I have always been intrigued about the lives of geniuses and would ask myself a plethora of questions regarding it; What does it mean to be a genius at something? What is the secret recipe behind their phenomenal feats of achievements? What are the borderline “traits” that strip apart a genius and a mediocre? And in this article, I will try to detail all of my understandings and findings that I’ve been able to capture so far from some of the past Masters that I’ve read about, including Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein.
Firstly, let me break down one of the key traits that are often misconstrued about people who have exceptional achievements, it’s not a genetic gift nor are they born a genius. All of the Masters have poured in a tremendous amount of manpower into polishing and improving the respective craft that they’re pursuing. Overnight success is a ridiculous fantasy. Nothing simply blossomed out of nowhere, some might have even spent half their lifetime working on their craft.
“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” — Malcolm Gladwell
There’s this magic rule of 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book Outliers. It states that any individual needs to spend at least 10,000 hours on a given craft to attain mastery in it. And of course, this is not to be taken very literally as people have different grasping powers and varies accordingly. Take the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was a prominent composer in his time and composed tons of brilliant pieces, in his case, it wasn’t until 10 years of playing music did he finally started to compose music of his own, until then he was either playing pieces composed by others or his father. Taking the instance of The Beatles, which was one of the most successful pop bands in the 60s, they weren’t churning out hit songs right at the beginning. Before the fame, the band regularly performed in the clubs of Hamburg for a strenuous amount of time. As Lennon said, “We had to play for hours and hours on end. Every song lasted twenty minutes and had twenty solos in it. That’s what improved the playing. There was nobody to copy from. We played what we liked best.” In the case of Charles Darwin, his most acclaimed work, On the Origin of Species, is the culmination of the ideas that he collected during the 5-year voyage on HMS Beagle and wasn’t published until 20 years later. Now, the common theme in all these stories is just one thing, mastery of a craft is not a piece of cake, it requires us to have an abundance of perseverance and takes a substantial amount of time perfecting the craft. And there may be some individuals who are gifted enough to cut the mark to about 9 years to master a craft. This intense period of practice and labour is, what the author Robert Greene talks about in his phenomenal book Mastery, known as apprenticeship. And this term is not at all an invention of Robert Greene, this was a system developed in the later Middle Ages in which a master craftsman would employ young people as a form of inexpensive labour in exchange for food, shelter and training.
Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of a respected Florentine lawyer, Ser Piero da Vinci. His father, who realised from the beginning that Leonardo would be better off being a painter rather than a lawyer, was the one who talked to Verrocchio, who was the master of a workshop in Florence, in admitting Leonardo into his studios. Verrochio, recognising a flair in Leonardo’s sketches and drawing, accepted him as an apprentice. Leonardo has been an apprentice for a long time until he learnt all he can from his master. Michael Faraday, who was an apprentice at a bookbinder shop, used to rigorously read about electricity and all of the science behind it in his off times, he would also go on to attend a lot of lectures and make copious notes on it which would eventually pile up into a huge encyclopaedia of his understanding of the field. When his notebook was shown to a prominent member of the Royal Institution, he was surprised by the level of simplicity by which Faraday explained concepts. This incident ultimately led to Faraday getting to work as an assistant (In Greenes terms, apprenticeship) under a really famous chemist named Humphry Davy. Working under him made Faraday pick up a lot on how the minds of scientists worked when posed with a problem (for instance, developing experiments to prove or disprove a particular theory that they have in mind.) Essentially an apprentice absorbs every single minor behaviours and knack from his Master and builds himself upon it.
In the above two cases, I have unravelled the lives of two geniuses and what they both have in common is apprenticeship and, most importantly, love for whatever they were doing. By definition, it’s clear that apprenticeship itself is meant for an individual to sharpen his skills under supervision, but if we look closer into the two stories I’ve mentioned above, both have strongly adored their respective craft even before becoming an apprentice. In the case of Leonardo, he was already ardent about sketching and observing things which is one of the fundamental traits a painter should be having. In the case of Faraday, he had a strong desire to probe deep into understanding science and a really curious mind. And this is one of those things that sets apart a genius and an ordinary person. A genius mind always knew what his innermost desire and passion are, he knew what he would be pursuing in his future. Even though they wouldn’t be bothered about whether they would be pursuing their passion as a job, they almost always seemed to recognise this early on in their life. This is such a trivialized fact, which is the very reason why parents forcing their children to pursue a particular field never really works, he may become a mediocre in his respective field and live a middle-class life but not the other way round.
The next logical question would be, what if an individual fails to recognise his interest? It’s never an easy task to do it. Past Masters have been fortunate enough to have it recognised early in their life. But what about the others? Do they have a chance to be a genius?
I used to believe that an individual can “develop” an interest in any field he chooses to be regardless of his talent or interest. I used to think that with sheer perseverance and hard work anyone can ingrain an interest in virtually anything (there are some exceptions though, like, if a person gets nauseated just by the sight of blood, then it may not be wise for him to be a doctor.) The main caveat or flaw behind my thought is if the person recognises or tries to develop an interest, say at the age of 18, he is already behind millions of others who have been working on the latter since childhood. He essentially lost the crucial headstart he ought to have got had he begun early in his life. Our world is incredibly competitive and it’s a common trait of humans to compare themselves with others and be critical of oneself. And some people in this process may develop a sense of existential crisis and may completely abandon the whole ordeal. But others who have the grit to stay put through the misery and compete against others will rise to the top in no time.
And one other problem with “developing” interest is, it requires an abundance of willpower, which unfortunately is a limited reserve of mental energy. No matter how pumped up we are at the moment about a task, when we are out of willpower we start to slump and procrastinate. This is a very common phenomenon amongst students wherein at the start of each semester they’ll be making copious notes and listening to all the lectures with utter concentration and this wanes out gradually as time passes on when willpower starts to run out. If we have the interest and drive, we would still be working on it even when we are out of willpower. As Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliers, “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have a meaning.”
I would be concluding this long article by answering one more question. Does IQ play a huge role in being an outlier? The short answer is, no. IQ has very little to do with how successful an individual would be. There are tons of other complicated factors that come into play that determines an individual’s success. If a person has an IQ of a minimum of 120, he has crossed the bar to be considered as a potential genius. What he does with his mental capacity is another question. IQ can be analogous to height in basketball, being really short won’t get you anywhere but if he is 6’2 then he’s good to go and being taller than that doesn’t give him any more noticeable advantage.
