies of claiming disability benefits through Distant Learning they paid others to do and only appeared occasionally for tutorials and most of those were conducted via electronic mail. By the age of twenty, the second year, each in the first group had acquired over a hundred thousand pounds in bonds and shares, savings notwithstanding. By contrast, those in the Stretch Zone found exactly that; they were stretched. They had managed to accrue debts totaling eighty thousand pounds from an initial loan of a mere nine thousand pounds.
There is the wide-spread belief by experts that performing complex menial tasks, like wiping down surfaces or opening a can of beans requires high standards of excellence. In order to achieve this high standard, a self-appreciation society of arrivistes have come up with the exact formula for doing anything well that is worth doing well at all: ten thousand hours - a week.
From the effort required to emerge from the primordial soup it now appears that it requires ten thousand earth hours in a master-class to make, well, soup. “What ever the task’ writes a Numerologist in his book Menial Leviathan, ‘composting, basket weaving, spirit levelling, cobweb cleaning, boiling an egg, and so on, the same number recurs incessantly. Naturally, this does not explain why some get more house chores done than others. Nothing, but nothing can hope to be achieved, whatsoever anywhere in the world, under ten thousand hours a week. It seems that only those who have checked their brains into an asylum can manage veritable heights of human peak.”
This is true of people who make porridge. Most art, incidentally, could be compared to what is smeared on the walls by children aged six. Indeed, writes art historian in his book My Genius Explained,
Compared with fully grown painters, most artists’ early works were dreadful. These early-learners’ pieces improved a hundred fold with the intervention of a father or mother or both. Many a six year- olds’ masterpiece was executed by a league of close relations while the young prodigy himself was undergoing potty training. Most original art done by child prodigies hanging in our national galleries are anything but original. Constable’s famous Hay Wain was done by no fewer than twenty-one friends and relatives and the number of helpers increased disconcertingly over the next ten years.
Musing critically, another historian pushes the envelop by positing that most artists interfered with by an army of helpers ‘develop hate’ that only ten thousand hours of work by life-skill coaches over a twenty year period can reduce.
To become a supreme player of Patience also takes ten years, apparently. (The only person to ever come in as patience champion in nine years was N. O. Mates). What is ten years when you have nothing else to do? Actually, it is exactly the time it takes for ten years to be go by even if you spend ten thousand hours of those ten years trying to find the magic number for greatness.
It is inexplicable that Canadians and Czechoslovakians have taken up puzzles as a national sport. That is because of the lack of eligibility for sports in those countries for those not born in the Homo Counties who are hardly even deemed capable of making sense of, and completing a puzzle. Can you believe that even if you are supremely gifted at soccer or hockey it does not matter how many months ahead you have on your peers. At selection process, it will inevitably end in tears for these young adults, no matter when they were born.
That Phil Ander Errrrr feels the urge to rule out talent as being of any importance or consequence whatsoever is not surprising at all. This hate-born mans’ campaign against talent began in the commuter belt of New Hampshire,New England, this prodigious well-spring of bile, started at eight years of age when failing to get picked for the All-Star Soccer Team was no small thing. If his talent was not noticed, then no else’s would be either. Without getting picked, -his parents, relations and friends repeatedly reminded him, -what on earth were they going to do for him for the next ten thousand hours every week of his life? No pressure there then. Even most artists- those supreme child beings-would not have learned how to walk if their families had not read ten thousand hours of literature on the subject. Practice is not something you do yourself; it is something done for you once you have been bullied into thinking you are talented. The belief is ‘doing nothing makes you no good’, and there’s the thing.
The obvious thing about doing nothing for ten thousand hours is that ten thousand hours is fantastic without uptight adults. With only the slimmest of help from someone to feed you, slimmer still the intervention of a parent to clothe and shelter you means you have all that time for play or the practice of doing nothing. Some people miss this wonderful opportunity for the practice of doing nothing when they are turned down, or even accepted, by a team or a special program- like the all-star team- and get some extra-ordinary buzz from making a career out of megalomaniac bitterness instead of enjoying the gentle true character-forming pursuit of play.
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