Over Time
EPISODE 053: OVER TIME
There are two narratives competing for the attention of creative people trying to unlock the so-called secret to success. One relies on natural talent, the other on super-natural perseverance. I think the truth–as it so often does–lies somewhere in the messy middle, let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Did you know that Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, shot one of his competitors in a fight over billboards painted on barns? This is apropos of nothing though it amuses me. But other facts about the kindly-looking southern gentleman are certainly relevant. For example: to perfect his so-called secret recipe he invented his own pressure cooker, early models of which exploded with alarming frequency before he got it right. Sure, later he built a successful franchise, now one of the largest in the world, but he visited over 1000 possible partners before he started to see success. 1000 refusals and exploding pressure cookers. Harland Sanders might have been a talented businessman, and his chicken might have been the best thing you've ever tasted but, above all, he was a persistent, stubborn, man that didn't seem to know how to take no for an answer.
JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter franchise, was so poor she couldn’t afford to make copies of her 90,000 word manuscript so she hand wrote the copies before sending them to dozens of publishers, all of whom rejected her until someone took a chance on her. She not only wrote 90,000 words by hand, which is amazing all on its own, she did it many times.
Stephen King, famously rejected so many times that he took to collecting his rejection letters on a massive spike nailed to his wall, only did so because he had so many of these rejections letters that the nail he first used for the purpose gave out.
Stories like this about the power of persistence vastly outnumber the ones about some kid who was born a genius and accidentally got famous because of it, which is a good thing because not only is that a lousy story, but there are far more of us –the ones who need to rely on something much more than an abundance of natural talent–than the one kid in a million who appears to be the exception to the rule.
The prevailing narrative in our culture, despite so many stories to the contrary, is that the genes of a lucky few contain some hidden key to creative success. It’s clear that some people are more naturally inclined to do some things better than other things–we all seem to come with some unique built-in proclivities–but what is often conspicuously lacking from the prevailing narrative is that this so-called talent still has to survive the real world. Even in the case of the most gifted people, it is not the gifting alone that is responsible for their success. So what is it?
I'm David duChemin, and this is episode 053 of A Beautiful Anarchy, a podcast about the joys and obstacles of everyday creativity. Welcome here.
Music / Intro
I started writing this episode wanting to talk about how perseverance and determination is better than talent or giftedness. But that feels a little too easy, and I don't think it's the whole story. What about luck, for instance? Surely chance and circumstance play a role in bringing us opportunities others do not get. They say, too, that it's not what you know but who you know, and I credit many of my own big steps forward–in both my craft and my career–to relationships with others–so what role does that play? Surely just sticking it out isn't the whole story. Could it be that simple?
First of all, let's put this on the table right away: the kind of perseverance exhibited by people like Colonel Sanders, J.K. Rowling, or Stephen King is pretty rare. That is to say, as available as it is to everyone, it's rarely chosen, and for a multitude of reasons. To be that resilient in the face of rejection I think you have to feel a level of conviction about what you do, or feel a passion for it that is deeper than what many people can conjure. Not everyone is so sure, not everyone feels such a strong sense of calling or such passion. The more I wrote my way around the idea for this episode, the more I felt I was trying to tell you it was unnecessary to be superhumanly talented just so long as you were superhumanly determined, and both kind of make me want to just give up now because I've never been superhumanly anything. Most of us aren't.
Where I think conversations like this go off the rails a little is in discussing only the extreme examples of talent on one hand or perseverance on the other. As if it's this-or-that with nothing of value in the middle. When we argue for talent or hard work or perseverance or even luck, we're missing the more interesting conversation about how they're all connected. And as so few of us live at the extremes, either with extraordinary natural talent or the perseverance of a saint but, rather, in the soupy middle of real life and plans that go awry and bills that need paying and therefore jobs that need doing, I think it's probably worth having a more nuanced perspective, one accessible to those of us who feel more average than truly exceptional most days.
This is a conversation not about being talented on the one hand, or being perseverant on the other. It's about becoming both in the amounts needed to be, not Stephen King, not another Oprah Winfrey, but fully ourselves.
If we define perseverance as the rather unglamorous act of simply showing up, doing the work over time, not giving up when it's hard, and going the distance over years, not months, then it is that ordinary kind of perseverance that makes the rest of us "talented." We grow into it.
It is not being born a talented and prolific writer that makes you write many books, as Stephen King has done. It’s writing many books that has made him prolific, and therefore really good at writing. He wasn't born the writer he is now, he became–and is still becoming–that writer.
We’ve got it all backwards. Talent doesn’t lead to doing the work; doing the work–persistently, over time–leads to what we've come to call talent.
Doing the work–over time–hones what we've got and teaches us what we don't. We become good, sometimes truly great at the thing we do because we do it over and over again, over time. And doing it over time, over years, slowly chipping away, gives us a greater chance of bumping into luck along the way too, and it gives us eyes more adapted to recognizing that luck when it comes.
The same is true of relationships. It's not so simple as "who-you-know rather than what-you-know." Yes, the longer you do whatever it is you do, the more you will know, the more expertise you'll gain, but also the more people you will connect with, collaborate with, and explore opportunities with, over time. You don't get to experience that when you quit before you have spent the time you need to spend to become the person who is closer to mastering their craft. Give up too soon and you'll never become the person who has been at it long enough to grow into your craft, experience chance and coincidence, and to meet–and build lasting relationships with–the kind of people who will collaborate with us.
We live in a culture focused on being great, not becoming great. On being talented, not becoming talented. And on being creative and prolific and successful, even lucky, but not on becoming those things.
Becoming takes time. And grit. Your grit might not be as, uh, gritty, as someone else's grit, but it's grit all the same.
Becoming is not easy.
Becoming depends more on mistakes than on getting things right straight out of the gate.
It takes focus.
And it’s messy, full of moments that invite us to either quit or keep going.
But what is deeply hopeful about the idea of becoming is that it is largely in our hands. It does not rely on a random gift of genetics. It does not demand that we be better than anyone else or even compare ourselves to anyone, including ourselves.
Becoming is hopeful because it means while the person I am today might not be able to pull it off (whatever it is), the person I will become tomorrow or next year, might be.
I’m not talented enough to do tomorrow's big thing today. I never am. If I had the talent or ability right now to do the bigger things about which I dream, I'd have done them already. I might not be able to do it now, but I will be in a year. Maybe two or ten. Because while I’m not yet the guy who can write my next book, I am becoming that guy. And, though it feels like a paradox, writing my next book (and all the books that led me to it) makes me the person capable of writing exactly that book. The man I am when I start a book is not the man I am when I finish it. Yes, we make our art, but our art makes us.
But remember, too, that merely sticking it out, merely persevering, is of no particular value. Just being patient, and putting in the time, is not the same as over time becoming, learning, or growing.
Being is static. Being one thing or another is fine if you're content with that, but it's not really the stuff of possibilities, is it? Becoming is on-going. It's cumulative. Evolutionary. Becoming is about transformation.
But we don't talk like that. No one talks about who we are becoming. They talk about who we are, as if it's been decided, nailed down, set in concrete. As if the person I was when I was born is the person I am now and will be in 20 years. But we are not. We become. Or we can, if we are willing to learn.
Doesn’t that give you hope?
You don’t need an abundance of unusual talent, though you probably have more than you think, and in some combinations that make you unique. Even if you did, it would be too late. I mean, you can't do much about it now. But you don’t. You just need to not quit. To not give up on your work becoming better, to not give up on you.
There will be plateaus and foggy times. There will be set-backs and times when it all feels so unimportant or unattainable. At some point we all feel like we’re just not cut out for this, forgetting that none of us was so specifically “cut out” for anything at birth that it prevents us from taking joy and finding delight in something else. Within some broad limits, we aren’t born destined to be this or that, but we do–or can–become those things, whatever they are, everyday that we persevere in the thing we love.
Everyday we don’t quit.
Everyday we don’t take no for a (final) answer.
Everyday we stick it out on the road to becoming.
I'm not the only one to see the possibilities in thinking about life this way, these aren't remotely original thoughts. Painter Paul Klee said, "Becoming is superior to being." Martin Luther, who was–whatever your religious inclinations–a bold and creative thinker, he also said life was "not being but becoming." He said:
"We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
Remove the religious undertones from that, if you prefer, and he's still pointing toward a comforting truth that many of us learn too late in life, if at all: we can still learn, and do, and create, so much more. We can still become so much more. If only we will stick it out. If only we will see the astonishing value of small things done over time, accumulating to become who we are. Small, attainable, truly doable things that don't rely on being born someone–or something–we weren't but rely instead on the accumulation over time of the million pieces that make us who we are.
Perhaps this is the best argument for doing what you love, or finding that love in what you do. Anyone can do something for a couple of years, even something they don't care for. Add in some natural talent and you might do it a little longer, if only for the adulation it brings. But to do it for as long as we must to become truly good at it, to get well beyond those first 10,000 hours of apprenticeship? That–I think–requires love. Reading Annie Dillard this morning, she reminded me that Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed not powerful wills but powerful hearts.
Do what you love, find delight in it. Keep doing it. Don't give up when it's not as easy as you hoped. Let the efforts and the lessons they contain accumulate, and everyday, or as frequently as your heart propels you to do so, go make something beautiful. And if you’d like to get in touch with me, you find me anytime at talkback@abeautifulanarchy.com.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0