Anyone can be a genius….
There have been many individuals who have impressed the world so much that they will remain in the hall of fame till the kingdom come. Some of them include people like Mozart, Einstein, Musk and the list is endless. But are they really geniuses or are they ordinary humans with a lot of experience in their fields?
I’ve seen many articles saying that geniuses aren’t made, they are born or that you need to have certain mannerisms or IQ to be classified as a genius but I have never fully accepted those statements. I was always the guy who preached ‘Practice makes perfect’. And that statement holds most of the time. I say most of the time because there is a possibility that people are genetically gifted but the chances of that happening are incredibly low, like one in a billion or something.
Back when I was in high school studying biology, we were taught that there were two types of traits in every organism- Acquired and Hereditary. So, born geniuses have hereditary traits no doubt, but it makes me wonder whether genius can be acquired or not. (Spoiler alert: yes, I’ll explain)
Like a curious 5-year-old, I set sail across the vast expanse of information present on my fingertips to find answers. That’s when I stumbled across Mark Diaz’s TED Talk. It was a hilarious one and memorable too but my key takeaway was that yes, you can be a genius in a certain field if you wished to.
One of the quotes in the talk was, “If you get to your gift too quick it will destroy you.” And I completely agree with that. We take many things for granted today, which makes me think about whether we will respect our abilities if get them instantly.
Being a genius is a journey of its own. You have obstacles, you overcome them. You learn new things or figure out a better way to do it. This story will be what remains of you long after you’ve left the planet, acting as a source of insipiration for billions.
Now that we’re done sailing the ocean, let’s learn how to be a genius in any field:
- Divide all the tasks into small achievable goals — You can’t do a one-hand pushup if you don't know how to do a pushup. Learn how to do a pushup and then go for a one-hand pushup. Anytime you are unable to achieve a goal, break it into smaller steps.
- Laser-like focus — It’s no doubt that you have to be focussed while learning a new skill and the more focussed you are, the more it helps you.
- The 70–30 rule — Whenever you’re practising your skill, try that at least 70% of the time you are pushing yourself beyond your limit. The magnitude doesn’t matter as long as you are outside your comfort zone. And the remainder 30%, improve upon what you can already do. For example: If you can juggle 4 balls, try juggling 5 or 6 balls for 70% of the time and 4 balls for 30% of the time. (Usually, people do it the other way round that’s why you can see them improving in what they're already good at instead of improving at what they cannot do)
I believe that with these steps, you can come closer to being a genius and perhaps be the biggest genius in your field.
