Ira Glass on Good Taste
Posted: May 30th, 2008 | Author: Ryan | Filed under: Featured, Inspiration | Tags: creativity, ira glass, npr, practice, public radio | 2 Comments »Ira Glass talks about developing creative genius.
Ira Glass, Peabody Award winner and host of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, talks candidly about what it takes to become good at just about anything – practice. In it he defines the disparity that creative folks initially have between their tastes and their abilities. And he encourages them to keep moving forward in order to, eventually, meet the standards of their taste.
What’s interesting to me is that I know that practice pays off. For some reason I’ve just never attached that knowledge to creativity – even though all the clues were there. A brilliant artist and friend of mine says that he can teach anyone to draw. In essence, he’s saying the same thing. “If you want to practice, you can be good.” I suppose the struggle – for me anyway – is determining which things I really want to be good at. Because there simply isn’t enough time to practice them all.
Jeanna and I had the pleasure of seeing Ira Glass at the Tennessee Theatre in 2007 and I finished this short video with the same feeling I had when we saw him on stage – hopeful, inspired, & creative.
Great set of videos from Ira. Saw him myself at the College of Staten Island. It’s nice to hear him speak so encouragingly. A couple of psychologists who study “excellence” and performance would totally agree with him. You’ve probably heard that it takes a minimum of 10 years to get really, really good at something. Made sense to me.
As a web designer, I’ve definitely experienced what he’s talking about. Especially in my first few years designing websites, I hated my work, but I didn’t have the ability to improve it at the time.