“Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.” -Moby
I may have been eight, or ten... who knows. With a small bucket in hand, I was tasked with getting the day’s worms.
There are a lot of effective ways to catch earthworms which can be found on the Internet, but none of them were used this day.
Picking a random spot in the yard, I dug a hole with my garden shovel, maybe catching a worm or half a worm every three digs.
“This sucks,” I thought. Or at least I would think. I’m not sure if “suck” was in my lexicon at that time.
I decided to experiment.
I recalled that many insects and bugs seem to hide under large stones or boards laying on the ground. There must be some worms there!
“Gotcha!” I yelped after plucking a rock about fourteen inches around. My shovel piercing the cool soil around it as I pulled it from its home. My bucket began to fill.
To be successful at fishing, you have to know where to fish and what baits to use. After that, you’re just limited to the size of your rod and your bucket.
Its similar to Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. Everyone has what he proposed: ten intelligences (eight plus existential and moral which he later proposed).
- musical-rhythmic
- visial-spatial
- verbal-linguistic
- logical-mathematical
- bodily-kinesthetic
- interpersonal
- intrapersonal
- naturalistic
- existential
- moral
Gardner proposed that all of us have these ten buckets, but they may be different in size. For example, someone with a larger bucket in musical-rhythmic would develop those skills at a faster rate than someone with a smaller bucket in the same intelligence if they worked on the skill for the same amount of time.
It also means that someone can be better at something even if they have a smaller bucket if they spent a proportionally higher amount of time on that skill.
His theory isn’t about being smarter or more intelligent. In contrast, his theory supports the idea that anyone can get better at anything... it just takes more effort for some than others.
I know I will never be LeBron James (and not because I’m just under six feet tall). My bodily-kinesthetic bucket is significantly smaller than his and I’d never get close, yet I can still play basketball with my friends who are also kinesthetically challenged.
If you didn’t notice, my fishing bucket was and is small. Naturalistic is not very big for me. I do enjoy nature, but if you ask me what that bird is or how to catch a fish, I probably won’t know even when you try to teach me. My Mom and Grandpa can. And they’ve tried to teach me. However, I am at a level of being able to tell the blue ones from the red ones, and “oh, I think that’s some sort of a swallow.”
Which bucket is one of your smallest, and how have you developed it?