Psychology – Page 3 – A Bevy of Books

What have you spent 10,000 hours doing?

I wrote a fan post to Malcolm Gladwell a few weeks ago after reading Blink, so it should be no surprise to any of you that I picked up another of his books, Outliers – this one about successful people and how they did not get that way alone. As with Blink, this book was filled with much food for thought – and that is exactly why I am now officially a Malcolm Gladwell groupie. He looks at everything from the birth dates of leading hockey players to the rice patties of Southeast Asia to the garment district in New York City during the Depression to show that time and place had as much to do with success as a particular person’s individual skills.

What he’s NOT saying is that people like Bill Gates aren’t talented, hard-working and motivated. What he is saying is that things like where you live, who your parents are and what you spend your time doing count as much as individual effort. Mr. Microsoft wasn’t just bright and skilled in math, he went to a school that had one of the earliest on-demand computers in the country, and virtually unlimited access to that computer where he could practice his programming skills. Without that, he may have become Bill Gates, regular joe.

The part I remember most about Outliers is the 10,000 hours theory. According to many different sources referencing many different skills, 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to become a master at something – whether it be playing the violin, programming a computer or playing hockey. Ever since I read that chapter, I’ve been thinking about those 10,000 hours.

While I was reading it, I immediately thought of what I’d spent my 10,000 hours on – reading! Now, of course, I always knew that the reason I was good at English and analyzing literature was because I spent so much time reading, but this is ‘knowing’ in a different way. If 10,000 hours of practice is the amount of time it takes to master a skill – well, I hit that a long time ago – before I got to college. Obviously, I am an expert at reading because I love it – but I also had a big sister who taught me to read before kindergarten, and parents who encouraged reading, took me to the library when we couldn’t afford books, and never told me to put the book down and do something else.

I’m not here to make judgments, but I think – for some people at least – a re-framing of the definition of talent/expertise would be valuable. How do you get to be a professional ball player? – 10,000 hours of practice. That is a finite – if rather large – goal a person can chip away at. I find myself wanting to impress this knowledge upon my son somehow – not in a ‘what are you wasting your life on’ kind of way, but more of a ‘you can choose what you will be a master of – what is it that you will choose?’ And if what you want to be a master of is wasting time on the internet – well, at least you should be consciously choosing it! I wouldn’t be surprised if web-searching wasn’t something you could be employed for in the future. So maybe we should be less uptight about all that time our children waste on the weird things that interest them – those things could turn out to be something incredible if they are willing to put the time in.

It also puts new spin on those ‘mid-life’ career changes that used to be such a big deal (though increasingly, anyone who hasn’t changed careers 3 times by mid-life is an anachronism). But if you hadn’t hit 10,000 hours on something by your early 20s (when you had to hit the workforce), you may well have done it by your mid-40s and ‘suddenly’ have a new skill to market.

Maybe I’m making more of this than there is, but, as you can see, Gladwell’s got me thinking in new and interesting ways. And this is just one facet of a book full of insights like this!

Yes, I am a big fan of analysis and the human experience – why do you ask? Pardon me, I must get back to working on my second 10,000 hours of reading – or is it my third? Feel free to tell me what you spent your 10,000 on.

Master James

I discovered The Master by Colm Toibin in a Powell’s newsletter. It won several awards and was short-listed for the Man Booker prize (likely because of it is just the kind of book us lit-geeks love – books about literary figures that are written by powerfully articulate authors) and it was on sale when I saw it on the shelf. The Master is a fictional account of Henry James’ life from his own perspective. Henry James, of course, is a huge figure in Modern fiction, a prolific author of novels as well as literary criticism. His most popluar works are probably The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of a Dove (both of which I have seen film adaptations of, neither of which I enjoyed very much).

If you had asked me – before I read this book – where Henry James was from, I would have said he was from England. And if you’d asked me if he was gay, I would told you that I’d heard nothing to the contrary (but I would never rule it out, of course). Oscar Wilde – everyone (read: English geeks) knows he was gay; Henry James, never heard a whisper. Well, James was American – and gay. However, I often confuse Henry James and James Joyce in my head – so I’m hardly a good person to ask these questions of.

James is portrayed as a character on the edge of, but rarely involved in, many experiences and events. He had two brothers who fought in the American Civil War. He was born and raised in America but spent time in Europe as a child and young adult and eventually made his home there. He never married but had close women friends and was closest to his sister of all his siblings. He was welcomed in high society in Britain and Europe as an artist but was not truly included in that strata. He was attracted to men but was not able to truly pursue that as a lifestyle. He was a lauded author but not actually well-read by the general public.

The Master is engaging and well-written, but doesn’t paint Henry James as a very likable character, at least in my eyes. Well, not truly unlikeable, but probably not someone you’d want as a close friend or lover. He seems to have a difficult time actually experiencing any moment that he’s in. Rather, he removes himself as much as possible from what is happening around him and only later allows himself to feel one way or the other about it. We probably all know people like this, but few count them as close friends. Some might think it horrible that he used his personal experiences as fodder for fiction, but that doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is that he only seems to really be able to connect with people through fiction, either his actual work or the stories he tells only to himself. So any happiness he might give or receive is difficult, if not impossible. Instead, he hurts the people he cares most about and doesn’t seem to realize it until after they’ve died and it’s too late to do anything about it. Such a sad way to live.

Strange coincidence – I read this book right after Sandra Day O’Connor’s book, and Henry James was a friend of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (as young men and throughout their lives). It even implies – and again, this is a work of fiction based on facts, not a biography of established facts – that James and Holmes had a one-time sexual encounter during their friendship.

Toibin is clearly a skilled writer (a master, one might say) who can create authentic atmosphere and character for people, places and eras. He made the character of James interesting and sympathetic without ignoring his negative traits. I will surely be looking for other books by Toibin. If you are looking for an enjoyable way to learn more about Henry James, artists in the early modern period, American ex-patriots, gay men in the Modern period, the English relationship with Ireland, American views on the Civil War, or the thought processes of conflicted people – all of these and more can be found here.

Blinking is a good thing…

We’ve all had times when we knew something before we had a ‘good’ reason to know it. You have a funny feeling something is about to happen, or known a person was up to no good before they’ve done anything wrong. In the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell tells us how this happens, as well as why a snap judgment can be as dependable as a well-considered decision, and sometimes better.

Using everything from art forgeries to Pentagon war games to divorce counseling, Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Outliers) builds a convincing case for the snap judgment. He uses scientific studies and front-page news stories to demonstrate how the brain is not just getting lucky, but processing information (speed dating) without needing us to be involved. And how this system – which is calls the adaptive unconscious – can be derailed by stress and other factors to become a liability (cops shooting innocent bystanders).

This book peaked my interest the first time I heard about it. Psychology has always fascinated me – I want to know why people do the things they do. This book discusses how a part of the brain can make decisions based on information that people are not even aware they have acquired. It was a quick read (I read it on the plane from Anchorage to Portland) and well-written. Gladwell keeps things interesting with tons of real-life examples to illustrate what could be boring scientific research. You wouldn’t think that orchestral auditions, secluded Amazon tribes and the O.J. Simpson trial to could all be used to illustrate his point – under the right conditions, the brain can be trusted to do amazing things without our well-reasoned (and sometimes interfering) help.

One of the points I found interesting was the fact that – when pressed to come up with an explanation for why they did a particular thing or knew something they didn’t realize they knew, people would make up a story for why they did it. Gladwell calls it the ‘storytelling problem’ (and we all know people with this problem, don’t we?). We aren’t comfortable with the fact that we don’t consciously know why we do things, so we come up with an explanation. And in some cases, if we are pressed to explain what we know, we know a lot less (I know that sounds confusing – but read the book and it’ll all make sense). Of course, when others then take these explanations and run with them… well, it’s the blind leading the blind (New Coke). My ex-husband was always pushing for explanations for the crazy things our son would do when he was younger (and even now =). But I have come to realize – and this book only reinforces my conviction – that sometimes there is no ‘why’ for what we do. “It seemed like a good idea at the time” covers all manner of ills. And now I have evidence that says that’s not always a bad thing.