The Assumptions of Intelligence: Why our skills don’t always grow with age.

We age. We grow. Our limbs extend outward as our heads move farther and farther away from the ground. We feel elevated. Above others. Able to do things we could only dream of before. Inch by inch we are becoming adults and with adulthood comes greater potential.

Or so we assume.

But what drives this belief and what actually makes a real difference in whether we succeed or not, at anything we do?

IQ or intelligence quotient, refers to a human’s innate ability to acquire and process knowledge and solve problems. Not a guaranteed outcome, but the potential.

More formally from professors Resing and Drenth, (2007: Intelligence, Knowing and Measuring) IQ is, "The whole of cognitive or intellectual abilities required to obtain knowledge, and to use that knowledge in a good way to solve problems that have a well described goal and structure."

Is it intelligence alone, though, that drives future success?

In His book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell spoke of the 10,000-hour rule and what role continuous practice had in the achievement of greatness. In his book, he referred back to an earlier study on expertise, that appeared in American Scientist, authored by Herbert Simon and William Chase in the 1970s. Their observation was:

There are no instant experts in chess—certainly no instant masters or grandmasters. There appears not to be on record any case (including Bobby Fischer) where a person reached grandmaster level with less than about a decade’s intense preoccupation with the game. We would estimate, very roughly, that a master has spent perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 hours staring at chess positions…

In other words, those that we consider to be great or very, very good at what they do, spent on average about 10,000 hours practicing with their instrument, their hockey stick, their baseball, basketball, ice skates and so on.

They had talent, yes. In many cases a great deal of it. But urban myths abound of people having incredible talent who never made it into the NBA, Major League Baseball or any other advanced situation.

What happen to them?

What happens to any of us who stop practicing? Not with a basketball or violin but with everyday skills like communication.

We assume that normal use equals advanced skills over time. But does it?

We can’t drive at five – our feet won’t reach the pedals even if our desire is there. But at 15, because our limbs are now long enough and our hands strong enough, we assume we can drive, simply by getting behind the wheel and starting.

Over time this assumption is proven mostly true. Evidence millions of cars and drivers on the road every day. But driving for years on those same roads and freeways tells us fairly quickly that there are a lot of drivers out there who actually aren’t very good at it. Was it too little practice – not enough hours in the car, or something else?

Malcolm Gladwell made a further point about this in his book, I was interested in the general finding, which was that the best violinists, on average and over time, practiced much more than the good ones. In other words, within a group of talented people, what separated the best from the rest was how long and how intently they worked.

Drivers learn, by driving. They get behind wheel and log in the miles day after day, without ever looking at what they are doing from a problem-solving or improvement perspective and ask themselves: “Am I getting better at this or staying the same?” Once the driving test is passed, how many of us revisit the manual and catch up on the latest changes?

Thus, we experience delays, and endless fender-benders as drivers make the same mistakes over and over again, thinking that’s the way it’s always been done.

Communication. Interacting with fellow workers. Parenting, Dating, Leadership. These are roles many assume every day without practice or years of preparation.

We slide easily into the role and assume that our age, our prior experience, our belief that we know enough will get us through. And for some, it does. But for most, does it really?

Look at the headlines. The long list of sexual harassment lawsuits. The chaos in Washington, DC. Videos highlighting bad behavior and skill levels that seem to hover around the age of 12 mark and not the age the person actually is.

Why wouldn’t these skills, these abilities not require the same level of dedicated practice and intensity to become good at them?

No one is asked to be the Tom Brady of plant managers. Or the Michael Jordan of CFOs. But wouldn’t it make society a whole lot easier to manage, if everyone actually tried to get better at the basics?

Some people can lift a 100-ton piece of equipment with a crane and nimbly set it down on a foundation with inches to spare and yet, have constant issues with bosses, rules, wives or husbands. Is it because they just don’t have the talent to be in communication with another person or because they simply never practiced at it?

There are two simple rules, that if applied, would actually make life and society a great deal easier to navigate.

1. Never assume you’re done learning. Always assume you can get better at something.

2. Work at every skill as if you’re trying to get into the Majors. As if your life depended on it. The quality of it certainly does.

Marriages fail, partnerships go bust, governments collapse, not from a lack of talent or good intentions, but from a failure to acquire the level of skill needed to accomplish the task at hand.

Every skill from making beds to making vaccines has a near endless graduated scale of development. One doesn’t have to have a PhD in Physics to mow the lawn or be a good Dad – but the discipline and attention to detail required to achieve that level of certification would surely impact that individual and provide the needed motivation to get better in other areas of his life.

When you think of Serena Williams, Nadia Comaneci, Wilma Rudolph, Dara Torres, Megan Rapinoe or any other woman who became great in their sport – what drove that greatness? What made them different than those who came in second or third behind them? How many thousands of hours of practice came before they were great at what they did? Would they have been the same without it.

What would highways be like if just 25% of the drivers, spent time every month, practicing the basics? Doing what they already consider there good enough at – when in fact they are not.

Now let’s move that level of intensity over to parenting, management, and leadership. Or just plain communication among people. What changes in society would be experienced?

It doesn’t take a genius IQ to see that practice may not make perfect, but it does make for better and better and right now, that would be great.

Previously published in Medium - https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-assumption-of-intelligence-why-our-skills-dont-always-grow-with-age-52bd1f7b2468