Who was your dad?
No one you've heard of! Even with the internet, not everyone is a LOOK-AT-ME.
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Free registration at the forum removes this block.Who was your dad?
You do raise an interesting point on what precisely talent is, and frankly I don't have a great answer. Is it God given? Is it the combination of a modicum of ability with insane work ethic? I would argue it's probably the latter, but in the end it may not even matter.
but, as I said in another post... I'm probably being too pedantic. One doesn't have to be a DaVinci to be awesome and skilled at a bunch of stuff.
This is spot on. I had - no - talent for coding at all just 7 months ago. Now I would (humbly) consider myself an intermediate to advanced Node.js developer, who can build secure APIs. This was not some innate attribute that had been waiting to be expressed when the time was right. This was a concentrated effort of growth and knowledge acquisition, time sacrifice, and a personal belief that I could attain that competency. The real talent is Google.Talent is a myth. It persists for a few reasons:
- We struggle to comprehend our potential in the medium - long term
- It's a great excuse not to try
- It appeals to religious epistemology
"talent" is really being highly skilled at something, which comes from:
You find that "talented" kids, were usually practising that skill continuously throughout their childhood, maybe without consciously realising or intending it.
- Persistance
- Doing things the right way
- Asking the right questions
- Having a go and seeing what happens
- Supportive environment
There are a few books that look into the subject of talent - Bounce is a really good one. The Talent Code is another (although I haven't read that one). The conclusion from a lot of these books, which study several fields, is that...
... talented people do the work.
Talented people also appear "talented", because they suffer from expert amnesia. This is where they have programmed all the simple tasks that mere mortals struggle with, into their subconscious. For example, a lot of great (really great) guitar players believe vibrato technique is something you either have, or you don't have. They are so good at the technique, they struggle to consciously comprehend the individual elemetns of it. However, I can tell you for a fact they are wrong - give me any half-wit with a guitar and I can give them a great vibrato in about 6-10 weeks.
From my personal experience teaching, most people learn at the same sort of rate. What differs is:
=====
- practice time
- attention to detail
- time spent worrying if you did it right over just getting on with it
Most "talented" people are, to put it in fastlane terms, people that enjoy the process, in an artistically creative field. They're good at painting, because they can sit for 10 hours a day painting.... every day.
This is spot on. I had - no - talent for coding at all just 7 months ago. Now I would (humbly) consider myself an intermediate to advanced Node.js developer, who can build secure APIs. This was not some innate attribute that had been waiting to be expressed when the time was right. This was a concentrated effort of growth and knowledge acquisition, time sacrifice, and a personal belief that I could attain that competency. The real talent is Google.
Very very true.Yes, and it's a curse, because no matter what you devote your live to, you'll be unhappy for the interests you are leaving behind.
Being a multipotentialite is a gift and a curse. I find myself finding an interest in something. Then, I will excel at it quickly. After mastering whatever it may be...I'll get bored with it and move on to something else. I get annoyed by my own actions when that occurs. I wish I can kick the habit and just focus on ONE thing. Not trying to sound arrogant or anything of that nature. But imagine you are good at everything. Now, it's time to make money. But you don't know what direction to go because anything is an option for you. No action is taken towards anything because of the fear of "I don't know if i'm doing the RIGHT business." It is also a form of perfectionism. I feel it is holding me back from reaching my full potential in the world of business. Combat sports(mainly the sport of boxing) and music production are the only things that keep me constantly interested. I don't know why I've never gotten bored with the sport of boxing yet. I lowkey think it's because humans are unpredictable. A person may assume but no one truly knows what an opponent is going to do in the ring or outside of the ring. Especially, in a time of desperation.
At the same time, I often feel inferior to other people because I've never reached mastery in anything, particularly in sports which have always been my primary passions outside of entrepreneurship.
It seems like no matter what sport I engage in, I always stop improving after about 2-3 years and end up with average skills. But then it makes me think of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, who wrote in his book Let My People Go Surfing:
Perhaps that's a fitting word for me, too - an 80 percenter. You're proficient enough, but you can't call yourself exceptional.
I highly recommend picking a category like stocks/trading, e-commerce, real estate investing, or digital marketing.
There’s enough to learn in any one category that you won’t be able to master it as fast.
That feeling and the frustration is very familiar to me, and I haven't quite found a "solution" to the struggle.
I am a bit frustrated that so much relies on us having to earn money (but that's the way it is), because I would probably also be happiest just exploring without the pressure of having to turn it into something I can monetize..
However, the internet offers quite a few ways to earn enough money through a myriad of interests combined with some skills (online marketing is a great skill to learn + niche knowledge to build/sell your own projects or consult), and another way to help you free up time to pursue multiple interests or careers is cooperation. This multi-faceted interest is often coupled with a certain degree of introversion, so that's complicated, but people skills are a good thing to learn .
Don't beat yourself up about it and with time there might come a huge project that combines many interests and can actually keep you happy. I haven't found it yet, but the interests I've had in my life so far seem to spiral into an underlying concept that seems to be getting more and more clear to me. It takes time, enjoy the ride.
The concept of a well-rounded man has been around (Some examples were already given and Samurai were also educated in many areas such as art and culture as well as war). Try to discover if there is a principle that guides you and use that as motivation and orientation (helping people, improving your community, becoming a better person, artistic expression, inner peace etc.)
Such an interesting topic.Talent is a myth. It persists for a few reasons:
- We struggle to comprehend our potential in the medium - long term
- It's a great excuse not to try
- It appeals to religious epistemology
"talent" is really being highly skilled at something, which comes from:
You find that "talented" kids, were usually practising that skill continuously throughout their childhood, maybe without consciously realising or intending it.
- Persistance
- Doing things the right way
- Asking the right questions
- Having a go and seeing what happens
- Supportive environment
There are a few books that look into the subject of talent - Bounce is a really good one. The Talent Code is another (although I haven't read that one). The conclusion from a lot of these books, which study several fields, is that...
... talented people do the work.
Talented people also appear "talented", because they suffer from expert amnesia. This is where they have programmed all the simple tasks that mere mortals struggle with, into their subconscious. For example, a lot of great (really great) guitar players believe vibrato technique is something you either have, or you don't have. They are so good at the technique, they struggle to consciously comprehend the individual elemetns of it. However, I can tell you for a fact they are wrong - give me any half-wit with a guitar and I can give them a great vibrato in about 6-10 weeks.
From my personal experience teaching, most people learn at the same sort of rate. What differs is:
=====
- practice time
- attention to detail
- time spent worrying if you did it right over just getting on with it
Most "talented" people are, to put it in fastlane terms, people that enjoy the process, in an artistically creative field. They're good at painting, because they can sit for 10 hours a day painting.... every day.
Such an interesting topic.
OK so I have a bit of a nuance to add here.
You say "Talent is a myth" and that "it's a great excuse not to try," but that real talent comes from persistence and "doing the work."
.........
A few conclusions from my point of view...
A) There is a thing that people call "talent," but it is overrated - it's more likely to set you up for failure than success.
B) People who are NOT "talented" are more likely to develop skill through hard work, which will take them 100x farther than mere "talent" ever could.
C) If you look at a successful person and chalk their success up to "talent," you're almost certainly wrong. It probably wasn't "talent" that got them there, it was hard work.
D) If people label a child as "talented," it does short-term good and long-term harm (the child has wonderful self-esteem, but they're not set up to succeed in the real world).
E) If, in some rare instance, a person who is universally acclaimed as "talented" also develops an insane work ethic, THAT person will probably go much further than the person who is merely a hard worker with no talent. I think there is a real phenomenon where some people's "half-effort" is better than most people's "full effort." But in my experience, talent seems to work against the likelihood of a person developing a strong work ethic. The majority of talented people, myself included, seem content to put in "half" their potential and coast for the other half. This is a major flaw in my character that I am working on correcting.
I stumbled upon this term some years ago, and found a book that helped me a lot to understand me better in that regard.
"Refuse to choose" by Barbara Sher.
The downside of it is that you rarely monetize any of your skills, as specialists do. But once you recognize yourself as a generalist and accept that fact, you can become a better entrepreneur, or creative problem solver, or conector, or whatever.
... I love to be a generalist, but I cannot avoid to envy some specialists sometimes.
At least, I've found a passion where being a generalist is necessary. I'm into filmmaking lately and that allows me to learn a lot about so many topics without going out my way. As a good teacher of mine said "as a director, you have to be the second best in everything"
I guess the same applies to a lot of entrepreneurial endeavors.
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That's the hard part if all your body and mind pulls you in the opposite direction. Being a generalist you may surround yourself with a lot of specialists. But anyway you have to say NO to a lot of things.Now the question will be how to take advantage of this for entrepreneurship, as spending my free time on my million interests is great, but deep inside I still think I should break free from a day job.
I think the key here is to "apply that cross-domain knowledge into one specific domain".@OP
Also, love your avatar ;DPeople Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely To Be Successful According To Research
Author’s Note: This article was written over 60 hours with love and care using the blockbuster mental model. If you like my writing style…medium.com
Agree with the Scott Adams bit - when you add skills together it can greatly increase your chances of success.I think the key here is to "apply that cross-domain knowledge into one specific domain".
Another good case to study is Scott Adams. Who was average in all the things he did, but combining them into ONE thing made him rich.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams: 9781591847748 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play...www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Edit: I wrote the answer before finishing reading the article, which also mentions Scott Adams
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