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Also, somewhat related: Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on how you shouldn't follow your passion but should go where everyone else didn't go. (link is a blog post discussing his TED Talk, which you should watch)
https://ramblingperfectionist.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/mike-...
However passion isn't the only thing. The amount and type of practice/tinkering is deeply important. My favorite book on this subject is "Talent is overrated" by Geoff Colvin. It directly covers this issue. He breaks it down into time spent working on the fundamentals in a specific way - called deliberate practice and coaching. So the sheer amount of time isn't the fundamental issue, it's the amount of time spent practicing in a specific way and how good the quality of instruction you have access to. It's a fantastic read, but it will deeply challenge many assumptions that are culturally embedded in the U.S. It's amazing how addicted to the notion of talent people are. It helps people make sense of the world, it gives them excuses for not being world class. Yet at the end of the day, talent is overrated will strip that excuse from you and leave you with the question how much do you really want it?
"You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar, skating or singing. How can you possibly be as good as them? They must have a talent for it! But in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it." Hogwash. I started singing and playing guitar at the same time as some friends of mine. We spent the same amount of time -…
Is it at least not possible that your friends used their learning time better than you? They push themselves harder, it was more active, present, focused time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really disagree with you. You say you could never compose music like Mozart, but how do you know? What if you worked at it every day for the rest of your life? Are you really certain you could never reach his level? (And bear in mind he is an extreme case.) You should read this piece by Derek Sivers called "After 15 years of practice...": http://sivers.org/15-years . Quick excerpt (but really, read the whole piece)…
Mozart was a guy who was on his way to possibly becoming history's best maker of music, except he died an unfortunately early death at the age of 35. He was writing tuneful, listenable, harmonious music at the age of four . This is a level of talent far beyond what Sivers was talking about.
The Mozart we know didn't emerge until he was a teenager and he started composing at the grand old age of 13. Yes, he did have a talent, but perhaps that talent was the gift of accelerated learning. Not the gift of magical music.
Talent is the genetic (and nurtured) predisposition toward something.
Being great at something - often conversationally referred to as "talent" - is the combination of predisposition and practice. 10 000 hours of practice is probably not far off mark for any given field, physical or mental.
While the middle of the talent curve for any given field can somewhat make up for predisposition variance with working harder, it is not a good value proposition for those at the lower end of the curve. It is often a waste of time to slog at something you are naturally geared for when the alternate is to work on something you are better suited for.
Passion, drive, curiosity, ambition and mental fortitude also highly variable among people. The "you could do it if you only made an effort"-sentiments really irritate me, even though they usually spring from the inability to understand different minds rather than any malice or sense of superiority.
Virtually everyone has a few talents, and the question is mostly of opportunity to discover them (which does not exist for everyone, even in wealthy societies), "passion" for it - which could less romantically simply be described as the perseverance to work at it through the highs and lows.
In other words, humbug.
100% disagree. I could try my entire life and I will never be able to sing like Josh Groban, or compose music like Mozart, or win the Iron Man Strongest Man competition, or beat Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Yes, a LOT of success comes from effort, but to say that talent doesn't exist is absurd. People who have a talent in a given field, AND work with and hone that talent will always do better than people wi…
Genetic potential is something else entirely. It's hard to say how much of being a strong man or winning the tour de france is genetic, but likely the effect of genetics is less than we typically think. As an example in the book mentioned, they discuss the change in mile times since the four minute barrier was broken. The amount of people who can run a four minute mile now cannot be due to evolutionary changes in that brief period but is much more likely to be caused by improvements in teaching and training methods.
Anyway again, I highly recommend "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin. These issues are covered in depth.
100% disagree. I could try my entire life and I will never be able to sing like Josh Groban, or compose music like Mozart, or win the Iron Man Strongest Man competition, or beat Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Yes, a LOT of success comes from effort, but to say that talent doesn't exist is absurd. People who have a talent in a given field, AND work with and hone that talent will always do better than people wi…
Have you tried the experiment? The really striking thing about K. Anders Ericsson's research
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html
(which is the research underlying many articles and blog posts on this subject) is that Ericsson found results that no other researcher predicted before trying the experiments. In one case, Ericsson developed a training program for undergraduates to increase their "digit span" from the typical seven digits to more than 100 digits. That's a striking result, because "digit span" used to be regarded as a reliable proxy for IQ. (There are still IQ tests that have a digit span item as part of the item content.) Scientists who obtain surprising, replicated results show that sometimes our intuition about how the world works needs correction from factual observations.
There is such a thing as talent. Talent is a natural aptitude for an activity. Sometimes a person's physical and psychological make-up naturally aligns with the requirements for a specific task or group of tasks; it's entirely reasonable to state that such a person has talent. Passion is important - it's what makes your journey seem less like work, and is what will keep you focused regardless of results. However, the…