Wanna be a genius?

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Folks,

Another week, another audiobook collecting dust. I just finished David Shenk’s The Genius in All of Us. Great book with lots of data and case studies. Also very uplifting for folks to know that genius is not something you’re born with, it’s something you work for and towards.

He mentions a lot of great examples such as Mozart, Yo-Yo Ma and Michael Jordan as folks who actually had to work to get where they got. He demystified “genius”. Most people think that most geniuses are born that way. According to Shenk, it’s not the case at all.

The reason why Mozart & Yo-Yo Ma were so good at such a young age was that they were brought up in a musical family and also had an older sibling to emulate. The reason that MJ was so good at basketball is that he had a burning drive to be the best, especially after getting cut from the team in his youth.

He argues about the whole nature versus nurture conundrum. And according to the new studies, it’s not much of a contest. Nurture is king. Scientists used to think it was G (genes) + E (environment). Now they’re saying it’s closer to G multiplied by E where the environment makes a huge difference.

Anyway you look at it, it’s nice to know that regardless what you think, there is some major evidence to the fact that you can basically  master just about anything you want to. All you need is 10,000 hours…

So what do you want to be?

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Here is an interesting blog entry by Alex Hutchison where he looks at a new study from a lab at the University of Colorado on shoes and barefoot running economy.

Who knew that wearing big bulky shoes made you inefficient as a runner?

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