Is Talent Overrated?

          The hypothesis of my first blog post is that the "talent card" is often overplayed in talking ourselves out of pursuing greatness. As a teenager, I was convinced that only those persons who won the genetic lottery were successful. I've learned many lessons since then that have convinced me that innate abilities are not the determining factor in how successful we have the potential to become.

           There is a natural tendency among many of us to adhere to the "labels" we receive in our youth from parents, teachers, siblings, friends, and even our own bad logic that ends up determining which talents to develop. This mindset of writing off our potential to develop a talent after merely dabbling in the activity is a sure fire way of excusing ourselves from trying. Our self-identity is often skewed towards underestimating what we are capable of.

           Before I jump into the heart of my message, I should provide the caveat that this post doesn't focus much attention on prodigies. There are, of course, people out there with prodigious talents and I acknowledge that they are from a divine source. I should note, however, that even prodigies have to exert significant effort to perform at an elite level in most circumstances. 

Sources: Some of  the ideas and the studies cited in this post are from a couple of books I've read in recent years pictured below.

    

   

            

             What we often describe as "talent" is merely a barometer of how someone has used their time developing their skills. Talent does not typically exist unless and until it is developed. I suspect that nearly everybody isn't "great" at any endeavor the very moment they try for the first time. For example, there is someone I know who is excellent at playing the harp. My musical knowledge is limited enough to not really know where her performances fall in the spectrum of harp playing. However, I have enough musically inclined friends who have a similar opinion of her "excellence" at playing the harp to know that she is probably at the level I perceive her to be. I can virtually guarantee that her track record of excellent performances is a result of  hundreds if not thousands of hours of practice perfecting her craft.    

            There is no such thing as an overnight sensation. Those people on reality shows that seemingly come out of nowhere have usually been toiling for years in anonymity developing their talents. Talents are merely a reflection of  thousands of hours of deliberate practice plus some God given intellectual capacity to become great. Enough deliberate practice + average intellectual capacity + an opportunity to succeed equates to greatness in an endeavor that you choose to pursue.

            Many interests such as writing, photography, certain musical endeavors, dancing, cooking, or sports may or may not require a lot of talent to become great. A mere propensity or knack may be enough justification to send you down the road of trying to become great. Even then, the first several hours of trying something new may not be a good indicator of what your abilities could become with thousands of hours of practice time. One of the best things about life is that you can choose just about any path and be successful if you are good at persevering. 

           There are obviously a few endeavors where talent is a key element in determining who makes it to an elite level. Basketball is a pretty good example of a field that requires innate talent. You can't teach speed, height, jumping ability or athletic ability. Even though we can improve some of those traits, much of the base elements are innate. There are other fields where natural talent plays a significant role in who rises to the top.  

            It's my belief that any person of average intellectual capacity or better could apply it to a thousand different directions and be successful at any of them. It's obviously not possible to pursue a thousand different paths, since we have just one lifetime. However, the principle is important to understand that average intellectual capacity has near universal applicability to develop great skills in many different fields. 

            The reason we need to understand that we can succeed based on merely average abilities is that there are endless possibilities of directions of where you can steer your life. In particular, you can choose which interests you want to invest your time in whether they be for personal or career gain without a deep rooted fear of failure. You can become at least "great" if you are willing to pay the price. With that in mind, the burden is on each of us to decide the path of our own personal development. If we believe in ourselves and our capacity to do many things at a great level, it opens up endless possibilities for our futures.

            The key to success in any field is, a matter of practicing a specific task for at least 10,000 hours total. That roughly equates to 10 years of doing something for 20 hours a week. This number was established by a study of world class or elite performers in many different industries (music, computer programming, sports, etc.) noted in the figure above. Almost without exception, all the elite performers had logged 10,000 hours worth of time perfecting their craft.  

            The 10,000 hours rule requires a measure of perseverance. You can't decide to be great today and expect that in a year, you'll already have arrived. Most people that try to achieve greatness based on this rule give up along the way and get weeded out. From a comparison standpoint, you'll surpass nearly everybody just by getting to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

            Greatness requires a ton of dedication and sacrifice. Most people want to be great,  but don't want to spend the time getting there. The difference between getting good versus becoming great is a lot of hours of deliberate practice. Many people get burned out before reaching "great" levels.

            Many people don't realize that the brain is like a muscle. The more you repeat, the more cognitive control you have. You need to keep pushing even when you're tired. It also isn't enough to just go through the motions for 10,000 hours. There is a "deliberate" portion of practice that must improve performance.
             By way of example, a competitive long distance runner doesn't become great just by running hard every day. If they don't get enough rest in between hard workouts, they will regress or get injured. They also need to challenge themselves by running faster than race pace and simulate race conditions in practice.
               The practice must meet the following criteria to be deliberate shown on the picture below:

            I've found that activities that require high mental exertion should ideally be done during the middle of the day. When your brain is slowing down at the end of the day, the work product can get sloppy. Using your peak hours usually leads to greater improvement.  

            Calvin Coolidge summarized nicely the argument why persistence of giving consistent effort towards deliberate practice trumps talent in a lot of instances:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

            If your goal is to develop a talent, it's important to both have the tools needed to get in enough deliberate practice and to showcase it. If you want to be great at playing the piano, but don't have access to a piano it will be hard to develop that talent. Even if there are great obstacles to a person developing their talent, in today's world anything is possible for those people with enough desire.

            To a large extent the timing of when we are born impacts our chances at developing a world changing talent. Bill Gates would probably be a different person in history if he had been born 20 years later. Shaquille O'Neal would have needed an alternative career if he was born before basketball was invented. It is my belief that God dictates the timing of our lives and the circumstances into which we are born into, so don't let that be an excuse for not developing your talents. Here is Shaq's alternate career:

            Many of us know how competitive today's job market is. Many of the skills that employers are looking for are acquirable contingent on our effort to develop them. The good news is that they won't require 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become great to hire you. The bar seems to be much lower in that regard. Since certain jobs are evolving and growing in certain fields, it's important to keep an "adaptive" mindset when your resume has some of the core elements of jumping into a new field.

            We are all on an individual journey of personal and career development. The talents that we have today are largely a reflection on our effort to develop them. It's both a scary and exciting proposition that we can acquire new talents that allows us to adapt to the ultra competitive job market. The burden is on each of us to invent the person we want to become.