How your thoughts about talent can shape your future.

“If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

-Michelangelo

We’ve likely all heard a quote (or several) that goes something like

“talent is nothing without hard work”

or maybe

“hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”.

Quotes like these are motivating and certainly more True than not, but they commit a cardinal sin that is not often talked about. Namely, they assume that “talent” is actually a thing — a surprisingly dangerous assumption to make.

We make this assumption regularly in all aspects of human life. The notion that some people are more “gifted” than others or that some people are “math people” all refer to the idea that some people “have it” and others don’t — no matter what “it” is.

We’re not here to convince anyone that natural talent is a thing or not — that’s a deep rabbit hole that almost certainly has no bottom. What we are here to do, however, is point out that no one really knows if it exists or not, and therefore that you get to choose whether or not to believe in it. Moreover,

whether or not you choose to believe in talent is much, much more important than whether or not you actually have it (if it exists).

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And you DO get to choose

If you choose to believe in talent, then you open yourself up to the possibility that you don’t have it. And — since “talent” is usually viewed as a rare object to possess — chances are you probably don’t have it. In this case, the next time you hit a particularly frustrating point in your development, or the next time you mess up in a performance, or the next time you come across someone half your age who’s twice as good as you, it’ll be easier to think “I clearly don’t have talent.” Now that you think you don’t have talent, you’re much more likely to give up, and then that’s game over on your goals.

If, however, you choose not to believe in talent — a choice that you are completely within your rights to make — then it’s impossible not to have it. You then see that the only things between you and your goals are work, practice, and consistency. The next time you’re frustrated, or you embarrass yourself on stage (which has happened to literally everyone who’s ever been on a stage), or you encounter another child prodigy, your reaction will be to do the only thing that you can actually control: work harder, work smarter, and/or work differently. But you’re still in the game, you haven’t given up, you’re making progress.

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This will be a theme that we come back to over and over again, because it is the single most important thing (by far) that you can do to set yourself up for success. And this is not just philosophy — there is a large body of literature on this phenomenon (which goes by the name of “Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset”) spearheaded by Carol Dweck and others that is still growing even 30 years after the original findings. We’ll be getting to all that in the future.

In the meantime, we strongly recommend becoming a “talent atheist”. Take a moment to appreciate the fact that there is literally nothing for you to gain by believing in talent. The Michelangelo quote above says it all, and notice that the word “talent” is nowhere to be seen.

The next time you witness some aspect of human greatness — whether it’s a painting, an athletic achievement, or a musical performance — instead of thinking about how amazing it is that a human can have the “talent” to achieve that feat, try thinking about how amazing it is that a human can have the discipline and fortitude to practice for so freaking long to make it possible. The latter is no less amazing, but it has the benefit of being achievable. What do you have to lose by taking thinking that way?