If you concentrate on one thing?

flibbage0

flibbage0

flibbage0

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Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.
 
flibbage0 said:
Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.
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That depends if you have the ability or not.

I can concentrate on becoming a footballer all I want, I'm not going to be a Premier League footballer.
 
[TW]Fox;19954115 said:
That depends if you have the ability or not.

I can concentrate on becoming a footballer all I want, I'm not going to be a Premier League footballer.
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I'd pay £50m for you to be in my team. :cool:
 
[TW]Fox;19954115 said:
That depends if you have the ability or not.

I can concentrate on becoming a footballer all I want, I'm not going to be a Premier League footballer.
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Well that is a bit closed shop and you need to start from a young age.
 
The "you can be anything you want to be" line is such bull****. No you can't. You can focus on one area of interest all you want. Unless you have the ability you will be forever mediocre at it. Of course there's also the mantra of "jack of all trades, master of none". But Jack who can lay a floor, tile and plumb a bathroom will make more money than a master of none.
 
You can do most things but I think you need to realise the limit of your abilities and whether the chosen 'one thing' actually pays money.
 
flibbage0 said:
Do you believe that if you concentrate on one area of interest, for example music or something car related like mechanic or automotive engineer, that you will succeed?

Basically if you have any skill/interest/passion, no matter how uncommon it is, can you take it further if you focus entirely on it and earn £££.
Click to expand...

No, variety is the spice of life.

If you don't have balance in your life, you'll struggle to succeed.
 
Jonny69 said:
You can do most things but I think you need to realise the limit of your abilities and whether the chosen 'one thing' actually pays money.
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Indeed. I remember Prince Charles saying this years ago;

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, High Court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."
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And he was widely attacked. But I couldn't help but (and still) completely agree with what he said.
 
He was blasted by the education secretary of the time as out of touch and old fashioned and I couldn't help but think "we still wear uniforms and are frog marched into Thatcherite era buildings with bars on the windows to be told what we are to learn whether we like it or not". You can't get anymore old fashioned than that. The British education system is a cluster**** of being told what to do to meet government targets on pass rates.
 
Not really, i think having a good base in a good range of fields will help you in any specific one rather than focusing on that and missing all the knowledge and innovation in others which you could take and apply to your chosen one.
 
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.
 
Hard work is the way forward.

Tiger Woods was number one because he practiced 6 hours a day since he was a child, not because he was "born to play golf". If you put your mind to something and put in the hard work required, you can achieve anything.
 
Calabi said:
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.
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Biology?

Some people are built better for sport, some people likely have a better sense of taste, or a better memory for ingredients or have a more keen sense of smell to help tell when certain spices have been cooked for the correct amount of time. Same goes for the more intellectual things you've listed; some people are just 'built better' for certain things.

I agree with Foxes viewpoint, but to put it better to counter what you've said, what if i wanted to be a pro basketball player? I've got stubby fingers so can't catch the ball with one hand and i'm short, these two things mean i could never compete with the best no matter how much time and energy i put into my training.
 
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Tefal said:
Not really, i think having a good base in a good range of fields will help you in any specific one rather than focusing on that and missing all the knowledge and innovation in others which you could take and apply to your chosen one.
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I agree that a good base is necessary. In children. The problems start in secondary education with rapidly developing teens. It's supposed to prepare us for the world of work. All it really prepares us for is that we're going to be told what to do by people we think are ********* for the rest of our lives. Spoon feeding rhetoric to adolescents whose brains are all over the place due to hormonal changes.

You can see the way the big tech companies have changed the environment in which people work in the West. I personally believe the education system needs to follow that example.
 
Calabi said:
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.
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brain luckily wired to be good at tasks using certain skills or thinking styles?



iirc Tesla used to say he'd see his inventions fully formed in a vision with details and dimensions, can you envision a fully formed brand new electrical system?

he also used very few diagrams in planning, something few people can do. That is natural ability.
 
Calabi said:
Theres no such thing as natural ability. How does anyone have a natural ability for cooking, football, chess, hacking or or the million other things we do now.
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Of course natural ability exists. How can there be certain 5-6 year old kids who are a lot better at maths than the average person their age? Because they've spent so many more years working hard and practicing?

Genes control just about everything about us. The fact is that different people's brains are wired in different ways.

There's also the fact that someone who is 6ft5 will probably be better at basketball than someone like me (5ft5)
 
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