The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (9 page)

Over the following three decades, Ericsson and colleagues invigorated the largely dormant field of expertise studies in order to test this idea, examining high achievement from every possible angle
: memory, cognition, practice, persistence, muscle response, mentorship, innovation, attitude, response to failure, and on and on. They studied golfers, nurses, typists, gymnasts, violinists, chess players, basketball players, and computer programmers.

They also examined many of the vivid historical myths of talent and genius, poking through the clichés to see if any clear-eyed lessons could be drawn. Standing above all other giftedness legends, of course, was that of the mystifying boy genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, alleged to be an instant master performer at age three and a brilliant composer at age five. His breathtaking musical gifts were said to have sprouted from nowhere, and his own father promoted him as the “miracle which God let be born in Salzburg.”

The reality about Mozart turns out to be far more interesting and far less mysterious. His early achievements—while very impressive, to be sure—actually make good sense considering his extraordinary upbringing. And his later undeniable genius turns out to be a wonderful advertisement for the power of process.

Mozart was bathed in music from well before his birth, and his childhood was quite unlike any other.
His father, Leopold Mozart, was an intensely ambitious Austrian musician
, composer, and teacher who had gained wide acclaim with the publication of the instruction book
Versuch einer grüendlichen Violinschule
(
A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing
). For a while, Leopold had dreamed of being a great composer himself. But on becoming a father, he began to shift his ambitions away from his own unsatisfying career and onto his children—perhaps, in part, because his career had already hit a ceiling: he was vice-kapellmeister (assistant music director); the top spot would be unavailable for the foreseeable future.

Uniquely situated, and desperate to make some sort of lasting mark on music, Leopold began his family musical enterprise even before Wolfgang’s birth, focusing first on his daughter Nannerl. Leopold’s elaborate teaching method derived in part from the Italian instructor Giuseppe Tartini and included highly nuanced techniques:

[Leopold] advocated the so-called “Geminiani grip
” for greater left hand facility and good intonation and … recommended that each finger be left in place until required to move—a procedure which would also have contributed to a more effective legato … he placed emphasis on the freedom of the right elbow and hand, stressing the need to keep the bowing arm low but recommending that the violin be tilted towards the E-string side—thereby allowing for a freer wrist action.

As a court composer, Leopold Mozart was an ordinary creature of his place and era. As a music teacher, though, he was centuries ahead of his time. Eventually, his focus on technique and his impulse to teach very young children would be widely adopted by Shinichi Suzuki and other twentieth-century instructors. But this was quite rare in the eighteenth century; only a handful of families in the world could have conceivably enjoyed the same level of in-family attention, expertise, and ambition. With first-rate home instruction and exceptional amounts of practice, Nannerl Mozart became, over the course of a few years, a dazzling pianist and violinist—
for her age
. (As a rule, child prodigies are not adult-level innovators but masters of technical skill; their spellbinding quality comes out of natural comparison with other children’s skills, not because they truly compare to the best adult performers in their field.)

Then came Wolfgang
. Four and a half years younger than his sister, the tiny boy got everything Nannerl got—only much earlier and even more intensively.
Literally from his infancy, he was the classic younger sibling soaking up his big sister’s singular passion
. As soon as he was able, he sat beside her at the harpsichord and mimicked notes that she played. Wolfgang’s first pings and plucks were just that. But with a fast-developing ear, deep curiosity, and a tidal wave of family know-how, he was able to click into an accelerated process of development.

As Wolfgang became fascinated with playing music, his father became fascinated with his toddler son’s fascination—and was soon instructing him with an intensity that far eclipsed his efforts with Nannerl.
Not only did Leopold openly give preferred attention to Wolfgang over his daughter; he also made a career-altering decision to more or less shrug off his official duties in order to build an even more promising career for his son
. This was not a quixotic adventure. Leopold’s calculated decision made reasonable financial sense in two ways: First, Wolfgang’s youth made him a potentially lucrative attraction. Second, as a male, Wolfgang had a promising, open-ended future musical career. As a woman in eighteenth-century Europe, Nannerl was severely limited in this regard.

From the age of three, then, Wolfgang had an entire family driving him to excel with a powerful blend of instruction, encouragement, and constant practice
. He was expected to be the pride and financial engine of the family, and he did not disappoint. In his performances from London to Mannheim between the ages of six and eight, he drew good receipts and high praise from noble patrons. He could play rehearsed minuets or sight-read études he had never seen before, could play the clavier with a thick cloth covering his hands and the keys, could improvise a coherent piece from a suggested theme.

Still, like his sister, the young Mozart was never a truly great adult-level instrumentalist. He was highly advanced for his age, but not compared with skillful adult performers. The tiny Mozart dazzled royalty and was at the time unusual for his early abilities. But
today many young children exposed to Suzuki and other rigorous musical programs play as well as the young Mozart did—and some play even better
. Inside the world of these intensive, child-centered programs, such achievements are now straightforwardly regarded by parents and teachers for what they are: the combined consequence of early exposure, exceptional instruction, constant practice, family nurturance, and a child’s intense will to learn. Like a brilliant soufflé, all of these ingredients must be present in just the right quantity and mixed with just the right timing and flair. Almost anything can go wrong. The process is far from predictable and never in anyone’s complete control.

It is a blessing for any person, at any age, to be able to bring grace and beauty into other people’s lives. But such feats among children tend to cloud the judgment of adult observers, leading to what neuroscientist and musicologist Daniel J. Levitin calls “the circular logic of talent.”
“When we say that someone is talented
,” he says, “we think we mean that they have some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after they have made significant achievements.”

Levitin is exactly right. A profound ambiguity swirls around the word, which perpetually confuses the issue for anyone using it. “Talent” can be used to describe your daughter’s strong interest in an activity, or what you regard as her undeveloped promise, or her developing skill, or her unexplained advantage over peers. In a culture where linguistic precision is paramount, where we have at least twenty-five different words for “delicious” and thirteen for “ridicule,” such ambiguity is the best possible indicator of a real gap in our understanding of this powerful force in our lives. Aside from love, talent may be the most important intangible in all of human society. It is a linguistic apparition.

But what if the intangible could be made tangible? Over the last three decades, Anders Ericsson’s research army has aimed to do just that. Like all good scientists, their approach has been to break down athletic, intellectual, and artistic achievements into tiny, measurable components in order to determine what separated the mediocre from the good, the good from the very good, the very good from the extraordinary. They’ve interviewed, taped, tabulated, and scanned. They’ve measured eye movements, muscle response, breaths, swings, strokes, torque, ventricular function, white matter, gray matter, and memory. They’ve watched people hone skills, or not, over many years’ time. Over time, a picture has emerged—not nearly complete, but vivid enough to begin to see a process, to actually witness the tiny moving parts driving individual improvement. For those on their way to greatness, several themes consistently come to light:

1. Practice changes your body
   . Researchers have recorded a constellation of physical changes (occurring in direct response to practice) in the muscles, nerves, hearts, lungs, and brains of those showing profound increases in skill level in any domain.
   

2. Skills are specific
   . Individuals becoming great at one particular skill do not serendipitously become great at other skills. Chess champions can remember hundreds of intricate chess positions in sequence but can have a perfectly ordinary memory for everything else. Physical and intellectual changes are ultraspecific responses to particular skill requirements.
   

3. The brain drives the brawn
   . Even among athletes, changes in the brain are arguably the most profound, with a vast increase in precise task knowledge, a shift from conscious analysis to intuitive thinking (saving time and energy), and elaborate self-monitoring mechanisms that allow for constant adjustments in real time.
   

4. Practice style is crucial
   . Ordinary practice, where your current skill level is simply being reinforced, is not enough to get better. It takes a special kind of practice to force your mind and body into the kind of change necessary to improve.
   

5. Short-term intensity cannot replace long-term commitment
   . Many crucial changes take place over long periods of time. Physiologically, it’s impossible to become great overnight.
   

Across the board, these last two variables—practice style and practice time—emerged as universal and critical. From Scrabble players to dart players to soccer players to violin players, it was observed that the uppermost achievers not only spent significantly more time in solitary study and drills, but also exhibited a consistent (and persistent) style of preparation that Ericsson came to call “deliberate practice.” First introduced in a 1993
Psychological Review
article, the notion of deliberate practice went far beyond the simple idea of hard work. It conveyed a method of continual skill improvement.
“Deliberate practice is a very special form of activity
that differs from mere experience and mindless drill,” explains Ericsson. “Unlike playful engagement with peers, deliberate practice is not inherently enjoyable. It … does not involve a mere execution or repetition of already attained skills but repeated attempts
to
reach beyond one’s current level
which is associated with
frequent failures
. Aspiring performers therefore concentrate on improving specific aspects by engaging in practice activities designed to change and refine particular mediating mechanisms, requiring problem solving and successive refinement with feedback.”

In other words, it is practice that doesn’t take no for an answer; practice that perseveres; the type of practice where the individual keeps raising the bar of what he or she considers success.

How does deliberate practice actually improve one’s skills? In a nutshell, our muscles and brain regions adapt to the demands that we make of them. “Frequent intense engagement in certain types of practice activities,” writes Ericsson, “is shown to induce physiological strain which causes biochemical changes that stimulate growth and transformation of cells, which in turn leads to associated improved adaptations of physiological systems and the brain.”

Recall Eleanor Maguire’s 1999 brain scans of London cabbies, which revealed greatly enlarged representation in the brain region that controls spatial awareness
. The same holds for any specific task being honed; the relevant brain regions adapt accordingly.

For deliberate practice to work, the demands have to be serious and sustained. Simply playing lots of chess or soccer or golf isn’t enough. Simply taking lessons from a wonderful teacher is not enough. Simply wanting it badly enough is not enough. Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability. It requires a constant self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again.

It also requires enormous, life-altering amounts of time—a daily grinding commitment to becoming better. In the long term, the results can be highly satisfying. But in the short term, from day to day and month to month, there’s nothing particularly fun about the process or the substantial sacrifices involved. In studies, Ericsson found a clear distinction between leisure players, who tend to enjoy themselves casually much of the time, and dedicated achievers, who become glued to the gritty process of getting better: