Musing: Can anyone learn to master any skill?

I think the most important component of being a master is patience, followed by drive (which is is enhanced to a degree by competitiveness).

I do always feel humbled by the saying: “the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried”.
 
Nitefly said:
I do always feel humbled by the saying: “the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried”.
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I like that.

"i fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times"

Bruce Lee
 
I have recently started to learn to play keyboard with the aim to play piano. I am the only one in my family who has never played an instrument before and it does not come naturally to me. However, because I want to play it I find myself spending a long time to pick things up, getting frustrated, but pushing through.

I think the individual needs to want to learn as much as anything else.
 
I think natural talent definitely comes into it. My family is very musical. Both parents make handmade violins, both can play multiple instruments at a professional level. My brothers can pick up a guitar and just play, both have their own soundcloud channel where they regularly release tracks they've made, everything from psytrance to ambient to metal. Meanwhile, I can string a few chords together on a guitar or maintain a simple rhythm on a drum kit and that's about it, despite being brought up practicing various instruments and doing music at school up to GCSE level (at which point I figured it was time to stop wasting energy on something which was clearly going nowhere :p). I'm sure if I dedicated more time to it I could get to a decent standard, but I can't see how I could ever get to their level, much less that of some of the great musicians out there.

Clearly my "parents" found me in the forest somewhere XD
 
I think your average person could probably master most things.

I would perhaps make a distinction between mastery and the elite level performers - that is to say, even amongst masters there will be some who are better than others.

But mastery of something is (imho) relative to the average person.

Elite level is the best of the best and for that you need all the stars to be aligned.

But I'm sure we've all seen people make the most unlikely career moves, and though they are naturally years behind their peers, they can achieve competence and eventual mastery in time.
 
I definitely can't, I get bored.
I'm at level 5 for a lot of things but that's it.
The only thing I was truly great at was the lab testing of domestic appliances and my results went to WHICH magazine.
 
László Polgár (born 11 May 1946 in Gyöngyös), is a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He is the father of the famous Polgár sisters: Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit, whom he raised to be chess prodigies, with Judit and Zsuzsa becoming the best and second best female chess players in the world, respectively.

The experiment began in 1970 "with a simple premise: that any child has the innate capacity to become a genius in any chosen field, as long as education starts before their third birthday and they begin to specialise at six."

If the skill is nurtured from a young age then definitely.
 
I think anyone can master something given practice, but to be truly exceptional you need to be naturally gifted. That said, natural talent without application will get you nowhere whereas you can go a long way on grit and application alone.

The truly exceptional have both.
 
According to the 10,000 hrs rule if you put in 8hrs a day you will be a master in about 3 years.

In general if you dedicated 8hrs a day for 3 years to one thing by the end of those 3 years you would be pretty good at it I reckon.
 
Assuming no physical barriers anyone who dedicates the time and energy can master a skill.

However the motivation to do so is the barrier, whilst i may be perfectly capable of learning the guitar for example, i will never master it because i dont have the motivation to pursue that goal.

So in that regard yes people are naturally prevented from mastering certain things by dint of the fact they wont be inclined to it.
 
For most skills, good training and a lot of practice will get you to being perfectly acceptable at X.

Some skills however, need natural talent to master. For example, forget being a musician if you’re tone deaf (unless you’re Beethoven) and forget being a AA class clay shot if you have poor hand/eye co-ordination.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
forget being a musician if you’re tone deaf (unless you’re Beethoven)
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Beethoven started to go deaf at 28 but what he could do from a child was pick music up and hear it from the notation which I still can't do after 50 years gigging.
When he was totally deaf he could still hear all the notes and write them down.
 
You put a penguin in a desert and it will struggle. You put it in a cold climate and it will thrive.

The point being, if you have the genetics for something but you’re never put into an environment for them to be utilised. You will never reach your true potential. I’m sure there are loads of people who would be naturally good musicians who never get exposed to it for many reasons, parents couldn’t afford instruments, parents didn’t want to hear their kids practicing etc etc. The same can be said about a lot of talents.

I suppose it’s one of the flaws with modern education, you spend 9am - 4pm learning a vast array of subjects. Some of which you may have a proclivity for, some you won’t. If Mozart had to sit through 6 hours of maths, English and science everyday as a child he might not have been such a good composer. His Dad noticed his natural gift as a performer and composer. And let him dedicate himself to it entirely. It fosters an environment in which genius can develop. Of course the counter argument is that a good rounded education is vital to most people, and that is true. But it also holds back true genius because you spend a whole lot of your time learning things the system tells you that you have to learn.
 
I think there are some things people would never master because they don't have the dedication or interest to even if they have the natural ability

people get bored and disinterested fast.

if the question was could the average joe be trained to do almost any job well I would say yes.


most jobs aren't that difficult even if they are high paying it's just the opportunity to get that sort of job is limited a lot by society.


if you look out how some of the most famous inventions came around and how people made their millions from it then it's like no way would most people be able to do that.

some things are insane yet invented by seemingly ordinary people who clearly were extraordinary thinkers way ahead of their time
 
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There is no chance that anyone can learn to master anything they attempt. It also depends how you define Master, anyone can daub paint on a canvas, can have multiple lessons and still end up only able to make basic daubs but be told by the teacher it's wonderful. The popular style of painting known as impressionism is the result of not having the skill to paint in photorealism. The arty farty crowd will then fawn over the most basic stuff stuff that toddlers and Chimps can produce so I suppose it's possible to be a master of complete crap.


Look at some of the stuff on this link to see some of the hyper realistic work of masters

https://webneel.com/types-of-paintings-techniques-styles
 
Smokey Deza said:
Nah. Practice generally makes you good at something but only a few reach perfection.
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Perfection isn't reached by anyone, in anything, ever. It's a terribly high bar to set!

Mastery of a skill isn't perfection. Nor is it being the best of the best.

Ie to get into one of the prestigious symphony orchestras (of which there are a fair few!) you would have to be a master of your instrument.

There could still be quite a few people better than you.

Mastering a skill doesn't mean you are the best. Or even in the top 5 in the world.

It literally just means you've mastered a skill :p
 
I think programming can be a good example of this - pretty much anyone can learn to code, but some people are just not wired for it despite doing it for 10 years plus.

If you've got the right brain for it and look at problems in the right way you'd probably make a better programmer in a few months over someone with loads of experience but without a natural aptitude for problem solving / analysis Etc (the world of work is full of people like this seamingly!)

I guess the same applies to loads of other skills - like mechanics, engineers etc etc
 
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