Practice, Persistence and Enjoyment

Came across two articles which, in their different ways, reinforce one of the underlying principles of Growing a Reading Culture; the importance of enjoying what you are doing in order to support constant repetition and practice. In other words, by enjoying reading, you read more. By reading more you become a better reader. As a better reader you become more able to read yet more. The broader your reading capabilities, the more likely you are to find books you do enjoy and remain motivated to read further.

In Malcolm Gladwell's article (The Sure Thing in the January 18, 2010, New Yorker, abstract only available on-line) he argues that the distinctive thing about successful entrepreneurs is that they are risk averse, they enjoy what they are doing, they are curious and they persist.

From the article:

There are a number of moments like this in "The Greatest Trade Ever," when it becomes clear just how much Paulson enjoyed his work. Yes, he wanted to make money. But he was fabulously wealthy long before he tackled the mortgage business. His real motivation was the challenge of figuring out a particularly knotty problem. He was a kid with a puzzle.

This is consistent with the one undisputed finding in all the research on entrepreneurship: people who work for themselves are far happier than the rest of us.

snip

They were drawn to the eighty-per-cent chance of getting to do what they love doing. The predator [entrepreneur] is a supremely rational actor. But, deep down, he is also a romantic, motivated by the simple joy he finds in his work.

And then there is this article in the December 19/26, 2009 edition of the New Scientist. Stephen Battersby in Lab Ruts writes:

To confirm the existence of their suspected new element, radium, Marie and Pierre Curie took tonnes of residue from uranium ore and processed it by hand. Fitting the pattern of women getting the really grim jobs in science, Marie did most of the hard graft. She describes how she worked in "a wooden shed with a bituminous floor and a glass roof which did not keep the rain out... It was exhausting work to move the containers about, to transfer the liquids, and to stir for hours at a time, with an iron bar, the boiling material in the cast-iron basin." Over a span of four years, she turned a tonne of ore into 100 milligrams of radium chloride.

But here's the surprise. The Curies actually enjoyed their work. "We were very happy," Marie wrote. "We lived in a preoccupation as complete as that of a dream."

They are not the only ones. One of the great staring feats of modern times - a Nobel-garlanded staring feat, no less - belongs to John Sulston of the University of Cambridge. During one 18-month stretch he spent every available hour gazing down a microscope at growing nematode worms, eventually tracking the fate of every single cell from egg to adult. Squinting at grey blobs for a year and a half may sound dull to you and me - but it wasn't to Sulston. "It was fun. I love looking down a microscope," he says.

Boredom, it seems, is very much in the eye of the beholder. Scientists at the top of their game rarely become jaded, possibly because it is only the most tenacious individuals who ever succeed in research.