> The first rule to become a gym beast is to believe you are a gym beast.
> That is: you need convince yourself that what you do is the best thing you ever do.
I think this is a dumb idea, a mix of wishful thinking and immature psychology. You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
We all want to do the best thing, but in practice in every project there are lots and lots of small, routine things that have to be done in order for the best things ever to even start functioning. I think its important to understand clearly what is the best, and what is necessary and see how each part contributes to the whole project.
> Regarding gym beast - it has few effects: - you eat bigger portions - you go to gym more often - you try harder
I mean there is nothing stopping one from doing all that without thinking "I'm a gym beast now". I feel that its more about breaking the mental structure one is used to, eg "I'm not good at the gym", in that case it might help, but I would argue that instead of replacing one with another why not drop it completely and just do what is needed for the goal one has set. If you do the right things the results will always follow.
You're not wrong. But only right in a "if you're homeless, buy a house" sense.
"stop having low self-esteem bro" is not an constructive advice.
We human are peculiar in that our perception of things (about ourselves) often affect the outcome. "it won't work anyway..." mindset when starting usually end up being a source of self sabotage. Probably somewhere along the line with protecting ego or creating surrogate objective such as "See it didn't work. *I* was right". Creating a vicious loop.
Blind optimism have shown, to many, is a good antidote. Some enforced enlightenment or rationalist talking points usually don't
Per Scott Adams' "Passion is Bullshit", what really helps with motivation is to succeed already. If you have good luck and your initial efforts pay off, you'll probably want to build on that. If you have bad luck and it all collapses, you'll probably want to stop. The lesson there is, I don't actually know. Try sometimes maybe but don't overdo it?
Yes, entirely unaware. I had a hunch it would be that he said or did some terrible thing, but I don't suppose it diminishes the value of this concept about motivation, does it?
Others might (or might not) notice it, but the important thing is competence always gives you more options, more freedom in situations, in that sense you become "someone". Whatever other people might call it depends on culture, language, and so many factors.
> I think this is a dumb idea, a mix of wishful thinking and immature psychology. You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
Nah, there is definitely a genetic basis that allows you to pick things up faster or slower than average. I have one kid who is very uncoordinated, and one who picks up movement effortlessly. The kid who is good at sport (but doesn't actually play any sports) knocked out 16 pullups a few days ago, with no prior training. My all time PR is 17 pullups, and I had to train for years to get that. Some people just are built different. (I've always found symbolic reasoning very easy, so I have my fair share of gifts.)
In other words, it's not nature vs nurture, it's nature and nurture. If you want to excel at a field you have to start with some genetic advantages but then you need to put in the work. (Yes, there is a undertone of frustrated parent in this post.)
Alignment is a good term, but it seems fairly simple: do we want to do something?
I had a wonderful English teacher, in 6th grade. He had us read The Hobbit, and other fantasy books, as opposed to the usual “classic” literature.
It made all the difference, and I’ve been a voracious reader, all my life. Other factors also came into play, but I credit Mr. Martin, for helping me to become interested in reading.
In seventh grade, I had Mrs. Broadbent, and she forced us to read “classic literature.” It was awful, after my sixth grade experience.
Wanting to do stuff has always been important to me. And encouraging people to want to do stuff is a vital aspect of training and managing.
To be fair there might be other students in your same class who, like perhaps Mrs Broadbent herself, would find classic literature to be the thing that ignites their love of reading?
Personally I tried and failed to get into LotR as a kid even though I was a keen reader. Same with Shakespeare. Not everything is for everyone.
So I guess the big deal is everyone getting to meet a book that they can get into as a kid, to foster a love of reading. And different people have different books.
Therefore the problem with high school literature is everyone reading the same narrow assigned set of books, rather than what that narrow set is?
There is a science on talent development, famously popularized in part by Malcolm Gladwell in his over-simplification of the "10,000 hour rule," which he presented as "do something for 10K hours and you'll have mastered it." In fact K. Anders Ericsson maintained that the difference between the highest achieving musicians and the next tiers of achievement were associated with higher volume of _deliberate practice_. The differences were significant around 10,000 hrs. A later meta-analysis looked at the literature and found that practice accounted for far less of the measurable factors that explained the difference in outcomes - maybe just 12% or so.
I think the take-away from these discrepant studies of talent development is that it's a complex phenomenon likely involving genetic predisposition, other factors that influence neural "wiring", availability of opportunities to learn and develop (socioeconomic factors), and practice quality and volume.
If alignment is involved, it's alignment of these factors.
The caveat behind all of this is that the research is heavily focused on the factors that propel one into the high reaches of achievement. For example, Ericsson studied students in acclaimed conservatories. How these factors play out in how talent develops in "good-enough" practitioners is perhaps a different question.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet a number of high performers across some disparate domains. In nearly all cases genetic / nature explanations count for zilch. Alignment, in the sense that TFA talks about, is everything.
I think that across the board a lot of people mistake passion for talent. Which’s what OP is discussing. The people who do well are those whose passion drives them to do better, every waking moment of every day, because that is where they find their enjoyment.
That's just clearly not true. Look at the high end of any sport and you see obvious genetic advantages. Basketball is particularly obvious, because height is so important. Nate Robinson could jump just as high at LeBron James, but at 1.75m (5'9") he was never going to be as successful at basketball as the 2.06m (6'9") LeBron. There are plenty of basketball players who would have never got on the court if they weren't as tall as they are. No amount of passion is going to make you taller.
I'm thinking that the domain of (competitive) sports is an outlier as such as it's probably the one domain where physical properties like muscle structure, height etc. have the biggest impact on "performance".
But the discussion in the article is not about performing to a high level in order to accomplish a certain outcome (win the match), it's more about exploring one self and honing a certain talent to reach deeper levels of self-expression and self-actualization: OP has a unique way of playing the piano, and they honed it by pouring love and time into it. They would probably not perform super well in some kind of piano contest where you need to play by ear, for example. And that's not the point I got.
Everyone can principally pour love and time into any domain or activity. A 1.50m tall person can explore and hone their basketball talent in order to form a deeper understanding of that part of themselves and share it with the world.
The dictionary def of talent is an innate ability; application and practice are not mentioned.
Lady Catherine hilariously claimed "There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."
Dictionary definitions often reflect false folk psychology, but we are still stuck with these words as a common vocabulary.
What I mean is that your talent at Thing was not that you are innately skilled at it, but that you really enjoy doing and getting better at Thing. That is something that it is very hard to cultivate from scratch, and either you have it or you don’t.
I talk to them? Ask them “how’d you get so good at Thing?” and they often tell you just how hard it is to do Thing, but they love it and feel so lucky that they can get paid to do Thing, then tell you all the challenges they ran into, etc.
This incorrectly assumes that people are self-aware about how much their genetics / environment contributed to their success (they are not) but also misses the fact that lots of people work very hard at things without success.
When I think of my singular biggest external achievement, I worked my ass off for it. But no amount of hard work by someone who didn't have some of the advantages I have would have gotten them anywhere close to it. The second part of that comes up approximately never when people ask me about it, I always emphasise the tremendous amount of gut-busting work it took, because that's the part I'm proud of. All that said, I've worked just as hard (maybe harder?) on some things that came to nothing.
There's still a missing part. As a kid I didn't have to learn how to read. I saw the words on children books while my mother was reading when I was 5 and my brain did the rest. It's thus unrelated to time spend trying a particular task.
The "funny" part is that since high school, my brain kinda lost the ability to parse / infer things I don't know most of the time, but not always, and the few time I was able to understand new topics was when I altered my own thinking patterns to not search for answers right away but let myself swim in stimuli/data smoother and let idea come up slowly.
> In a very short summary - talent is time spent on learning or doing something. Which means that anyone can be talented in any area. That’s it. That’s the secret. Go, and be the next Mozart, Copernicus or Tesla (don’t be Edison, that guy was a dick).
I used to believe this. Like many I was swayed by 10k hours. You hear stories like "Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8" but also hear "he must have easily been approaching thousands of hours by that point!"
The one thing that convinced me otherwise is bodybuilding. Take Jay Cutler, one of the greats. He started lifting at 18 and reported that in his first year of training, he gained approximately 50 pounds of muscle, going from around 180 pounds to about 230 pounds by age 19. He quickly got his squat up to 700lb, an insane feat. This is what he looked like [1]
People don't normally put on anywhere close 50 pounds of muscle in a lifetime, no matter how hard they try.
Ronnie Coleman had similar stories, and started bodybuilding at 24, staying natural the first 6 years. He had to gear up to eventually reach the main stage, but he was a beast regardless. It helps when your mom looks like this [2]
Talent is so obvious when you look at physical tasks. Anyone who spent significant time at the gym knows there are people that roll in every 6 months that are always strong. Or that runner that can roll out of bed untrained and run sub-6 minute miles.
Sure anyone can look good and improve their performance, but some people are just talented. And to reach the pinnacle of performance, you have to be extremely hard working and extremely talented. Now apply that to every other field.
People are too obsessed with being "the best" at something, like most things in life skill is a bell-curve. And sure some genetic and environmental factors can be required to reach the very tail-end of that curve, but you don't have to.
The only parts of life that require that kind of skill is in a competitive scenario where only one person/team can win. Essentially in zero-sum games, for you to win someone else has to lose. Very few areas in life are really like that, and the ones that are are usually not worth pursuing.
Effort and perseverance can get you to 5% end of the bell curve just fine and that should be enough for most people in most areas of life.
> People are too obsessed with being "the best" at something, like most things in life skill is a bell-curve
Most of people have dreams that revolve around beating others. If you want your indie game to succeed you have to make a better game than 99% of indie developers. If you want to marry the prince you have to be more attractive (inside and/or outside) than most other people. Or even to solve a big world problem you have to be better at it than most others who tried.
Of course you can have a dream to get kids or to marry and live a regular life etc, but people like to also having these stretch dreams and imagining what it would take for them to reach there.
I think the big dream thing is overrated in terms of popularity. In some cultures it would be taboo to say you're not ambitious.
But most men i know want to marry a beautiful mid, make enough to support a family and watch football on the weekends. The grinders are just over represented in social media and media in general
I mean, it's going to be steroids plus genetics plus a massive amount of effort. Few people can look like that after one year of lifting, no matter how hard they try.
Yes, you still gotta put in the hours even if you do steroids, but calling it talent is like saying someone is a talented cyclist when they're riding an e-bike against a regular bike.
Do you think you can apply the word "talent" to someone who instinctively knows how to the various exercises should work, how to use good form to maximise muscle tension and minimise injury risk, how to vary the exercises to hit different muscles etc..? It feels similar to saying someone is talented at football (soccer) if they instinctively know how to make tackles and kick the ball accurately.
Reminds me of the meme where a kid is dropping tears on the math assignment sheet, "when you do homework with your dad". Forcing kids to spend time on something is an effective way to spoil it for them.
Exploring [math] from a place of curiosity, openness, joy - so, love - is to act out of alignment.
This also means that you need to start from within to develop your talent. What are you curious about, what excites you? Doesn't matter if that's math, obscure bird species or screws.
There's a compounding effect here, once you're deep enough in a couple domains you're starting to see their commonalities and less explored nuances at the domain boundaries.
> Forcing kids to spend time on something is an effective way to spoil it for them.
I generally agree. However most school systems force students to learn basic math, which is generally used for testing whether the student is able to think structurally and follow simple rules. Although I agree intrinsic motivation to be extremely valuable, not doing math with children the way school intends may just lead to worse grades and outcomes.
I believe this less as of now. Sure you can put in the hours, but you can see the difference between ppl that are fast learners and not.
™Do what you are" is a much better ordination. Some people are better wired for sports, maths or arts etc. Far too many are shoehorned into careers not suitable for them intrinsically - but that's also how the economy works. Hey, maybe you're talking about hobbies though?
I think also that what you're getting inner motivation from is also the most hidden from you, therefore it becomes necessary to explore and try to align with as many things as you can. If you're lucky then you do it at an early age.
It's so obvious. Someone born without legs will not be able to run, no matter how much he or she imagines being a runner. When we can't see the thing that obviously explains such a discrepancy, we call it "talent." In many cases, a large part of that is cognitive, and it's not fashionable to think of cognitive abilities as innate, or worse, genetic. Hence the wishful thinking that you're born tabula rasa and can good at anything for which there's no obvious physical hindrance.
It's also not clear that what the "baseline" is for many accomplishments. Perhaps 80% of the population has some musical talent, perhaps 20%. I don't rate the improvisation on his blog highly. Noodling without development, a weak left hand, and questionable rhythm.
It's so obvious, this invisible thing? Seems to me the wishful thinking could go either way here, and you could build a whole imaginary castle of hidden innate abilities, since they're hidden.
Why do innate differences stop at the brain-blood barrier? Isn't it quite reasonable to assume that physical, biological differences exist everywhere in the body, since birth? A priori there's no reason for assuming otherwise.
There's enough evidence that intelligence is partially heritedary. It's also obvious that there are differences between people who dedicate themselves to their hobbies and profession, well beyond the 10k hours.
If it could the other way, why isn't there an endless stream of Einsteins and Newtons? Are all physicists lazy?
That "castle of hidden abilities" exists, BTW, even though it's usually focussed on short-comings. Our genes are quite hidden, and determine a great deal of our capabilities and lack thereof.
The piano piece is nice. You might enjoy Lubomyr Melnyk.
I think its a good approach to discover and build upon what feels good. There are plenty of pianists that can play a catalogue of songs, or improvise "flawlessly", but rareness or uniqueness are great qualities for art to have.
I'm not sure how well the same applies to work, though, where fulfilling implicit or explicit standards plays more of a role. A developed "taste" plays a role in doing e.g. a good sysadmin job, but if you're creating something unique here, any successor is likely to have a bad time, no matter how beautiful this creation seemed at the time.
I do agree with the idea that passion can be a big driver in both worlds, it just seems to me that in work there's more to gain if it is harnessed to some degree.
> When I share recordings with family and friends I often hear that I’m talented and people are surprised that I only play for a year. I have much worse opinion about myself, but take the compliments with gratitude.
> Here I’ll share the secret with all of you. The open secret that I tell to everyone who asks: I play piano 1-3 hours per day. As of today that’s probably ~1000-1500 hours.
1000 hours in one year is 2.73 hours per day. 1500 hours in one year is 4.1 hours per day. And that's 365 days in a year.
If you drop it to 250 (say M-F), it's 4 hours per day (1000) to 6 hours per day (1500). If that's dedicated time, that's more in line for a full time job (or at least the portion you're actually doing constructive work).
That's correct, it's just reality is too complicated to put in simple numbers.
I play 1-3 hours daily per usual, but had 5-10h sessions sometimes. Once my family left and I sat 18h hours while practicing sounds.
And yes, I play everyday, as mentioned I have other devices so on vacations/trips I always have something with me. Usually small synthesizer. It's not a full piano, but allows me to explore chords, check various finger positions etc.
That's what my music teacher told me. I agree but then I have that irresistible pull for "do more, complicate, extend". And with change of seasons my fingers became stiff which is annoying.
Talent is how good you are at something. So you can have "talent" by training a lot. You can however argue that two people that are equal in skill, but one trained less then the other, do that person have more talent?
Too much talent at early stage can however hinder growth to full potential because that person is not used to work hard for the gains. So early talent is not everything, but it does make things easier.
> In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music.
This is interesting. I can remember and hear sounds in my head, but can't visualize any images.
I didn't know about the not remembering or forming sounds in one's own head thing. For the image part:
> A 2022 study estimated the prevalence of aphantasia among the general population by screening undergraduate students and people from an online crowdsourcing marketplace through the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. They found that 0.8% of the population was unable to form visual mental images, and 3.9% of the population was either unable to form mental images or had dim or vague mental imagery
I discussed this with doctors and I was told that visual and audible aphantasia exist, but visual one is much more known. It seems I have both, which explains why I never could learn in classical way through repetition, hearing etc.
However I need to also say that after this year I sometimes can humm in my mind simple tunes like "Old McDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle" or that Looney Tunes piano melody that was always portrayed during rigging the piano, so it might not be hopeless.
You could be describing me. Some very ingrained jingles I can (often involuntarily) reproduce in my mind, but that’s it. I suspect that this is the result of some other learned skill that is repurposing other neural wiring to store these audible memories, since I seem utterly incapable of forming or recalling melodies otherwise.
Seems that the researchers didn't popularize this part good enough. I have some suspicions why this might happen, but it's already into complex consideration area. I'm thinking about something that's called "limited working memory".
It also impacts on mappers vs packers phenomenon and might by linked with alexithymia (which sounds rare but is quite common - especially for men).
I can visualise arbitrary things in my mind, same with sounds, I can build up quite a decent level of polyphonic music and have it play in my head.
Certain things I visualise as a matter of course, I give them colours and shapes etc., and in those things I do well at reasoning. But then I hear other people talk about how they visualise things like arithmetic and I notice they're much faster than me, I think because I'm not just "seeing" it, I have to actively "calculate" it.
I see talent as both the potential of someone, and the capacity to realize said potential.
I've written this before, but I'm also a musician - and have been for 25 years, and music was what I did prior to becoming an engineer. I've interacted with hundreds of musicians in my lifetime, and have observed thousands. Discovering "typically" talented individuals is pretty easy:
- They learn fast
- They excel fast
- They are unusually skilled at something from the get-go. In music, this usually means that even as very beginners, they have a good pitch. Or sense of rhythm.
Within maybe 3-5 years, they are at the same level that takes regular musicians 10-15 years to reach.
That does however not mean that the individuals that lack the above, are not talented. I've seen people that have progressed slowly, but steadily, and become fantastic musicians. Some people will reach 90% in 5 years, others will reach 90% in 10-15-20 years.
Motivation and work ethic tends to be independent skills. There are extremely talented people out there that lack motivation and work ethics, and will abandon the interest, when the going gets tough, or they simple lose interest.
The people that aren't talented, are those that will never progress, no mater how much time and energy they put into it. I know people that have truly tried their best, those that have been going at it for years and years (decades even), but just can't progress beyond beginner stage. They have no sense of rhythm, they are tone deaf, and just can't muscle coordinate enough to become proficient at instruments, and can't pick up theory. (Note: this does not mean that you can enjoy making music, or have fun with music! It mostly just limits what you can play. Some genres or songs will likely just forever be out of reach)
> The first rule to become a gym beast is to believe you are a gym beast.
> That is: you need convince yourself that what you do is the best thing you ever do.
I think this is a dumb idea, a mix of wishful thinking and immature psychology. You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
We all want to do the best thing, but in practice in every project there are lots and lots of small, routine things that have to be done in order for the best things ever to even start functioning. I think its important to understand clearly what is the best, and what is necessary and see how each part contributes to the whole project.
This is often discussed in Psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_it_till_you_make_it#In_ps...)
Regarding gym beast - it has few effects: - you eat bigger portions - you go to gym more often - you try harder (i.e. bigger weights etc.)
I can atest that this works _for me_, but using confidence to reach a goal is quite common.
> Regarding gym beast - it has few effects: - you eat bigger portions - you go to gym more often - you try harder
I mean there is nothing stopping one from doing all that without thinking "I'm a gym beast now". I feel that its more about breaking the mental structure one is used to, eg "I'm not good at the gym", in that case it might help, but I would argue that instead of replacing one with another why not drop it completely and just do what is needed for the goal one has set. If you do the right things the results will always follow.
You're not wrong. But only right in a "if you're homeless, buy a house" sense.
"stop having low self-esteem bro" is not an constructive advice.
We human are peculiar in that our perception of things (about ourselves) often affect the outcome. "it won't work anyway..." mindset when starting usually end up being a source of self sabotage. Probably somewhere along the line with protecting ego or creating surrogate objective such as "See it didn't work. *I* was right". Creating a vicious loop.
Blind optimism have shown, to many, is a good antidote. Some enforced enlightenment or rationalist talking points usually don't
Per Scott Adams' "Passion is Bullshit", what really helps with motivation is to succeed already. If you have good luck and your initial efforts pay off, you'll probably want to build on that. If you have bad luck and it all collapses, you'll probably want to stop. The lesson there is, I don't actually know. Try sometimes maybe but don't overdo it?
If you're reduced to the philosophies of Scott Adams, you're not succeeding.
Why's that? I read that chapter of his book and liked the idea expressed. You got a beef with Scott Adams?
Plenty of people have a beef with how Scott Adam has conducted himself. Are you unaware of his polarizing positions over the last decade?
Yes, entirely unaware. I had a hunch it would be that he said or did some terrible thing, but I don't suppose it diminishes the value of this concept about motivation, does it?
> You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
Important point is: You become someone to others because of your competence.
Others might (or might not) notice it, but the important thing is competence always gives you more options, more freedom in situations, in that sense you become "someone". Whatever other people might call it depends on culture, language, and so many factors.
> You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
And where does that competence come from?
From learning, a complex combination of theory, practice, attention, memory and whatever processes happen in the brain and body.
> I think this is a dumb idea, a mix of wishful thinking and immature psychology. You become someone because of your competence, not of what you believe in.
Shit works, it's not dumb at all.
Nah, there is definitely a genetic basis that allows you to pick things up faster or slower than average. I have one kid who is very uncoordinated, and one who picks up movement effortlessly. The kid who is good at sport (but doesn't actually play any sports) knocked out 16 pullups a few days ago, with no prior training. My all time PR is 17 pullups, and I had to train for years to get that. Some people just are built different. (I've always found symbolic reasoning very easy, so I have my fair share of gifts.)
In other words, it's not nature vs nurture, it's nature and nurture. If you want to excel at a field you have to start with some genetic advantages but then you need to put in the work. (Yes, there is a undertone of frustrated parent in this post.)
Sounds like skill, as opposed to talent.
Alignment is a good term, but it seems fairly simple: do we want to do something?
I had a wonderful English teacher, in 6th grade. He had us read The Hobbit, and other fantasy books, as opposed to the usual “classic” literature.
It made all the difference, and I’ve been a voracious reader, all my life. Other factors also came into play, but I credit Mr. Martin, for helping me to become interested in reading.
In seventh grade, I had Mrs. Broadbent, and she forced us to read “classic literature.” It was awful, after my sixth grade experience.
Wanting to do stuff has always been important to me. And encouraging people to want to do stuff is a vital aspect of training and managing.
To be fair there might be other students in your same class who, like perhaps Mrs Broadbent herself, would find classic literature to be the thing that ignites their love of reading?
Personally I tried and failed to get into LotR as a kid even though I was a keen reader. Same with Shakespeare. Not everything is for everyone.
So I guess the big deal is everyone getting to meet a book that they can get into as a kid, to foster a love of reading. And different people have different books.
Therefore the problem with high school literature is everyone reading the same narrow assigned set of books, rather than what that narrow set is?
This is true.
I feel as if a "One size fits all" approach is a problem.
That's something that "AI" might actually be good for; helping to craft solutions to individuals, while preserving a consistent utility.
I was that kid; never enjoyed fantasy at all, but everything clicked when I discovered Dostoevsky in the school library.
I’ve read plenty of the classics, since, but that’s because my reading comprehension is so good from all that “junk.”
If reading is painful, we won’t do it, no matter how good it is for us.
Same with thinking, problem-solving, learning, whatever.
There is a science on talent development, famously popularized in part by Malcolm Gladwell in his over-simplification of the "10,000 hour rule," which he presented as "do something for 10K hours and you'll have mastered it." In fact K. Anders Ericsson maintained that the difference between the highest achieving musicians and the next tiers of achievement were associated with higher volume of _deliberate practice_. The differences were significant around 10,000 hrs. A later meta-analysis looked at the literature and found that practice accounted for far less of the measurable factors that explained the difference in outcomes - maybe just 12% or so.
I think the take-away from these discrepant studies of talent development is that it's a complex phenomenon likely involving genetic predisposition, other factors that influence neural "wiring", availability of opportunities to learn and develop (socioeconomic factors), and practice quality and volume.
If alignment is involved, it's alignment of these factors.
The caveat behind all of this is that the research is heavily focused on the factors that propel one into the high reaches of achievement. For example, Ericsson studied students in acclaimed conservatories. How these factors play out in how talent develops in "good-enough" practitioners is perhaps a different question.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet a number of high performers across some disparate domains. In nearly all cases genetic / nature explanations count for zilch. Alignment, in the sense that TFA talks about, is everything.
I think that across the board a lot of people mistake passion for talent. Which’s what OP is discussing. The people who do well are those whose passion drives them to do better, every waking moment of every day, because that is where they find their enjoyment.
This isn’t a substitute for talent. It is talent.
That's just clearly not true. Look at the high end of any sport and you see obvious genetic advantages. Basketball is particularly obvious, because height is so important. Nate Robinson could jump just as high at LeBron James, but at 1.75m (5'9") he was never going to be as successful at basketball as the 2.06m (6'9") LeBron. There are plenty of basketball players who would have never got on the court if they weren't as tall as they are. No amount of passion is going to make you taller.
I'm thinking that the domain of (competitive) sports is an outlier as such as it's probably the one domain where physical properties like muscle structure, height etc. have the biggest impact on "performance".
But the discussion in the article is not about performing to a high level in order to accomplish a certain outcome (win the match), it's more about exploring one self and honing a certain talent to reach deeper levels of self-expression and self-actualization: OP has a unique way of playing the piano, and they honed it by pouring love and time into it. They would probably not perform super well in some kind of piano contest where you need to play by ear, for example. And that's not the point I got.
Everyone can principally pour love and time into any domain or activity. A 1.50m tall person can explore and hone their basketball talent in order to form a deeper understanding of that part of themselves and share it with the world.
Can there be 'latent talent' then?
The dictionary def of talent is an innate ability; application and practice are not mentioned.
Lady Catherine hilariously claimed "There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient."
Dictionary definitions often reflect false folk psychology, but we are still stuck with these words as a common vocabulary.
What I mean is that your talent at Thing was not that you are innately skilled at it, but that you really enjoy doing and getting better at Thing. That is something that it is very hard to cultivate from scratch, and either you have it or you don’t.
> In nearly all cases genetic / nature explanations count for zilch
How would you even begin to know this?
I talk to them? Ask them “how’d you get so good at Thing?” and they often tell you just how hard it is to do Thing, but they love it and feel so lucky that they can get paid to do Thing, then tell you all the challenges they ran into, etc.
This incorrectly assumes that people are self-aware about how much their genetics / environment contributed to their success (they are not) but also misses the fact that lots of people work very hard at things without success.
When I think of my singular biggest external achievement, I worked my ass off for it. But no amount of hard work by someone who didn't have some of the advantages I have would have gotten them anywhere close to it. The second part of that comes up approximately never when people ask me about it, I always emphasise the tremendous amount of gut-busting work it took, because that's the part I'm proud of. All that said, I've worked just as hard (maybe harder?) on some things that came to nothing.
People are not very good at evaluating their own success. And also people learn to say things people like to hear.
There's still a missing part. As a kid I didn't have to learn how to read. I saw the words on children books while my mother was reading when I was 5 and my brain did the rest. It's thus unrelated to time spend trying a particular task.
The "funny" part is that since high school, my brain kinda lost the ability to parse / infer things I don't know most of the time, but not always, and the few time I was able to understand new topics was when I altered my own thinking patterns to not search for answers right away but let myself swim in stimuli/data smoother and let idea come up slowly.
You're almost certainly undersampling the people who put in great amounts of effort which didn't amount to anything.
Deliberate practice might be neccessary, but it's not sufficient.
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It's true that talent is almost entirely curiosity/enthusiasm/drive.
But that curiosity/enthusiasm/drive has a large genetic component - like every pretty much every other individual characteristic that humans exhibit.
> In a very short summary - talent is time spent on learning or doing something. Which means that anyone can be talented in any area. That’s it. That’s the secret. Go, and be the next Mozart, Copernicus or Tesla (don’t be Edison, that guy was a dick).
I used to believe this. Like many I was swayed by 10k hours. You hear stories like "Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8" but also hear "he must have easily been approaching thousands of hours by that point!"
The one thing that convinced me otherwise is bodybuilding. Take Jay Cutler, one of the greats. He started lifting at 18 and reported that in his first year of training, he gained approximately 50 pounds of muscle, going from around 180 pounds to about 230 pounds by age 19. He quickly got his squat up to 700lb, an insane feat. This is what he looked like [1]
People don't normally put on anywhere close 50 pounds of muscle in a lifetime, no matter how hard they try.
Ronnie Coleman had similar stories, and started bodybuilding at 24, staying natural the first 6 years. He had to gear up to eventually reach the main stage, but he was a beast regardless. It helps when your mom looks like this [2]
Talent is so obvious when you look at physical tasks. Anyone who spent significant time at the gym knows there are people that roll in every 6 months that are always strong. Or that runner that can roll out of bed untrained and run sub-6 minute miles.
Sure anyone can look good and improve their performance, but some people are just talented. And to reach the pinnacle of performance, you have to be extremely hard working and extremely talented. Now apply that to every other field.
[0] https://generationiron.com/18-year-old-jay-cutler-4-months-i...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/bodybuilding/comments/8p9mok/jay_cu...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/GymFailNation/posts/ronnie-coleman-...
People are too obsessed with being "the best" at something, like most things in life skill is a bell-curve. And sure some genetic and environmental factors can be required to reach the very tail-end of that curve, but you don't have to.
The only parts of life that require that kind of skill is in a competitive scenario where only one person/team can win. Essentially in zero-sum games, for you to win someone else has to lose. Very few areas in life are really like that, and the ones that are are usually not worth pursuing.
Effort and perseverance can get you to 5% end of the bell curve just fine and that should be enough for most people in most areas of life.
> People are too obsessed with being "the best" at something, like most things in life skill is a bell-curve
Most of people have dreams that revolve around beating others. If you want your indie game to succeed you have to make a better game than 99% of indie developers. If you want to marry the prince you have to be more attractive (inside and/or outside) than most other people. Or even to solve a big world problem you have to be better at it than most others who tried.
Of course you can have a dream to get kids or to marry and live a regular life etc, but people like to also having these stretch dreams and imagining what it would take for them to reach there.
I think the big dream thing is overrated in terms of popularity. In some cultures it would be taboo to say you're not ambitious.
But most men i know want to marry a beautiful mid, make enough to support a family and watch football on the weekends. The grinders are just over represented in social media and media in general
I agree. Zero sum games really should be avoided unless it's obvious that you're an extreme outlier.
But let's not extend that to paint a false egalitarian view that talent or natural ability doesn't exist and everyone has equal potential
Robert Wadlow was talented at being nearly nine feet tall. He could be very tall better than anyone, but we don't usually count genetics.
This isn't talent, it's just steroids. It's almost funny how someone can look at that picture and not think of that.
Michael Samuelson benched 100kg the first time he went to the gym at 16 years old, some are literally just built differently.
I mean, it's going to be steroids plus genetics plus a massive amount of effort. Few people can look like that after one year of lifting, no matter how hard they try.
Yes, you still gotta put in the hours even if you do steroids, but calling it talent is like saying someone is a talented cyclist when they're riding an e-bike against a regular bike.
Do you think you can apply the word "talent" to someone who instinctively knows how to the various exercises should work, how to use good form to maximise muscle tension and minimise injury risk, how to vary the exercises to hit different muscles etc..? It feels similar to saying someone is talented at football (soccer) if they instinctively know how to make tackles and kick the ball accurately.
For me it feels like talent = \int_{time} love.
Reminds me of the meme where a kid is dropping tears on the math assignment sheet, "when you do homework with your dad". Forcing kids to spend time on something is an effective way to spoil it for them.
Exploring [math] from a place of curiosity, openness, joy - so, love - is to act out of alignment.
This also means that you need to start from within to develop your talent. What are you curious about, what excites you? Doesn't matter if that's math, obscure bird species or screws.
There's a compounding effect here, once you're deep enough in a couple domains you're starting to see their commonalities and less explored nuances at the domain boundaries.
> Forcing kids to spend time on something is an effective way to spoil it for them.
I generally agree. However most school systems force students to learn basic math, which is generally used for testing whether the student is able to think structurally and follow simple rules. Although I agree intrinsic motivation to be extremely valuable, not doing math with children the way school intends may just lead to worse grades and outcomes.
I believe this less as of now. Sure you can put in the hours, but you can see the difference between ppl that are fast learners and not.
™Do what you are" is a much better ordination. Some people are better wired for sports, maths or arts etc. Far too many are shoehorned into careers not suitable for them intrinsically - but that's also how the economy works. Hey, maybe you're talking about hobbies though?
I think also that what you're getting inner motivation from is also the most hidden from you, therefore it becomes necessary to explore and try to align with as many things as you can. If you're lucky then you do it at an early age.
It's so obvious. Someone born without legs will not be able to run, no matter how much he or she imagines being a runner. When we can't see the thing that obviously explains such a discrepancy, we call it "talent." In many cases, a large part of that is cognitive, and it's not fashionable to think of cognitive abilities as innate, or worse, genetic. Hence the wishful thinking that you're born tabula rasa and can good at anything for which there's no obvious physical hindrance.
It's also not clear that what the "baseline" is for many accomplishments. Perhaps 80% of the population has some musical talent, perhaps 20%. I don't rate the improvisation on his blog highly. Noodling without development, a weak left hand, and questionable rhythm.
It's so obvious, this invisible thing? Seems to me the wishful thinking could go either way here, and you could build a whole imaginary castle of hidden innate abilities, since they're hidden.
> could go either way
Why do innate differences stop at the brain-blood barrier? Isn't it quite reasonable to assume that physical, biological differences exist everywhere in the body, since birth? A priori there's no reason for assuming otherwise.
There's enough evidence that intelligence is partially heritedary. It's also obvious that there are differences between people who dedicate themselves to their hobbies and profession, well beyond the 10k hours.
If it could the other way, why isn't there an endless stream of Einsteins and Newtons? Are all physicists lazy?
That "castle of hidden abilities" exists, BTW, even though it's usually focussed on short-comings. Our genes are quite hidden, and determine a great deal of our capabilities and lack thereof.
Well, maybe it's quite a small castle. You don't know.
The piano piece is nice. You might enjoy Lubomyr Melnyk.
I think its a good approach to discover and build upon what feels good. There are plenty of pianists that can play a catalogue of songs, or improvise "flawlessly", but rareness or uniqueness are great qualities for art to have.
I'm not sure how well the same applies to work, though, where fulfilling implicit or explicit standards plays more of a role. A developed "taste" plays a role in doing e.g. a good sysadmin job, but if you're creating something unique here, any successor is likely to have a bad time, no matter how beautiful this creation seemed at the time.
I do agree with the idea that passion can be a big driver in both worlds, it just seems to me that in work there's more to gain if it is harnessed to some degree.
The math does not check out here:
> When I share recordings with family and friends I often hear that I’m talented and people are surprised that I only play for a year. I have much worse opinion about myself, but take the compliments with gratitude.
> Here I’ll share the secret with all of you. The open secret that I tell to everyone who asks: I play piano 1-3 hours per day. As of today that’s probably ~1000-1500 hours.
1000 hours in one year is 2.73 hours per day. 1500 hours in one year is 4.1 hours per day. And that's 365 days in a year.
If you drop it to 250 (say M-F), it's 4 hours per day (1000) to 6 hours per day (1500). If that's dedicated time, that's more in line for a full time job (or at least the portion you're actually doing constructive work).
That's correct, it's just reality is too complicated to put in simple numbers.
I play 1-3 hours daily per usual, but had 5-10h sessions sometimes. Once my family left and I sat 18h hours while practicing sounds.
And yes, I play everyday, as mentioned I have other devices so on vacations/trips I always have something with me. Usually small synthesizer. It's not a full piano, but allows me to explore chords, check various finger positions etc.
Music is art.
It's about doing something interesting, that doesn't mean is has to be complex or complicated.
OP does the right thing in sticking to simple stuff, because that's what they can control right now.
That's what my music teacher told me. I agree but then I have that irresistible pull for "do more, complicate, extend". And with change of seasons my fingers became stiff which is annoying.
Talent is how good you are at something. So you can have "talent" by training a lot. You can however argue that two people that are equal in skill, but one trained less then the other, do that person have more talent? Too much talent at early stage can however hinder growth to full potential because that person is not used to work hard for the gains. So early talent is not everything, but it does make things easier.
> In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music.
This is interesting. I can remember and hear sounds in my head, but can't visualize any images.
I wonder how common it is.
I didn't know about the not remembering or forming sounds in one's own head thing. For the image part:
> A 2022 study estimated the prevalence of aphantasia among the general population by screening undergraduate students and people from an online crowdsourcing marketplace through the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. They found that 0.8% of the population was unable to form visual mental images, and 3.9% of the population was either unable to form mental images or had dim or vague mental imagery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
I discussed this with doctors and I was told that visual and audible aphantasia exist, but visual one is much more known. It seems I have both, which explains why I never could learn in classical way through repetition, hearing etc.
However I need to also say that after this year I sometimes can humm in my mind simple tunes like "Old McDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle" or that Looney Tunes piano melody that was always portrayed during rigging the piano, so it might not be hopeless.
You could be describing me. Some very ingrained jingles I can (often involuntarily) reproduce in my mind, but that’s it. I suspect that this is the result of some other learned skill that is repurposing other neural wiring to store these audible memories, since I seem utterly incapable of forming or recalling melodies otherwise.
Seems that the researchers didn't popularize this part good enough. I have some suspicions why this might happen, but it's already into complex consideration area. I'm thinking about something that's called "limited working memory".
It also impacts on mappers vs packers phenomenon and might by linked with alexithymia (which sounds rare but is quite common - especially for men).
I can visualise arbitrary things in my mind, same with sounds, I can build up quite a decent level of polyphonic music and have it play in my head.
Certain things I visualise as a matter of course, I give them colours and shapes etc., and in those things I do well at reasoning. But then I hear other people talk about how they visualise things like arithmetic and I notice they're much faster than me, I think because I'm not just "seeing" it, I have to actively "calculate" it.
I see talent as both the potential of someone, and the capacity to realize said potential.
I've written this before, but I'm also a musician - and have been for 25 years, and music was what I did prior to becoming an engineer. I've interacted with hundreds of musicians in my lifetime, and have observed thousands. Discovering "typically" talented individuals is pretty easy:
- They learn fast
- They excel fast
- They are unusually skilled at something from the get-go. In music, this usually means that even as very beginners, they have a good pitch. Or sense of rhythm.
Within maybe 3-5 years, they are at the same level that takes regular musicians 10-15 years to reach.
That does however not mean that the individuals that lack the above, are not talented. I've seen people that have progressed slowly, but steadily, and become fantastic musicians. Some people will reach 90% in 5 years, others will reach 90% in 10-15-20 years.
Motivation and work ethic tends to be independent skills. There are extremely talented people out there that lack motivation and work ethics, and will abandon the interest, when the going gets tough, or they simple lose interest.
The people that aren't talented, are those that will never progress, no mater how much time and energy they put into it. I know people that have truly tried their best, those that have been going at it for years and years (decades even), but just can't progress beyond beginner stage. They have no sense of rhythm, they are tone deaf, and just can't muscle coordinate enough to become proficient at instruments, and can't pick up theory. (Note: this does not mean that you can enjoy making music, or have fun with music! It mostly just limits what you can play. Some genres or songs will likely just forever be out of reach)
Relevant SSC blog post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-tal...
Starting from very similar observations but drawing the causality arrow in the opposite direction (alignment follows from talent).