All too many believe that talent is the key to success. WRONG! While certainly helpful, talent as an innate gift is not the primary driver of success.
Success is much more the product of:
- Hard work
- Smart work
- Long hours
When we see success and we attribute it to talent, we are mixing up the independent and dependent variables, because we only see the outcome, not the input.
The myth of talent can lead to a “mind trap”: if we believe that talent is the key to success (or connections or luck or any of a dozen or more common excuses) then we give ourselves latitude to coast, to give less than our best.
Closing Quote:
“The talent fallacy comes about because we only witness the end excellence itself
and not the countless hours of work that went into producing it.
If we could witness the entirety of actions
— the repetition of small tasks
— that resulted in the performance,
then we would not be so quick to rely on talent as an explanation.
Ultimately, using talent to explain top performance prevents us from understanding
the very repeatable process that created the success
— one which we could follow if we choose to.”
– John Ousterhout
‘Always Measure One Level Deeper’
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier