3 ms·

Ahh, the half-truths that sound so nice, people don't bother to look at the other half :) Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Talent (or genetics, or nat

Ahh, the half-truths that sound so nice, people don't bother to look at the other half :) Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Talent (or genetics, or natural inclination, or a good teacher that came along early on, whatever you want to call it) is another variable that's necessary but not sufficient. When I was just starting out my friend and I both got the same computers. Our parents sent us to the same Sunday computer class to learn. We were both pretty bright. Except I quickly excelled at it, and he was stuck. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't catch up. What came naturally to me was an uphill battle for him. If he started out again today, there's no way he'd ever catch up to me, not in a million years. He was far better at sports than me. During gym, he'd run circles around me while I barely stood there, gasping for breath. No matter how hard I worked, I could never outdo him. I suppose if I set out to practice my running full time every day of the week, I could (with huge effort) outdo all the lazy people that have the talent for it. But it's unlikely I'd ever outdo the talented people who work for it, and I certainly have no chance in hell to outrun Donovan Bailey, not in a million years. Oh, and talent and hard work together are necessary but not sufficient. You could work 24/7 at hammering a mountain with a toothpick, and you could get really good at it, but you still won't get anywhere. You have to have enough sense and enough luck to stumble on the right thing (or to have enough sense and enough luck to stumble onto the method or process that will help you stumble onto the right thing). It's not just hard work - that's a pipe dream. There are as many workaholics that toil for years and never see the light at the end of the tunnel as there are lazy talented people that never get anywhere. The truth is, you might never succeed at what you've set out to do despite being hard working and talented. In fact, the statistics are overwhelmingly against you. It's not empowering and it's not romantic to say that, but it's the truth.

nostrademons 17y ago
I'm not sure that's really true. There was a discussion on it here about 3 weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986 I think there's a feedback loop of sorts, where people tend to enjoy things they're good at more, so they spend more time at them, so they get better at them, so they enjoy them more. This feedback loop gets started by what we normally think of as "talent" - inborn ability. But what if that talent is just the random chance that your first try happens to be the right way to perform that skill? There're ways to interrupt the feedback loop too, which is why both talent and hard work seem to be necessary but not sufficient conditions. If you decide you really don't want to do something, you're not going to practice, even if you're good at it. Or if you decide you're going to keep trying approaches until you get over whatever block is holding you back, you can become talented at something even if you weren't initially successful at it.

nostrademons 17y ago

I'm not sure that's really true. There was a discussion on it here about 3 weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986 I think there's a feedback loop of sorts, where people tend to enjoy things they're good at more, so they spend more time at them, so they get better at them, so they enjoy them more. This feedback loop gets started by what we normally think of as "talent" - inborn ability. But what if that talent is just the random chance that your first try happens to be the right way to perform that skill? There're ways to interrupt the feedback loop too, which is why both talent and hard work seem to be necessary but not sufficient conditions. If you decide you really don't want to do something, you're not going to practice, even if you're good at it. Or if you decide you're going to keep trying approaches until you get over whatever block is holding you back, you can become talented at something even if you weren't initially successful at it.