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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sean Patrick
Read between
August 6 - August 7, 2020
While some people display innate talents for certain activities early on, amazingly average people have become champions in all manner of endeavors.
Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.
the opportunities presented to one are just as important to success as one’s own inherent talents and willingness to put in thousands of hours of work.
Opportunities are whispers, not foghorns.
It suggested that genius is much more than high intelligence, innate talent, extraordinary work ethic, or uncanny luck, but rather a composite manifestation; a synthesis of very specific types of worldviews and behaviors.
It’s about how we can empower ourselves to bring true meaning to our lives and the lives of others in ways most people would consider impossible.
The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
In every field of human endeavor, the more visionary the work, the less likely it is to be quickly understood and embraced by lesser minds.
His imagination was a factory with unlimited resources, and the world an exciting playground with unlimited possibilities.
This is the beauty of imagination. An unexpected dead end in one journey is merely an opportunity to set a new course for another. Losing what we have can only do us real harm when we feel we can’t create it, or something equally valuable or compelling, again, and that ability resides squarely in our imagination.
He also criticized Einstein’s theory of relativity, calling it a “magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles, and makes people blind to the underlying errors.”
Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge,” because “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Every mathematical enigma solved, every masterful symphony composed, every revolutionary machine invented, every brilliant philosophy penned, every great corporation built...they all sprang from a person with an extraordinary imagination.
Most of us regard creativity in the same way we regard that statement—as a mysterious gift that can’t be explained or cultivated. But we’re wrong. Like genius itself, creativity is a process, not a providence.
When you start viewing creativity as a process of combination, and imagination as the ability to connect, stretch, and merge things in new ways, creative brilliance becomes less mystifying. A creative genius is just better at connecting the dots than others are.
“As we grow older reason asserts itself and we become more and more systematic and designing. But those early impulses, though not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies.”
The more varied your knowledge and experiences are, the more likely you are to be able to create new associations and fresh ideas. Your mind has an incredible ability to cross-pollinate—that is, to connect disparate things to solve problems in unique ways or envision new creations.
It takes curiosity to find your call to adventure, it takes courage to venture into the unknown, and it takes imagination to create your path.
