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Bummer. I was hoping to find some shortcuts to learning how to play the guitar. I've had one for 20 years now and still can't play it.
Good article, but straight from the big book of the very obvious. Were this the case, children would have to spend months deliberately studying how to play. As the author says, deliberate study is antithetical to creativity. Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. I have my best ideas usually while doing something totally unrelated.
> Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. Research shows that people who simply produce wind up producing better . So, the research disagrees with you at least somewhat. There is no creativity without production. Production, however, does not guarantee creativity.
My videos are here if you're curious: http://youtube.com/krisshamloo
I lost all respect for the article the moment the author drew difference between chess/music/sport and writing/drawing/teaching/"creativity". Frankly, the way I read it, this is just another hero-worshipping article by consultants whose main contribution to the economy involves destroying R&D and shipping jobs oversea. And it truly saddens me that Hacker News keeps this on my front page.
Why did the difference irk me?
First, find me, seriously, find me 2 basketball matches that are exactly the same. Or 2 golf days that are exactly the same. Or 2 music performances that are exactly the same. Or 2 chess matches that are exactly the same. It's ridiculous to claim that somehow chess and music playing and sports are not creative.
Second, if a person claims that somehow long period of deliberate practices do not matter on engineering, my personal opinion is that all engineers should spit at that person. Such insult! True, each engineering situation has different challenges. However, the principles of engineering (applied sciences, basically) are finite. Same things for writing or drawing. The materials & techniques (even styles!) are finite. Creativity refers to the adroitness of solving the infinite (problem space) with the finite (tools and principles). Without an intimate understanding of the finite (tools and principles), how can one bring it to bear on the infinite?
Third, most of new works are old. Let's take Shakespeare. His works are lovely and creative, no? But consider this: most of his plots are derivative (similar motifs, if not outright fully-formed plots, already existed and popular); most of his language already formed. Shakespeare created at most 10% of his language. He must gain expertise of the other 90% to show case these 10%. Similarly, think of any art or design or product or whatever creative result. Most of such art/design/whatever already follows some popular styles and employs existing and popular techniques. Creativity is only the little extra. Sure, the extra sets it apart. But without the expertise of the 90%, such "extra" can't exist.
Finally, creativity is very inefficient without deep expertise. Many people say things like "I am most creative when xyz" (popular xyz: in shower, on a walk, relaxed, reading, etc.). However, this actually means is that people come up with the 10% (see above) extra during this time. Since the person must create the other 90% to top off the little newness, without expertise, 10% will remain fantasy.
Now, I am not saying "expertise/practice is everything!" Expertise and practice are foundation of the creativity house. Even when you have solid foundation, you don't have a roof yet, and rain will still wet you. However, without foundation, you simply can't build a house. Expertise and practice are a requirement, but alone are probably not enough.
Parting words: people love stories of outsiders winning. However, why don't we talk about outsiders losing? There are vastly more of those. Let's take a simple field: web programming (1. it's appropriate here; 2. outsiders seem to look down on it). You know who built Google? Graduate students from prestige schools. You know who built Microsoft? Students with years of programming experience. You know what outsiders build? The millions of badly written websites, ready to be SQL injected or attacked by a already-patched bugs. That's outsiders' works.
I think the author of the article is describing a false dichotomy. The purpose of deliberate practice is to build the underlying knowledge that leads to the creativity and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery.
sigh Yet-another-worshipper-of-god-given-creativity. I lost all respect for the article the moment the author drew difference between chess/music/sport and writing/drawing/teaching/"creativity". Frankly, the way I read it, this is just another hero-worshipping article by consultants whose main contribution to the economy involves destroying R&D and shipping jobs oversea. And it truly saddens me that Hacker News keeps…
I think the author of the article is describing a false dichotomy. The purpose of deliberate practice is to build the underlying knowledge that leads to the creativity and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery.
I started painting 3 months ago at age 45 while in the throes of a massive personal crisis, out of a purely selfish need to express myself emotionally rather than accommodate other people. Turns out that I'm good at it, have original ideas, and am already getting unlooked-for interest from other people in loaning or purchasing my artwork. It's not that I have some tremendous natural talent; I work hard at it and when I can't paint I study, plus I had years of self-development in other parts of the arts that allowed me to develop my own aesthetic philosophy. But frankly the most valuable factor underlying this unexpected productivity is an uncharacteristic Not Giving A Shit about other peoples' feelings. Giving myself permission to be a less nice person has been an enormous boon to creativity.
I think the author of the article is describing a false dichotomy. The purpose of deliberate practice is to build the underlying knowledge that leads to the creativity and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery.
If people lived 1,000+ years people would be talking about 100,000 hours.
On the flip side, a lot of art schools have focused so much on creativity that they've lost their grounding in technique. So you get a lot of creatively profound but technically incompetent graduates.
Neither are great options. But training technique and creativity together seems like a good choice.
Only personal experience to share here, but I can comfortably say that as my technical skills increased, so too did my creativity. I was always worried as a kid that I wasn't "creative" enough to be a decent artist. But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place.