Is talent a myth? What makes someone good at something?
The talent myth is the idea that inherent talent dictates how well you will perform, and it has been shown to be false. Instead, practice plays a much more important role in determining how much someone will excel.
Read on for more on what makes someone excellent.
Talent Doesn’t Adequately Explain Excellent Performance
While excellent performance is popularly attributed to talent, there’s little empirical evidence that talent even exists, let alone that it’s the determining factor in excellent performance. In fact, the lives of excellent performers tend to contradict the talent myth. Even in artistic fields (in which many people believe talent is a major factor), research shows that most excellent performers don’t start being excellent until after they begin formal training. If they displayed excellent performance at an unusually young age, it was because their parents encouraged their abilities—or even began their formal training—from an early age.
Thus, the quality of a person’s performance actually depends on how many hours they’ve spent practicing—specifically deliberately practicing, which we’ll define in the next section. The more hours spent practicing, the better a person’s performance. Excellence is rare because few people are willing or able to spend enough time practicing.
| How Much of Performance Quality Is Determined by Hours Spent Practicing? How much of your performance quality depends on the hours you’ve spent practicing? Anders Ericsson, who developed the theory of deliberate practice, estimates that deliberate practice accounts for around 80% of variation between excellent and mediocre performers. However, other researchers say it’s closer to 20%. Instead of proposing talent as the true determining factor, however, they suggest that a combination of factors, such as your general intelligence and the strength of your working memory, can account for the remaining variation in performance quality. This suggests that the rarity of excellence isn’t just because people aren’t willing or able to practice. It may also be influenced by your genetics and neurological makeup—for instance, some research shows that general intelligence is inheritable, while your working memory develops and degrades along with your prefrontal cortex. These researchers also noted that deliberate practice had the most influence in artistic fields and sports—in other words, the performances of artists and athletes improved the most after beginning training. While Colvin says this is proof that talent isn’t as major a factor as many people think, the researchers take a different approach. They say it proves that practice isn’t as important as Ericsson claimed because, even in these most-impacted fields, practice can only account for 26% of improvement. Finally, the researchers address how practicing at a young age influences performance. Some frame this as a head start—people who start practicing early can accumulate enough hours of deliberate practice to be excellent at a younger age. In contrast, the researchers suggest that practice may be more effective for children. One study found that people who started practicing at a young age performed better than their counterparts even when controlling for deliberate practice. This suggests that it may be easier for children’s developing brains to acquire complex skills, similar to how they can learn languages faster than adults. |
Different Perspectives on Talent
In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman offer a slightly different perspective on talent. They describe talents as recurring thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that affect how you think and see the world. For instance, they count empathy, ambition, and adaptability as talents. These talents are developed, rather than inherent, but they stop developing at a young age and can’t be changed after that point. Thus, Buckingham and Coffman agree with the popular definition that your talent (or lack thereof) dictates how well you can perform: If you don’t already have a talent that’s essential in a specific role, you won’t be able to develop it and thus won’t be truly successful.
In contrast, Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t challenge the popular definition of talent in Outliers, but he does suggest that it’s only part of the reason people achieve excellence. Your individual attributes give you the potential to succeed in a particular area, but your circumstances decide if you reach that potential, he says. Thus, excellence may be rare because its two main factors (your talents and circumstances) rely on chance. Gladwell adds that your parents greatly influence your circumstances, which could explain why excellence seems inheritable: If your parents were excellent performers, you may have a better chance of being one too because they know how to tailor your circumstances to help you excel.
