The Creativity Post: In his new book "Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise", psychologist Anders Ericsson and journalist Robert Pool distill an impressive body of research on "mastering almost any skill." Indeed, deliberate practice can help you master new skills. Deliberate practice involves a series of techniques designed to learn efficiently and purposefully. This involves goal setting, breaking down complex tasks into chunks, developing highly complex and sophisticated representations of possible scenarios, getting out of your comfort zone, and receiving constant feedback.
6 comments:
Of course building skills within a pre-established set of rules isn't at all relevant to creativity-- the backbone of creativity is originality, meaning that repetition (or "deliberate practice", as this article coins it) is basically counterintuitive. That's not to say that creativity can't be practiced. I think any time you allow yourself to have complete free rein with your ideas or push yourself to think of something out of the box you are "practicing" being creative-- not exactly in the execution but in the process leading up to the execution. I feel like at this point no article or study on creativity is bringing up any new information or revelations. How many times can we rephrase that fact that creativity is a combination of natural talent and personality and can be applied any discipline that involves problem solving and/or general originality? It's slightly ironic that the topic that shows the least creativity is creativity itself. Maybe some day we'll learn how to stop beating a topic to death that's already been covered as much as possible.
I think that the oft-quoted 10,000 hours statistic, which always happens to make the rounds during Olympics years, is an oversimplification of what it takes to master a field. That being said, I was so glad to read this article, as it enforces many of my preexisting opinions. The author of this article sums up my feelings with one quote.
"Deliberate practice is really important for fields such as chess and instrumental performance because they rely on consistently replicable behaviors that must be repeated over and over again. But not all domains of human achievement rely on consistently replicable behaviors."
This quote expresses, on many levels, why I don't feel as bad that this whole college thing hasn't magically easier as the year progresses. When easily-quotable research is spread into the four winds by popular news outlets, misunderstandings and misinterpretations abound. It's important to realize that in a culture where creative industries are systemically misunderstood, the information widely expressed about what "mastery" even is does not apply,and attempting to "master creativity" is futile.
I really liked how encompassing this article was. Unlike other articles that we have seem before about creativity that focus on one aspect, this article put together through information about things that contribute- or don't contribute- to creativity and talent. I think we hear a lot that all it takes to be good at something is to simply practice it a lot. This is true for the beginning processes most definitely- you have to draw a lot to get confident with your strokes, you have to play an instrument a lot to hit the notes right- but creativity comes after practice and expands on the tools you have learned to make new things that other people will think are inspiring or interesting or whatever. You have to change the things you learned in new ways, pushing and pulling at the boundaries, in order to make it in a creative industry. And even then other people might not understand or appreciate what you have made so you still won’t be successful. And the article lays out things that are relevant to the creative process- personality, talent, genes, environment, and more.
"Artists are under constant pressure to surpass what they and others have done before, and it is precisely this pressure that drives them toward ever increasing originality." Thus is also the struggle of being an artist. Not a bad struggle, may I add! I feel that as an artist, you are constantly comparing your work against the work you've done before and to those whose work you admire. This article brings up a great host of many other points as well. I'm a big believer in nurture over nature for the most part and so when the article mentioned that environment is a large determining factor in being creatively productive, I sort of said "of course!" Studying the arts is for those who have been fortunate enough to not be in a place of worry (in most cases). There's this saying that goes like this: “I am a soldier so my son can be a shop-keeper and so his son can be an artist." It is a privilege and an innate need to study the arts and I think that it is influenced by the sorts of socioeconomic. political, cultural and economic circumstances you grow up in. I've always said this, and I'll say this a thousand times over. I am so grateful to be studying in the arts where I am; I am a first generation Chinese American and so my parents emigrated from China. Many Chinese children in my place did not get the same types of opportunity that I did coming from such supportive parents. I've seen many Chinese childhood friends pushed into professions like becoming a doctor, lawyer, accountant etc.
In the midst of a larger campus- wide discussion on mental health and stress culture which is particularly applicable to the school of drama, I think it’s very important to realize that hard work isn’t valuable if it comes at a price to your personal well- being. As someone who puts a lot of emphasis on dedication and time commitment to things you’re passionate about, I’ve always liked the idea of the 10,000 hours rule, that as long as you spend enough time on something you will become great at it. I love Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” which explores this phenomenon through greats such as the Beatles. I guess it never occurred to me that this “rule” wouldn’t be applicable for creative domains that don’t have set rules/ guidelines. I think this article is very interesting in it’s exploration of how and why this rule doesn’t necessarily apply to those in creative fields, since the process is often so much more disjointed and unspecific, and an artist cannot do the exact same thing over and over again until it’s perfect; that’s literally the opposite of what the point of creative thinking is.
Over a lovely dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with my boyfriend a few weeks ago, he was telling me about the psychology classes he had been taking. We were discussing the concept of talent and if someone can be inherently good at something. He said that yes, people are born talented at certain things and that they simply are not talented at other things. I disagree - and this article supports that.
All people are not born talented. No baby comes out of her mothers womb and is a master piano player. No baby is born with an inherent knowledge of geology or arithmetic. All babies are born with certain affinities for different things, which relates to this articles emphasis on personality. But the true show of talent is from its development. That's why I think the most important factor to creativity is not 10,000 hours or 10 years of practice - it is how available are those resources to you. The next Michelangelo could be alive right now, in a poor neighborhood in Chicago, where access to the resources he needs to develop his skills are unavailable. The most talented future theatrical designers in the world probably aren't at Carnegie Mellon because they couldn't afford it. Talent is directly correlated with how available the resources for developing it are.
Post a Comment