I really enjoy reading "Seed" and "New Scientist" for daily insights like this. The broader question to me is about motiviation and upbringing. I was brought up believing that certain people were just "gifted" in certain areas. I kind of always kept looking for what I was "gifted" in. How different would it have been if I had instead been told that to acheive mastery in anything just applies focus and practice (as all of the new research points to).

Tiger Woods is not necessarily a great golfer because he was gifted. He worked harder for it than anyone around him and had people help him understand how to work through his hurdles.

I'd love to move towards a culture of mentorship where you can explore all of your interests with mentors who help you get better in your chosen areas.

Quoted: New research shows that when women believe they are genetically bad at math, the belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

An absolutely wonderful article from the September 2006 issue of "Seed" on "How We Know." The basic concept is that people elarn from doing - always. Extrapolating from there and showing concret examples from education, business, and the arts - there is something useful in here for everyone.

Quoted: According to Ericsson, this is how elite performers always practice. It is the secret trick of their talent, the way they become the best. Instead of treating practice as separate from the learning process--doing is what you do when you are done learning--they constantly find ways to integrate learning into their doing process, and the payoff is immense. The brain is designed to learn in a very particular way, consistently favoring the concrete over the abstract, the practical over the theoretical. If something can't be done, then we probably aren't interested in learning about it. The individuals and organizations that take advantage of this psychological principle are the ones that excel, getting the most out of themselves and their charges. If people can learn the right way--algebra on the subway, practice sessions and factory floors transformed into experiences that broaden the mind--neuroscience indicates there is little the mind can't accomplish. But if we remain ignorant of Dewey and the Labor-atory School, of Rizzolatti and his monkeys, of Bob Moses and newly-accelerated math students, of the winners of musical competitions and major golf championships, we will plod along in mediocrity, and fail algebra.

Quoted: Researchers (Hayes, Bloom) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Samuel Johnson thought it took longer than ten years: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."