Talent Is Overrated

Talent Is Overrated debunks both talent and experience as the determining factors and instead makes a case for deliberate practice, intrinsic motivation and starting early.

A 1990 study in the UK among 257 musicians showed that none of the top performers were:

a.) showing signs of great achievements before picking up serious practice with their instrument.

b.) improving faster when practicing, than their peers.

So not only did they have no inborn talent or capacity for greatness, they also needed just as much practice as their friends.

But if they all built up the same amount of experience and no one was particularly talented, how come there were such big differences in how people performed?

It’s because practice and experience are two different things.

You can make pizzas for 20 years, and still make crappy pizzas (please don’t do that, I love pizza).

We all know someone who’s worked at the same company, doing the same job for decades, which means they never improved to the point where they wanted to take on new things or received a promotion.

This happens when you stop improving, because you’re doing good enough of a job.

Yes, doing the same thing over and over again will build experience, but it’s still the same experience that you’re building.

What you need is new, additional, unfamiliar experience, and that only comes with practice. Deliberate practice, to be exact.

As science progresses, it takes longer and longer to master any given field, be it physics, biology, or even business. That means even when you practice the right way by meticulously analyzing your mistakes and improving in the exact areas you need to be, it’ll take you longer to achieve greatness than previous generations. Nobel prize winners, for example, are now 6 years older on average, when they make their scientific breakthrough, as they were 100 years ago. Sadly, there is no way to turn back time, so the only advantage you can get is to start incredibly early. Yes, for you and me that ship has sailed, but not for our kids. Whether you let them decide or pick for them, setting up a regular, deliberate practice for your children lets them reap three major advantages over the rest of the world: Children don’t have to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood, like work or family, so they can practice more. They can rely on a support network, i.e. their family, that might not be there when they’re grown up. Our brains get slower over time, but at a young age, children can still learn a lot very fast and make bigger leaps in progress. But how do you get your kid to keep practicing the…