Against the Talent Myth

Some claim there is no such thing as talent, and hard work, properly directed will propel anyone to mastery of an activity, subject to certain genetic limitations: A 5 foot tall 70 pounder is unlikely to become a successful professional wrestler and almost certainly not a professional basketball player.

While this “Talent Myth” theory has a lot going for it, some people seem to have taken it to an unnecessary extreme, and neglected some counter evidence.

It has been observed that those who excel in a field or complex activity and reach the top have a put in at least 10,000 hours of “purposeful practice”, practice that addresses their weaknesses without allowing their strengths to fall behind. In various Martial Arts this means repeating basic techniques day after day, concentrating on the new but not letting the familiar decline, perhaps training blindfold or not using the hands to maintain balance. For a musician it means practicing scales daily but leaving time for challenging new pieces or fingering. For a conjurer it means practicing the same tricks but adding new ones. Purposeful practice means making the familiar hard and constantly pushing for improvement.

It seems likely that if one took a group of say 100 young children and got them doing a particular activity new to all of them for 6 months then there would be a distribution of abilities in the group.

Some of this could be explained by physical factors, or personality traits. For Chess, for example some would find it easier to focus than others. For music some would have a better sense of rhythm than others. The point however is that there will be a spread in the potential within the group. But potential does not equal achievement.

Aesop expressed the idea of the talent myth in his fable of the Hare and Tortoise. The two had a race but the hare decided he was so far ahead he could relax and took a nap. While he was sleeping tortoise over took him and when the hare woke up he lost the race to the tortoise despite rushing to the finish line

Look at the group of school children mentioned above. If the one with the highest potential were to cruise or do nothing while the one with least potential steadily practiced, then the low potential child would eventually over take the high potential child.

It has been observed that no one ever reached grandmaster status with less than ten years hard practice including matches and studying past championship games. I am not denying that practice is needed, together with motivation but if one looks at the top 5 players of all time their performance ratings differ by about 3%: in first place is the brilliant and unconventional Bobby Fischer who came close to revolutionising the game. Assuming the rating system is consistent over time this seems a little high if all had practiced with equal dedication: 1% would seem more reasonable. Also, in 5^th place is one of three sisters raised to become chess champions, and 5^th place seems a little low in this case. This is NOT to denigrate her performance which is spectacular, but to speculate that the variation is due to talent not training, and chess has the advantage that it has a solid numerical measure of performance.

The notion that purposeful practice is the key to mastery has a lot going for it, but there are a few niggling little pointers that it is not enough.

Thomas Bethune was blind and mentally retarded. However he could repeat any piece of music on a piano if he heard it just once, and manifested this talent before the age of six, never having touched a piano before . He was a slave and his master made a lot of money exhibiting his talents. He also composed music

Olive Sacks mentions mentally retarded twins who would amuse themselves by swapping 20 digit primes. One day Sachs read out a 24 digit prime number to them and an hour later they were swapping 24 digit primes.

I recall seeing a 12 year old autistic boy on television who produced exquisite drawings, and reading of a child, barely more than a toddler asking his father what the time was and saying “in that case I have been alive for (a number I forget) of seconds. The father checked it and said it was wrong, but the child pointed out it he had forgotten a leap year.

When the great mathematician Gauss was ten years old his teacher set the class an exercise to sum a series of numbers. Gauss write down a number then did nothing for the rest of the class. When the teacher checked Gauss was the only one got the right answer.

When footballer George Best was at his peak he stood out head and shoulders above his team mates who had all had the same training

These examples constitute the basis of a case for talent. But they are rare. Each case however strengthens the case for talent without weakening that for purposeful practice

Masters of a field are not all equal even if they sometimes seem superhuman. There seem to be at least three levels of mastery.

The first is where you can teach yourself without going wrong. In IT a practitioner will reach this stage in 5 to ten years of professional experience.

The second is where you can teach yourself by teaching others. Again this requires 5 to ten years hard work and some teaching skills.

The third level is where you innovate and add something new to the field. Few reach this third level. In Martial Arts examples include Bruce Lee and Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido and Bill Underwood, founder of the martial art of Defendo who developed his own successful school after 5 lessons from a Japanese Ju Jitsu expert. In Science Einstein and Feynman come to mind and in Art there are Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci. And of course Dali. Others may have different lists but not much larger.

In summary to reach the first level needs purposeful practice, to reach the second level needs talent, and to reach the third level arguably needs genius as well as hard work

Talent will help you succeed but is probably neither necessary or sufficient.

Purposeful practice will help overcome differences in talent. (this assumes we know what talent is and can measure it),

Genius in a field is something else but a genius who fails to work hard will never realise their potential.