To be an expert, one has to invest much time and energy in practice

Henry Gekonde (DN, Dec. 31, 2018) posed an age-old question: “Can creativity and imagination be taught or are these innate abilities?”

He concluded that “creativity and imagination may not be taught, but good writing can be — the rules of writing, techniques and principles”.

This raised a question, is writing a mechanical function or a skill in dire need of creativeness and imagination?

The thinking has been that certain skills (call them ‘soft’) cannot be taught in class and that those who excel often do so only as a result of in-born talent, leaving ordinary mortals like yours truly gasping for air.

A 2007 landmark paper in the Harvard Business Review titled The Making of an Expert concluded that “consistently and overwhelmingly, experts — be it writers, musicians, athletes, chess players, physicians, exceptional leaders and managers — are always made, not born”.

In fact, the question isn’t if these ‘soft skills’ can be taught or not but how; the tools and methods needed to impart them.

The secret behind successful writers like Benjamin Franklin, entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, musicians like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or world-beating runners like David Rudisha isn’t in their genes but deliberative practice and thinking.

According to the paper above, although Mozart was an exceptional musician, his musical tutelage started before he was four and his father, a skilled composer and a music teacher, wrote one the first books on violin instruction.

To write eloquently and fluently, Franklin would read his favourite newspaper article, reconstruct it from memory and compare it with the original.

In other words, experts invest their time in hours and hours of training and preparation to be good at what they do.

Research has shown that even the most gifted performers need a minimum of 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training to win international competitions.

Neurocognitive scientists say our brains function in two modes: “Task-positive” or “task-negative” (not both at once).

The task-positive allows us to accomplish something in the moment that often requires intense mental concentration; task-negative, also “daydreaming”, is responsible for our moments of greatest creativity and insight, when we’re able to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable.

The English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton discovered gravity while in a task-negative mode, when he saw a falling apple while thinking about the forces of nature.

A common mistake is to assume that all practice makes perfect.

Experts caution that deliberative practice (and thinking) is not about practising over and over a skill that you’re good at; it involves doing what you aren’t good at and finding expert coaches and mentors to provide constructive, and, if need be, painful feedback.

As the adage goes, living in a cave certainly doesn’t make one a geologist.