The difference between mediocre and great talent performance is due to the number of practice hours. That observation is not surprising. What is surprising is the reason for the difference between great performance and knock-down world-class performance, according to Geoff Colvin in his book “Talent is Overrated”. The difference is due entirely to participating in more systematic and planned-out type of practice hours. Doubling from 2 to 4 hours of daily practice will make you great, but doubling from 4 to 8 hours will not make you a world-class performer.
When you help your child start a journey of 10,000 hours of talent building, it can feel in the beginning like you are riding a bicycle on the backroads, when you would rather be driving on a highway with a big, fast SUV. It feels like that because the beginning is in fact humble and slow. But humble and slow in the beginning stages of building talent gives you time to discover which part of the talent thread you want your child to pursue with bigger, more expensive tools. Don’t over-invest in the big, wrong tool that can get you fast to where you want to go. Stock-pile your energy and money to make bolder investments once your confidence has grown that you are on the right talent track.
Talent-building options will narrow down as you consider the advantages you already have on hand, the opportunities that can fit within the time constraints of the rest of the family, and of course, the financial limitations. If you live in a mountainous area, then being able to study streams, watersheds, and snowfalls is going to be much more accessible than studying desert oasis and ocean shore lines. So, for example, if your child has a long term interest in studying water, you are going to naturally gravitate to studying water within the mountain context and eliminate all other options for now. A great way to do this is for you as a parent to make a Mind Map of your child’s opportunities. Do this periodically to help you guide your child’s first 1,000 hours of talent building.
Reading About Contemporary Arguments prior to the Minting of First U.S. Coins
When studying a particular time period in the course of your standard homeschooling curriculum, have your son or daughter choose to read a biography of an individual who excelled in some particular area of focus related to his long-term term interest. This is not only a great way to build a deep understanding into the 10,000 hours of talent building, it is also a great way to peg general historical facts into a living context. History becomes very detailed and real because as he accumulates his reading of specialized biographies, he increases his ability to understand the general limitations and opportunities of a specific time period. For example, knowing the amount of timber, effort, and cost that smelting ore for 130+ warships in 1588, before the advent of Bessemer process, it really brought home to my 12 year old son the scale of the Spanish Armada preparing for war with the English. He was already familiar with some of the dramatic advances that new smelting techniques had brought to the world in the 1800s, so when he reads of vast quantities of copper and iron being smelted before those technological advances, he could correctly assess the deadly seriousness of the Spanish Armada in the 16th century.
Find a club that supports an aspect of your child’s long-term learning goal of building 10,000 hours of world class talent. This is a great way to socialize your child into the culture of a specialized interest and get to hear first-hand about other learning opportunities that would never be broadcasted elsewhere. The best clubs will often be the ones geared for adult practitioners as your child will invariably get great feedback and advice. My metals and minerals focused son goes weekly to a gem and mineral club that has been meeting since the 1930s. I accompany him as his adult supervisor so he gets a chance to play and use tens-of-thousands of dollars of expensive equipment and hundreds of years of combined experience in one room.
