Why Talent Is Overrated

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008102116

by comatose_kid • 18 years ago

66 56 18 years ago

money.cnn.com

I wouldn't say talent is overrated. I'd say hard work is underrated; talent is misunderstood. Luck is also underrated. Wealth is overrated.

sabat• 18 years ago

Talent alone does little or nothing. Talent + hard work = great potential. Talent + hard work + luck = success.

For a great psychological (layman's) treatment of this, see Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.

13ren3• 18 years ago

if luck is "success against the odds", the odds are dramatically improved by making several attempts, and making adjustments after each one. In these circumstances, I'm inclined to say that luck is inevitable.

The harder I work, the luckier I get

thalur2• 18 years ago

I would say that talent is how good you can be at something without having to try (i.e. without hard work), and that as such it is a continuous quantity rather than a binary one. When talent runs out, the only way to get better is through hard work. In a way, I think being too talented at something is a handicap because you never learn how to work hard, and so you are unable to progress any further than your talent will take you.

jajvirta2• 18 years ago

That Dweck book is indeed a good one, if not a bit touchy-feely in its take. It's really important finding in Dweck's studies that this mindset distinction has a huge effect in the effort people make. The people who believe they're bound by their inborn talent (fixed mindset) do not push hard and usually just give up when hard problems come up. People who believe the opposite (growth mindset), that your abilities are not constrained by your inborn talent, tend not to give up when things get difficult but just put more effort until they actually do manage to solve their problem.

So, in this sense it's actually irrelevant whether or not inborn talent is necessary, because the mere belief that it is could have negative effect on your effort.

zasz3• 18 years ago

It makes more sense to say that talent is necessary but not sufficient. I'd like the writer to provide examples of people who had no apparent talent at all, even lacking whatever talents are necessary to get into a good college, and show me how many billionaires you get from that group. Saying that out of a crowd of Ivy League graduates, since only two made it big, that being an Ivy League graduate had absolutely nothing to do with it at all, makes no sense.

hs• 18 years ago

Thomas A Edison lacking talents to get into a grade school has physical limitation (deaf) but invented? phonograph?

i would even say as far that limitations (talent, physical, money etc) are necessary to make it big

zasz3• 18 years ago

Just because you're deaf, doesn't mean you can't have mechanical aptitude. And what if your limitation is that you have Down's Syndrome? Clearly, some parts of human ability are genetic, and some of the variance in human ability is innate. I'm just not impressed to hear that out of a hundred smart people, only 5 became successful. That doesn't prove talent has nothing to do with it. If a study showed that the rate of success was 5% regardless of "talent," whatever that is, that would be something, but the article didn't do that.

I suppose if your limitation is mild poverty though, you'd probably have a lot more ambition to move onto something better than somebody born into a comfortable middle-class life.

helveticaman2• 18 years ago

Edison counted deafness among his talents because it enabled him to focus better.

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

I don't think this is true. According to the article, talent is a result of hard work directed in the proper direction (eg, working on stuff that you aren't good at). And the number of billionaires you get from the group with 'no apparent talent' has at least two examples from the top of my head; Alan Sugar and Felix Dennis were both pretty close to this mark (if not in excess at points).

habibur• 18 years ago

Reminds me of George W Bush.

Chocobean• 18 years ago

archiving the rank of ___ and then going down in infamy for being the worst of the ___ is probably not an achievement.

jajvirta2• 18 years ago

I think proving something like this is unfeasible. What is shown in studies of expert performance is that there's a very strong correlation between the hours of deliberate practice and expertness in some field. That is, pretty much without any exceptions, experts in any field have been practicing for thousands of hours, the number typically quoted is in the order of 10000 hours. This doesn't prove anything particular about the necessity of talent, but it proves that at least hard work is necessary.

But, on the other hand, nothing in these studies suggest that some talent-like property is necessary.

zasz3• 18 years ago

The problem with those studies is that they analyzed successful experts. I want to see a study where they have everyone putting in thousands of hours of work. How many kids get into Juilliard every year, and how many achieve the same level as Yo Yo Ma? How many grad students are working their asses off at Caltech and MIT right now, and how many of those are actually going to produce some significant mathematical work? I don't doubt that ambition and effort are necessary, but of course some degree of talent must be key as well.

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

If you're in a creative position, talent is essential. But if you simply need to make the right decisions (or not too many wrong ones) and get the job done reasonably well to get ahead. For a guy like Ballmer (featured in the article), discipline and diligence far outvalue talent.

blakeweb• 18 years ago

> If you're in a creative position, talent is essential.

I used to believe this strongly as well. I worked with a great web graphics designer on several projects 3-5 years ago. We'd collaborate on overall flow and wireframes. He'd make it look good, and I'd make it work.

I commented once that I wished I had his artistic talent. His response was basically that if along the way I'd spent as long in photoshop working on and trying to dream up mockups as he had, I'd be just as good.

Since then I've come to strongly agree with him.

vlad• 18 years ago

Bodybuilding came to my mind. People say they don't have good genes (I would say some percentage of professional athletes do have far better genes than anyone else, but not most professional or college athletes). However, unless they try lifting weights 4x a week and/or trying to be good at a sport for five years in their early 20's, they will never actually know.

gaius• 18 years ago

"A stronger will beats superior genetics" -- Dorian Yates. He's only partially right, tho', as Stuart McRobert demonstrates.

mattmaroon3• 18 years ago

Did they just use, as an example to prove that talent is not genetic, one former NFL quarterback having two sons who are NFL quarterbacks? Or did I imagine that?

I must have imagined that.

prospero• 18 years ago

I think it was meant to show that if you look beneath the inherited skill, you'll find a lifetime of hard work, just like with anyone else. Still, that's not what I'd call quality writing. I'm surprised it made it past the editor.

mattmaroon3• 18 years ago

Right, because if you accept the contrary argument, that it's about nothing but raw talent and work is irrelevant, you would assume that the training didn't hurt but didn't matter either.

Show me a quarterback whose 5'2" dad who stopped at middle school peewee trained them, and I'll be impressed.

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

Yeah, that was my first thought too - but the example does support the 'Deliberate practice is designed specifically to improve performance' idea. The father taught his children where to focus their efforts.

Also reminds me of one of Feynman's anecdotes where he mentions that his dad was really involved in educating him:

"My father taught me continuity and harmony in the world. He didn't know anything exactly, whether the insect had eight legs or a hundred legs, but he understood everything. And I was interested because there was always this kick at the end-a revelation of how wonderful nature really is." (from "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track", an awesome book).

acgourley• 18 years ago

Wouldn't it take talent to actually perform deliberate practice? Most people don't have that kind of self control.

13ren3• 18 years ago

From this one talent springs all.

But this "talent", to make effort in a specific way, seems more a moral "talent" - like courage or kindness - than anything else. These qualities can be cultivated, and are a necessary part of being human that are within us all. They are within you.

SapphireSun• 18 years ago

I would say that talent is a useless idea. What really matters is an openness to new ideas, the courage and diligence to pursue them, and a genuine interest in success. Sometimes these things do not appear at all in someone but then as they acclimate themselves to an environment, they polish themselves to a shine.

How do you even define talent anyway? If it's just something you're good at, enough practice will get you there provided you are physically able.

helveticaman2• 18 years ago

I couldn't help but notice the discrepancies between the article and reality:

Bill Gates, the world's richest human, is a more promising candidate for those who want to explain success through talent. He became fascinated by computers as a kid and says he wrote his first piece of software at age 13; it was a program that played ticktacktoe. The problem is that nothing in his story suggests extraordinary abilities.

From wikipedia:

"Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test[17] and subsequently enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973.[18] Prior to the mid 1990s, an SAT score of 1590 was equivalent to an IQ of about 170 (roughly the one in a million level),[19] a figure that would frequently be cited by the press.[20]"

Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

"This photo's from Lakeside High School, a private school that Paul Allen and I attended. Paul was two years ahead of me in school, looking here you might think he was about ten years older than I am...This particular room was very important cause this is where the first computer connection was created ...the mothers club funded that teletype this was when I was in eighth grade and first figuring out how to use the computer, and a bunch of kids came down and were fascinated but the two who really stuck to it the most were Paul and I. In fact, people thought it was strange that Paul kept talking to a kid who was two years younger than him, but I had won this nationwide math contest and so Paul knew I thought I could figure stuff out and he kept challenging me saying hey can you understand this or you know can you figure out how to do that and so he and I became very close friends and that led directly to the creation of Microsoft only about five years later."

Microsoft without Gates, as narrated by Bill Gates.

Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/gates...

From an interview with Playboy in the early nineties: GATES: I was 11. But he was an enlightened guy. He was always challenging me. He would ask me questions, but he would never tell me whether my answer was right or not. He would say, That's an OK answer. Then our time would always be up and he'd give me more stuff to read.

PLAYBOY: Ever wonder what might have become of you if you had gone to public school instead of Lakeside, where you met Paul Allen and fell in love with computers?

GATES: I'd be a better street fighter.

PLAYBOY: When did you know you had something special to offer? When did you become aware you were different?

GATES: [Big raspberry] I have something special to offer, Mom! Mom, I just figured it out: I have something special to offer! So don't make me eat my beans.

PLAYBOY: You know what we mean.

GATES: When I was young we used to read books over the summer and get little colored bookmarks for each one. There were girls who had read maybe 15 books. I'd read 30. Numbers two through 99 were all girls, and there I was at number one. I thought, Well, this is weird, this is very strange. I also liked taking tests. I happened to be good at it. Certain subjects came easily, like math. All the science stuff. I would just read the textbooks in the first few days of class.

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Bill.Gates.html

I recommend CNN learn to use google.

13ren3• 18 years ago

I know what you're saying, but those quotes also describe deliberate practice... look how hard Gates worked at 11 yo, and in what way.

If (and I don't know if he did or not) Bill Gates had been practicing those skills since the age of 3 or so (as Tiger Woods did), one would expect him to be highly capable by the age of 11, and to score well in any test of those skills. etc

yters• 18 years ago

Sometimes talent can be counterproductive:

http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm

wumi• 18 years ago

desire trumps ability

debt• 18 years ago

I believe I'm talentless so I couldn't agree more with this article.

auston• 18 years ago

I thought Ballmer knew Gates well in college. I'd say that would definitely help him get that CEO position.

benbeltran• 18 years ago

Talent isn't everything, but it sure helps. But then again, maybe "talent" is just the product of hard work and dedication in the form of an almost scary obsession with something.

danielh• 18 years ago

The sports analogy is misleading.

If you want to make it to the top in sports, you need the talent, which in this case, means the right genes.

Usain Bolt will never beat Haile Gebrselassie in a marathon, no matter how much training (or doping), and vice versa.

Goronmon3• 18 years ago

I think it's much easier to discuss "talent" if you ignore physical attributes. Not just because it avoids using the word "talent" too broadly, but because physical attributes only apply in a very limited number of professions.

xiaoma3• 18 years ago

Like the rest of the body, the brain exists in the physical world. All "talent" is based upon physical attributes.

crosscompile• 18 years ago

You underestimate steroids.

markessien• 18 years ago

'Talent' is not something anybody should be proud of having. Everybody is born with a particular advantage over other people in some particular area. Some discover this advantage and put it to good use. Others do not, or never have the chance to develop it. So 'Talent' is irrelevant, because everybody has it.

The thing to be proud of is discovering your talent and actually putting it to use in a way that benefits you or other people.

In a church choir, there are tons of people talented in singing. But they don't try to develop or focus on those talents.

And of the programming crew here, perhaps some of you could have turned out to be the greatest footballers in the world. But you may not even know that the balance and co-ordination for this is within you. Instead you're here writing medicore PHP code.

To develop a talent, one needs a positive feedback loop. Many people don't get that in the area they have natural abilities in.

So, talent is irrelevant. Everyone has it. It's the development of the talent that counts.

known• 18 years ago

Success = Passion + Potential + Patience

cadalac• 18 years ago

+ Talent

thalur2• 18 years ago

"You could say that work, like deliberate practice, is often mentally demanding and tiring. But that's typically not because of the intense focus and concentration involved. Rather, it's more often a result of long hours cranking out what we already know how to do. And if we're exhausted from that, the prospect of spending additional hours on genuine deliberate practice activities may seem too miserable to contemplate. "

That I can agree with :( A very interesting article once you get into the description of deliberate practice and how to implement it.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

I've always felt that early music education had something to do with brain development later in life. This article helped to explain a lot. To be able to identify weak areas and purposely practice at them is something I used to do in my 20s all the time, mainly because my music education told me that this was the way to improve a poor-performing piece.

This article was a good reminder for me. I need to get back into that mindset.

namcos• 18 years ago

A dropout can beat a genius through hard-work and determination. -Naruto

nicko2• 18 years ago

Never argue with an idiot. They will only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

mlLK2• 18 years ago

Is there a source for this? Or is this all you?

xiaoma3• 18 years ago

As my old basketball coach liked to say, "You can't teach tall."

We each have different innate limits that no level of "deliberate practice" can overcome. Yes, the power of sheer will can do amazing things, but our genetics still limit us. Lion DNA differs from human DNA by less than 10%, but no amount of training could ever allow a human to close the gap created by genetics and leap or run as quickly as a lion.

thewordpainter• 18 years ago

Too many people aspire for mediocrity; Not many people aspire for GREATNESS

mhartl• 18 years ago

An aphorism about babies and bathwater comes to mind.

To pick one concrete example, great musicians often have perfect pitch and are rarely tone-deaf; and, great musicians always work hard at music.

And so it goes with everything else.

mlLK2• 18 years ago

'Deliberate Practice' is what Easterners might call 'Kung Fu', while we Westerners often associate the concept with Chinese Martial Arts, I think the East associates this term in a much broader context whereas Kung Fu is used for describing much more than just martial arts.

jcl• 18 years ago

"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." -- Calvin Coolidge

Why Talent Is Overrated

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