Talent

Can we attribute success to talent or hard work? Take a great singer, for example. Surely, this singer was born with a certain amount of natural talent. Perhaps the average person would not reach the same level of singing ability if they practiced for the same amount of time as this singer, and this is where talent closes the gap.

However, this does not mean that the great singer’s talent gave them some raw capability before any practice. The hard work of learning how to sing is necessary regardless of one’s talent level, although talent does determine your ceiling. This means that talent is a factor in how far you can go, but to go anywhere at all you must work hard.

This insinuates a sort of paradox. Talent does matter, but we cannot attribute our capability (or lack thereof) to talent or hard work until we have reached a point where talent creates a meaningful gap. For example, almost any human on Earth could learn to play chess at a novice level. A naturally talented player may learn in less time, but a less talented player could still learn nonetheless. The difference in talent would only matter once both such players had practiced to the point of approaching their full potential.

The rational approach, then, is to live as if talent does not matter. If you are in fact not talented, you will not be able to know this for sure until you have worked hard enough to maximize your existing potential. If you are talented, it is still in your best interest to work as hard as you can, because talent merely increases the likelihood of success – it does not at all guarantee it. So you might as well do the best you can regardless of the cards you were dealt.

Note: the same mindset applies for luck. Luck is always a factor in every success, but it is often only realized after some threshold of competence. For example, getting into an Ivy League school involves a great deal of luck, but this only matters if you meet some baseline standard to begin with.