As someone who was measurably "gifted" as a child, I will say that the idea that I was more tenacious or laser-focused could not be farther from the truth. Inst

As someone who was measurably "gifted" as a child, I will say that the idea that I was more tenacious or laser-focused could not be farther from the truth. Instead, I just "got" things very quickly, such that it required very little effort to learn. I also read at a very high level through practice (I read fiction voraciously), which probably helped. I have since levelled off, and confess to struggling to learn through brute force things I don't readily apprehend. That said, I find the frequency of really good, creative ideas that I have is much higher than my peers, which has translated into a lot of success in the dev world (I dropped out of a phd program in philosophy and joined ama-google-softbook as a dev, as a bridge to starting a business). I don't dispute that effort is a variable in long term performance, but it's more of a criterion for long term performance than a predictor of raw talent imo. I will also say that being singled out for special treatment is pretty silly, I think a more constructive use of my time as a child would have been to help peers who were struggling.