{"id":148,"date":"2011-04-19T17:28:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hilarymoriarty.com\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2011-04-19T17:28:27","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:28:27","slug":"doing-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"Doing time"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last six weeks, I\u2019ve had a hard working left hand.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am right handed, but with a nod to my Latin A level, I might note that the left hand has become quite dextrous, that it\u2019s even quite sinister how dextrous it has become (ho ho ho). \u00a0While my right hand has been rendered useless by the plaster cast on my broken wrist, it\u2019s as if my left hand has come into its own.
\n\u2018See,\u2019 I imagine it murmuring, \u2018I can do anything Clever Clogs over there can do, but you never give me a chance.\u00a0 I could be just as fast, and just as useful, but you never gave me the practice!\u2019
\nNow that pressing the right hand back into service hurts so much that I seem to spend my time wincing and whimpering, I realise how I have come to depend on the left hand, and you know what, it really has risen to the occasion.\u00a0 I now reach automatically for the kettle with the left hand, and the pouring is just as efficient as it was when the right hand was fit.\u00a0 It\u2019s quite possible I will continue to make more use of the left hand even when all is healed and lifting a kettle with the right hand no longer makes me howl and drop it.
\nI realise that all of us develop a dominant hand, and I do know that something between 70 and 90% of humanity is right-handed.\u00a0 But the little glimpse of what the left hand can do for me when it gets the chance has been revelatory.\u00a0 And one of the things it confirms is the currently developing theory that talent is less important than hard work and effort.\u00a0 Perhaps my hands started out equal, but one has had a lifetime of working harder \u2013 hence its dexterity.
\nThe first time I came across the notion that geniuses \u2013 in many diverse fields \u2013 may be more a product of perseverance and application than of innate talent, was in Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s book, \u2018Outliers\u2019. \u00a0He is a very persuasive exponent of the need for anyone who would like to be good at anything putting in about ten years of practice to make it happen.
\nHe is in fact quite clear about ten thousand hours, probably taking ten years, being an almost magical length of time to achieve excellence and mastery in whatever has appealed to us enough for us to think it\u2019s worth the time and commitment.\u00a0 He quotes research in which musicians in the Berlin Academy of Music in the early 1990s were divided into three groups \u2013 the stars with the potential to become world-class soloists, the \u2018merely good\u2019, and those unlikely to play professionally but likely to teach (and I\u2019m not going to stop to discuss what that says about people who can going on to do, and people who can\u2019t becoming teachers \u2013 let\u2019s just not go there).
\nWhen they asked the students how much time they put into practice, they discovered that when very young, aged about 5 \u2013 7, they all practised about the same length of time.\u00a0 But by the age of 8, the \u2018stars\u2019 were putting in more hours a week, and the hours built up as they grew older \u2013 8 hours a week by age 12, 16 hours a week by age 14.\u00a0 By the age of 20, they were putting in 30 hours a week of serious practice.
\nTotal hours done by each of the groups by the time they came to the academy? The stars had clocked up ten thousand hours of practice; the good students had done eight thousand hours; and the probably-going-to-teach students, had accomplished just four thousand hours.
\nEven more interesting was that the researchers found no \u2018naturals\u2019, musicians who, as Gladwell puts it, \u2018floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.\u2019\u00a0 And the people at the top did not work just harder or even much harder than their peers, \u2018They work much, much <\/em>harder.\u2019
\nThe theory of effort and application being probably more important than innate ability, a gift from the fairy godmother at the cradle, a talent inherited from a gene pool the way you might have your mother\u2019s cheek bones or your father\u2019s height, is hugely important in schools.\u00a0 It is, if you like, the greatest message of hope.
\nI can imagine that it might also be a depressing message \u2013 \u2018What? How many hours? To be really good? But if I\u2019m playing the violin thirty hours a week, or diving or chasing a tennis ball, when\u00a0 will I have time to \u2013 lie in bed, play on the computer, date girls \u2013 just live??!!\u00a0 No way!\u2019
\nFor many youngsters, such a possibly monastic existence might hold little appeal.\u00a0 But the up-side of this theory is that it\u2019s your choice.\u00a0 If you would rather lie in bed, or become a whole different person in your computer-gaming world, fine.\u00a0 Do that.\u00a0 And the world won\u2019t come to an end and your life will pan out in whatever way it does.
\nBut if you would really like to sing like Catherine Jenkins, or play tennis like Venus and Serena Williams, or race like Lewis Hamilton or play golf like Tiger Woods (who was given a golf club five days before his first birthday \u2013 his first! \u2013 and played his first round of golf at the age of 2) then start putting in the hours.\u00a0 Because whatever your talent, you\u2019re going to need time, and commitment, and perseverance, and a willingness to find the time somehow \u2013 as swimmers do, who clock up miles in the pool while the rest of us are having a\u00a0 lie-in, or just thinking about breakfast.
\nMaking sportsmen professional, as Britain has in recent times, will surely allow them to put in the hours to bring home the medals in 2012.\u00a0 Listening to speakers from the cycling team, you would recognise their messianic pursuit of excellence via a rigorous training regime which you could not follow while holding down a job and earning a living. So if the athletes have the inclination, and the latent talent or physique, we pay them to put in the time.\u00a0 It\u2019s a far cry from Torville and Dean and \u2018Bolero\u2019,\u00a0 for which they won gold while working as a policeman and a secretary, as I recall, and only able to use an ice rink without the public getting in their way so long as they trained in the small hours of the morning.
\nThere\u2019s a romance about that story \u2013 putting in the hours whatever the obstacles \u2013 but it\u2019s not a model for today\u2019s stars. But boarding schools might well be part of the mix for the future \u2013 diver Tom Daley boards, and look at the hours in the pool or on the diving board that gives him.\u00a0 When the medals are counted for 2012, many of them will be held by athletes who grabbed the chance of a boarding place and facilities on site, and expert coaches and supporters, so that the hours you and I might squander \u2013 travelling, socialising, making phone calls, drinking coffee, watching \u2018Dr Who\u2019 – could be put to really good use:\u00a0 getting from \u2018good\u2019 to \u2018world class\u2019.
\nIt is, as you might say, just a matter of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last six weeks, I\u2019ve had a hard working left hand.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am right handed, but with a nod to my Latin A level, I might note that the left hand has become quite dextrous, that it\u2019s even quite sinister how dextrous it has become (ho ho ho). \u00a0While my right hand has been\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[64,138,160],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ie-today","category-independent-education-today","tag-commitment","tag-music","tag-practice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}