Spark of Genius

I was considering a subtitle of "How to Reliably Screw Yourself", but I prefer a little bit of subtlety.

It's been said that it requires 10,000 hours of effort to become a master of something. Although modern life may give us a semblance of control, everything still boils down to cause and effect. We are not necessarily any more in control than mice in Skinner Boxes. Yet every now and then, we see through the code. We have an idea, or a breakthrough, that's bound to change ourselves and the world. We find the last little piece of the jigsaw, and our plans are set into motion. All that separates us from our goals is hard work, right?

To think that an idea or a breakthrough might just change the world implies that we have more control of the world around us than we actually do. The world is not built on ideas, it is built on hard work and progress. Take the building you are currently in - did someone at some point have the brilliant idea of designing the exact building you are sitting in? Or was it something more mundane?

There is a conception that there lies a barrier between the mundane and the enlightened. Those with the idea and those without the idea; that we are separated by nothing more than jigsaw pieces. Many times I've seen people who complain that they just do not get "it". That perhaps, if they had that one little piece, they would be better off. Entire businesses are built around this idea - that all you need is tax counseling and you'll become a better buyer, or if you purchase turf your lawn will become beautiful, or if you buy GenericCorp Product™ your life will suddenly become better. Unfortunately, the world does not work like that - and to think that it does is a surefire way to screw yourself over.

Ideas are like lighthouses. They shine brightly against dark backgrounds, making them clear to us. Yet to navigate by lighthouses is to miss the features of the land around it - that is, when you emphasize that one idea or that one breakthrough or that one item, you will always lose sight of the bigger picture.

When you're learning a difficult school subject, by concentrating on the concepts but not the problems, all you learn is meaningless drivel. Too often people forgo problem sets because they feel they need to only learn the concepts before they're home free - which might work for the kind of shallow learning we do in grade school. But to truly navigate the land, or to truly learn a subject, you must learn to navigate by the land, not by the lighthouses; it is an exercise left up to the reader to figure out what this means.

Genius does not rely on the spark of genius - quite the opposite, in fact. True genius relies on being able to trail-blaze; to be able to walk the land without any guidance, and move forward, with or without "the idea".