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I'd like to share a view on this that I found for myself, I am curious if anyone finds it interesting. For years I thought of talent as an effort multiplier. "I

I'd like to share a view on this that I found for myself, I am curious if anyone finds it interesting. For years I thought of talent as an effort multiplier. "Intelligence is speed" etc. I recently remapped it in my head slightly and migrated to a definition that talent is a degree of competence and productivity which you can achieve in a given field "effortlessly". Let's say you are a top 5% software engineer off high school, because of your specific circumstances of nature and nurture. You will still need hard deliberate work, introspection and patience in overcoming plateaus if you want to climb the remaining 5% and become better or the best. So, some people have a head start, some have a very big one, but true improvement in a field is only possible through deep work, and if you can organise yourself to do it, that's a meta-skill for 21st century.

smorgusofborg 5y ago
That reminds me a lot of the story of the manager explaining the best engineers superiority in terms of dividends on a higher percentage of time dedicated to work.. I don't really buy into this theory since in my observation a lot of people get sidetracked and get their dividends on skills that cease to have meaning or otherwise miss the important pieces. I.e. they become convinced of a particular paradigm and use it as the wrong hammer on many nails. In authors they become obsessed with what amounts to retelling the same story to the bored audience. Also, people seem to ignore the net zero nature of being the best or even a pro. If you choose some paths every other amateur ends up as a pro by the standards of when you started, with others you spend years training alone only to suddenly be very relevant due to some shift.