Talent?
A harmful mindset, which is currently circulated in modern society, is the talent mindset-that talent plays the biggest role in the success of individuals rather than other factors. Subsequently, everybody is looking to find talent. The most talented musician or the most talented actor etc. But is this mindset even true?
Well, in 1991, a psychologist by the name of Anders Ericsson wanted to explore the phenomena of talent. Where did it come from? Who had it?
What did he find? Contrary to popular belief, there were no individuals who were granted world-class abilities at birth. Not one. What played a greater role in the “talented” becoming successful was opportunity and practice.
Matthew Syed has written a comprehensive book outlining the myth of talent and maximizing practice called Bounce, which was a book I recommended on the reading list I sent out last week. For those of you who don't know, he was a national table tennis champion who remained the top-ranked English player for nearly 10 years.
He decided to write this book because of an interesting realization he came to during his career as a professional athlete. For a long time, he bought into the myth of talent. He thought he had table tennis in his genes until he realized that the street he had lived on, while he was a kid, had produced more outstanding table tennis players than the rest of the country combined. What led to this area consistently producing the most accomplished players? Had a genetic mutation hit this place. No. A simple answer, the athletes in this area had practiced more than the rest of the competition.
While his town was not a particularly prosperous area, the kids who lived there had access to a free 24-hour table tennis court. They could play whenever they wanted and so from an early age, they were cultivating countless hours of practice on the table. On top of this, a world-class table tennis coach worked as a primary school teacher in the area and he was determined in ruthlessly producing table tennis champions. The success of the children in this area was much more down to them being beneficiaries of unique circumstances that allowed them to accumulate a higher volume of practice rather than any genetic predispositions.
This is a false perception I also had when I was younger. I attended a fairly low-achieving school but I used to outperform many of my peers. This led me to believe I was naturally gifted. However, when I look back, many other factors played a significant role in my academic success, one being, for example, the high emphasis my mom put on education from a very early age. This isn't something every parent did, especially in the area I grew up in.
The myth of the child prodigy
One common argument for the existence of talent is the child prodigy. How could a 7 or 8-year-old boy be so much better than his peers at a certain activity? Well, again, upon closer inspection it appears that practice and opportunity played a much bigger role than genetics in producing these "child prodigies". Mozart is often the poster child for the child prodigy until you realize that his father was an accomplished musician who had put him on a rigorous musician’s schedule since he was 3 years old. The same is seen with Tiger Woods. Many analysts attributed his success up to genetics, golf is in his DNA. How else could a teenager be competing with seasoned veterans? In reality, he had just been practicing so much more than everybody else. His dad had started teaching him golf since he was a 1 year old, before he could count to 5 he knew the difference between par 4 and par 5. Both of these individuals had put in thousands of hours of practice into their disciplines compared to their peers by the time they were 9 or 10 years old. As Matthew Syed puts it, talent is the result of thousands of hours of practice, not a gift granted at birth.
Too often when we pick up a hobby or pursue an endeavor if we aren’t good at it the first time we seem to chalk up to not having the aptitude to succeed in it. Do you think when Tiger Woods first picked up a club he was getting a hole in one or Mozart was composing classical greats when he first picked up an instrument? No chance. Hammer away at a skill, day in day out. Search out for the best opportunities instead of being held up on a so-so trait which you weren’t granted at birth.
Practice and opportunity> talent.
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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