[aidepast]

They were blue-collar artists. They just tried. They did not wait for ideal conditions. Solomon in Ecclesiastes 11 preaches such wisdom. They planted seeds without bothering to check the weather. Some of their seeds sprouted anyway, while those who waited for perfect weather, never planted at all, and grew nothing.

"Genius" is just practice, and deliberate at that. You don't see it. It's not some dramatic characteristic that you see in Paul McCartney, or whoever; No, John Nash was not intensely examining numbers and equations as they were dramatically floating around him like in "A Beautiful Mind". He did exactly what you do, only without the neuroticism; without the time-wasting; without the rumination.

Just plant the damned seeds. See what happens. Stop wasting your time ruminating. Imagine if Bach, or Da Vinci, Palestrina, Van Gogh, or Von Neumann decided to wait, and wait, until everything was just right, before they begin their studies/work. Nobody today would recognize those names. You would not be able to listen to Missa Papae Marcelli. It would just not exist. These people would be called "workaholics" today, an incredibly unfortunate term. Bach wrote over 1,000 pieces in his career. Van Gogh has over 900 paintings in less than 10 years.

As far as I can see at this point, "geniuses" are simply people who do not waste their time. Q3/Q4 of the Eisenhower Matrix is another planet to them. They live on the "Important" row, and they utilize that time.

To tie this into the HN community - think of the people who "want to learn to program" and yet they spend all of their time ruminating on which book to read, or language to learn, et cetera.

[a45a33s]

In the words of a different (better) band but relevant:

>Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

>Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way

>Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown

>Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

>Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain

>You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today

>And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

>No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

>And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

>Racing around to come up behind you again

>The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older

>Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

>Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

>Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

>Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

>The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

[klelatti]

It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. Not everyone who works as hard as the Beatles achieves what they did.

[aidepast]

It's a small club. Yes, luck is always involved, and you are not in control. Luck hits you. When the lightning strikes, you're either ready or you are not. The problem is that most people seem to behave in an exact opposite manner. They waste their life, waiting for luck to swoop them off of their feet. This is definitely wrong. You prepare yourself for when these opportunities decide to reveal themselves.

It's like saying "I'm not going to begin to exercise and attract a partner until I meet them first" - a recipe for failure. You must become the attractive person, and then, when they happen to enter your life, you attract them.

I apologize. I'm riffing.

[klelatti]

Please don’t apologise - very well put and I agree completely.

The fact that the work is necessary is what most people overlook. I just worry a little that if we expect too much then that itself can be a barrier to sustainably putting the effort in.

It’s OK to work hard and achieve a modest amount. We should take pleasure in what we do achieve.

[nickff]

>"Not everyone who works as hard as the Beatles achieves what they did."

Definitely true that they had a remarkable result, but I don't know of anyone who actually works/worked that hard and 'failed' (by any reasonable definition). Most people tend to dramatically overstate their persistence and work ethic.

[copperx]

> I don't know of anyone who actually works/worked that hard and 'failed'

Are you seriously handwaving away survivorship bias?

[nickff]

I am speaking of people I know personally, as well as anecdotes I’ve heard.

[rrose]

to be fair, if they really failed you wouldn't know of them

[TigeriusKirk]

Around 20 years ago I fell in with a bunch of screenwriter wannabes. Roughly 100 people, plus or minus, including myself. A difficult, highly competitive creative field.

Every person in that group who worked hard at it has had success at some level. That varies from making distributed indie films to running a network television show, but some level of success.

None of the successful people half-assed it, none of the hard workers utterly failed, none of the half-assed people made it.

The degree of success is largely out of your control. Innate ability, luck, etc are all factors. But the time and effort expended are in your control, and they're the primary factor of being able to make a run of it.

[munificent]

So what you're saying is that the combinations are like:

           Work  Don't
           hard  try
          .-----.-----.
    Get   | :-) | :-( |
    lucky |     |     |
          |-----+-----|
    No    | :-( | :-( |
    luck  |     |     |
          '-----'-----'

You don't have any control over what row you end up in. But if you want any chance of success, you better at least make sure you're in the left column.

[creakingstairs]

The analogy I like is that you have a net and you need to catch luck in that net to succeed. Naturally, you want the area of your net to be as large as possible to have the most chance of catching luck. There are a lot of things that can increase the size your net. One of them being working hard.

[klelatti]

Yes but my underlying point was that if you don’t expect Beatles level success then you might turn the Work Hard / No Luck combination to :-) - just enjoy what do you do achieve through your hard work.

[agumonkey]

And that's the whole gist of the problem of existence.

You have to merge this table with a S-curve of growth so you can work 'a bit' hard in a lucky enough context. And repeat the cycle.

I'm the kind to grind hard for long but blind.. it leads to a boring death. Find where, when, how to spend your mental energy is crucial.

[Zababa]

And the other part that comes with that is that no one that achieves what the Beatles did doesn't work as hard as they did. As you said, necessary but not sufficient. Hard work exposes you to opportunities, some people have better opportunities than others.

[tkgally]

> "Genius" is just practice, and deliberate at that. You don't see it.

Actually, in the case of the Beatles we can sort of see it. Half of their first album was covers, and the originals, while nice pop songs, were still a long way from their greatest work a few years later. During that time, they worked really hard, they wrote and released a lot of songs, and their songwriting improved immensely. How they were able to work so hard and stay focused while in the maelstrom of Beatlemania, though, is hard for me to grasp. Most others would have gone astray.

My own Beatles preference is for the middle period, roughly from Help! (1965) through Revolver (1966), when they were still polishing their pop songwriting skills and only beginning the experimentation. Though there’s great stuff later as well, of course.

[mgkimsal]

> were still a long way from their greatest work a few years later.

Their whole existence was really only a few years. That said, even "I saw her standing there" kicking off the first album is a really good 'basic rock' song that has become a classic (they're all classics, I know, but it's... just still so fresh 60 years on). Not 'greatest' piece, of course, but holds up well compared to a few other originals on that album.

> During that time, they worked really hard, they wrote and released a lot of songs, and their songwriting improved immensely. How they were able to work so hard and stay focused while in the maelstrom of Beatlemania, though, is hard for me to grasp...

Their progress is astounding. From "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (October 1963) to "Day Tripper" and "Drive My Car" and "Nowhere Man" and "In My Life" (October 1965) - that level of progression in writing/recording/production in a self-contained band which also produced 2 films, 5 albums and more than a hundred shows around the globe... it's just not going to be repeated. Between changes in the entertainment business itself, as well as the talent/skill combination we witnessed in those four... it just won't happen again. But we have all the recorded legacy to enjoy :)

I made a comment about One After 909 in another thread last week. It's the only(?) song we have of theirs with a recording from both 1963 and from 1969. The evolution in their playing, their approach to their own song - is really something to ... I hesitate to say 'marvel' at, but just really engaging for people who want to hear their progression. IIRC it was slightly under 6 calendar years - March 1963 to January 1969. They were good as a group in 1963 - they were so much tighter (yet looser!) just a few years later in 1969.

[WalterBright]

I recall a fellow employee said he wanted to get into programming, and what should he do? I suggested he pick up the manual, read it, and start programming.

Needless to say, he did nothing of the sort, and the world passed him by.

[aidepast]

You see this behavior in many communities; fantasizing. Visit www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning and you will find a group of people who discuss about "language learning" and few people learning a foreign language.

The topics are always similar; "which book", "which audio course", "which foreign language", et cetera. They seek perfect conditions, and they do not exist. They fantasize about how great their life will be once they obtain these perfect conditions. Eventually, they may move on to another subject, as their interest wanes, and repeat this cycle.

[WalterBright]

90% of success is simply showing up every day.

[wolverine876]

While I think that's essential, it's not that simple: Some things require much more preparation (e.g., becoming a brain surgeon), and there is also a lot of failure, regrouping, learning, and trying again - which the four Beatles didn't do as much of as most people. Most people have many years of 'failures'.

Also, most importantly, don't expect popular acclaim - the Beatles are an extreme exception - and don't measure your 'success' that way. Especially in art, have faith in your vision and accept that the public may not grasp it now, soon, or even in your lifetime. Even many great artists recieved little acclaim (or worse) in their lifetimes.

> They did not wait for ideal conditions.

In fairness, they didn't need to wait because ideal conditions were there - in culture (esp. at time that valued innovation and creativity), in music (ditto), in recording technology, in television, in mass media generally. It's a bit harder to be the Beatles today. (Who is doing it?)

[aidepast]

I mostly agree, but you are viewing ideal conditions in a macro-economical manner; perhaps whatever your society encouraged. Bach lived in a time and place where being a composer was a matter of finding a church to employ him, or "serving a court", et cetera. Were these ideal conditions for becoming a composer? They are, but it's a bit lame to say "Well, if I were born in 17th century Austria, I could be a great baroque composer, but in 2022, my society just doesn't encourage that." It's trivial.

People usually are conforming their interests to their society. Most people are not dreaming of being baroque composers today, but perhaps audio engineers, or whatever. The Beatles are a product of their time. They saw what was being encouraged, and it influenced them. A Beatles does not exist today because our society does not encourage it.

Frankly, there exist many contemporary painters who I consider clearly superior to Van Gogh, and their society thought so as well. For whatever reason, our society doesn't value them as much as him. Our views have reversed.

I do not know if this makes sense at all. I'm sure that I'll see this tomorrow and wonder what I was thinking.

[wolverine876]

> I do not know if this makes sense at all.

It makes great sense, thank you. It's a cliche'd point in most situations, that people are products of their time, but in this case it explains and joins two mechanisms - the Beatles not only benefitted from 'ideal conditions', but were possibly driven (in part) by them.

[yesenadam]

> there exist many contemporary painters who I consider clearly superior to Van Gogh

Please let us know about/link to at least a few of these many? Maybe the best ones. Thanks.

[krapp]

I'm sorry, but no matter how much you study math, practice the scales or study anatomy, you'll never be another Nash, Bach or DaVinci.

Hard work and resolve will get you far, and genius alone is no guarantee of success, but true genius isn't simply the application of enough hard work and resolve.You either win the genetic lottery or you don't.

[WalterBright]

If you painted every day, and pushed yourself by painting diverse things that were beyond your abilities, you're going to get goddamned good at it.

[krapp]

Yes, and that will make you an expert, possibly even a master, but not a genius. Genius isn't skill or technical competence, it's potential. Ramanujan was a genius even without formal training. Van Gogh died a genius before anyone cared about his art. Einstein was a genius daydreaming in the patent office. Shakespeare was a genius when he was writing dirty jokes.

[AQuantized]

It's really hard to say Ramanujan was a genius "without formal training." He didn't have the formal training of an English mathematician at Cambridge, but he had access to tutor and some material. He absolutely obsessed over what were essentially mathematical reference manuals for years in a way that was probably central to his extreme skill in symbol manipulation. It was a form of training that almost nobody would voluntarily expose themselves to.

[munificent]

> Yes, and that will make you an expert, possibly even a master, but not a genius.

You say that like it's some sort of indictment. Being an expert, possibly even a master, sounds great.

[Ma8ee]

It’s funny that you bring up Van Gogh, because he was as far from the archetypal genius as you can imagine. He started late, and he produced a lot of quite crappy paintings for many years before he produced his great works. And not least, he had a family that supported him so he didn’t have to waste his time with making a living.

[WalterBright]

Genius certainly exists, but it is often confused with the application of years of directed effort.

[bryanrasmussen]

From the outside you might not be able to see the difference, but perhaps inside the discipline you can see the difference.

Often one might think that results are the indicator. But I don't Crick and Watson were genii (prefer to sound of geniuses) just hard workers but when the payoff of their hard work came out you would probably be excused for thinking they possessed that special gift.

[aidepast]

It's a problem to say this because it's just a truism. Genius implies some sort of exceptional work; seeing what nobody thought to look for. People aren't geniuses. They produce genius. Von Neumann was clearly exceptional, but was he "a genius"? His output was exceptional. He planted seeds and definitely did not wait for ideal conditions. We may debate the legends of his cognitive abilities - eidetic memory - but he absolutely was a "workaholic". He never won a Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal, as if to imply his output was not of the quality of genius.

[ldx1024]

I must say that you picked a particularly poor example with which to make your point.

[bsder]

> I'm sorry, but no matter how much you study math, practice the scales or study anatomy, you'll never be another Nash, Bach or DaVinci.

But without doing that, you will never know.

In addition, many "geniuses" were never acknowledged in their own time. So, were they actually "geniuses"?

[magpi3]

How can you be so confident in this opinion?

[porkloin]

Don't you know? That's krapp the genius!

[champagnois]

I agree with you. This is a big part of my current philosophy of life. Do and read and learn.

[drzaiusapelord]

I think I'm going to counter some of your points. First off, almost none of the people you list would be considered blue collar, that is to say low-skilled working class under someone else's employ. These people were all elites and almost all of whom ran creative studios where they delegated work to uncredited studio artisans.

Secondly, neuroticism is a big problem with creatives and its not like these people didn't have the exact same motivation and mental block issues, its just they found their own ways around them. Drugs and alcohol were often the answer for many of them.

Thirdly, a lot of them led pretty hedonistic lives. Especially your painters. They led Parisian-style cosmopolitan lives of late nights, affairs, hiding gay affairs from the authorities, dealing with hangovers, not showing up for work on days they felt uninspired. Nearly all of these people were self-employed and sold directly to buyers or were funded by patrons. They didn't have any idea of the 9-5 grind and would probably consider it horrifying. Remember, almost everyone on your list lived in pre-capitalist societies and as such had different economic freedoms and systems than ours, and ones that, for successful creatives, meant that actual "work" was entirely different than what you may think it meant.

Art studios for many of these people were a bit like a corporate setup. They'd dictate an outline and leave reference work and a young apprentice or skilled artisan would do a lot of the painting. The master would show up occasionally to correct them and contribute stylistic tones and outlines. The master's real job, like a CEO, was marketing and he was off wining and dining with society to keep his avante grade status as an elite who is welcome in elite circles. These people's social lives were like Versailles's court. They had a great deal of dealmaking and alliance making to even be seen as a viable and important artist. This business and social skill is as important as the art.

And yes high performers were incredible perfectionists. There's no shortage of stories of a famous artist having violent fits because the work didn't match their vision. Mental healthcare back then was poor and Van Gogh obvious was into self harm for example. Perfectionism is the price of entry, imo. It makes us strive for excellence but weighs us down as well. If you're not perfectionist motivated, you may not be able to compete against those who are.

Yes you can cherry pick the prodigious, but they also have artistic block periods, slow work days, etc. And a lot of the higher content creation came after fame when they could afford to farm it out to the factory studio.

So yes, try hard and get over your fears, but there's no magical state of being a "do-er" that fixes everything. Like everything in life moderation is best and a lot of these guys had pretty pleasant lives compared to the stressed out office worker of today. When was the last time you got drunk or had sex at lunch or decided to take a few weeks off to go to Vienna because you were bored with life? Or you decided to move to another kingdom because a low-level regal wants to farm you out to her friends.

tldr; the modern grind is historically inaccurate if you apply it to the past masters. Leisure lifestyles were far more the norm for creatives back then than grindy ones. The nosleep, work 3 jobs, prance on social, never be "off," live with puritan middle class morals, stimulant driven grind is an artifact of our unregulated capitalism, not history.

[aidepast]

I do know that Von Neumann was privileged, with a wealthy father.

You misunderstand. I poorly use the term of "blue collar" as a mindset, and not to their socioeconomic status. It's definitely not the ideal term.

I disagree with your words on perfectionism. I believe that their work exists in spite of their neurosis.

Van Gogh, Von Neumann, Bach, The Beatles; all of these people were industrious with exceptional outputs. Van Gogh is famous for it, as he discusses his process in his letters, adopting the ethic of farmers, painting quickly & in poor weather, et cetera.

It's not relevant anyway. It was an excuse to preach. I did not intend to submit the parent and, as usual, regret it.