Talent or 10,000 Hours of Practice?

According to Malcolm Gladwell's in his book Outliers, he identifies 10,000 hours as being the minimum requirement for becoming seriously good at whatever you do based on various research which has been done.

Gladwell highlights the need to put in the hours as a really important explanation of why some people become very successful.

Outliers is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. It's about unpicking the explanations behind people who have produced exceptional results. Note I didn't say that the people are exceptional. That's the point of the book. Too many times people who have done well are described as 'very smart' or 'very ambitious'. Gladwell's point is that there are lots of talented and/or smart and/or ambitious people who don't do exceptionally well.

Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again."


Have you put in your 10,000 hours?

Interesting Art Book

The Artist's Eyes is a celebration of vision, of art and of the relationship between the two. Artists see the world in physical terms as we all do. However, they may be more perceptive than most in interpreting the complexity of how and what they see.

In this fascinating juxtaposition of science and art history, ophthalmologists Michael Marmor and James G. Ravin examine the role of vision and eye disease in art. They focus on the eye, where the process of vision originates and investigate how aspects of vision have inspired - and confounded - many of the world's most famous artists. Why do Georges Seurat's paintings appear to shimmer? How come the eyes in certain portraits seem to follow you around the room? Are the broad brushstrokes in Monet's Water Lilies due to cataracts? Could van Gogh's magnificent yellows be a result of drugs? How does eye disease affect the artistic process? Or does it at all?

The Artist's Eyes considers these questions and more. It is a testament to the triumph of artistic talent over human vulnerability and a tribute to the paintings that define eras, the artists who made them and the eyes through which all of us experience art.

About the Author

Michael F. Marmor is one of today's leading experts in retinal disease and retinal physiology and the author of more than 150 scientific papers. He is Professor and former Chair of Ophthalmology in the Stanford University School of Medicine and has taught "The Eye and Implications of Vision" in the Stanford undergraduate Program in Human Biology. James G. Ravin has studied the effects of illness on artists since he attended the University of Michigan Medical School. His investigations have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and have been featured on TV other national media. Dr. Ravin's special interest is in nineteenth-century European painting.

Sounds fascinating!

Back to the Drawing Board

It has been about a week since blogging and painting. My new canvas, my house, has been consuming my creativity.

I am looking forward to setting up my studio, but must wait until the floor is done which I hope will be this week. I have been missing painting and tonight will create a mandala with my traveling set of watercolor pencils.

In the meantime I have been reading a fun book: The Paintings of Henry Miller; Paint As You Like And Die Happy. It is a book that is out of print and first published in 1960. It is the same Henry Miller the famous writer.

Painting, for Henry, was more than an enthusiasm. It was a passion, yet he was curiously self-effacing about this side of his life. He painted for the sheer pleasure of picking up the brush "to see what happens." During his lean Big Sur years, he often spent more time painting than writing and watercolors became his economic salvation. He freely bartered them for food, clothing, and anything else he needed - a cord of wood, a tank of gas. The beauty of it was he assigned no denomination and exchanged them for anything from a song to a month's groceries. Value was a matter of the moment - and the heart. In order to create the book, the author had to find Henry's art.

The paintings in the book are organized by decades along with three essays. I will share more in the next blog. Stay tuned........


Henry Miller