What is talent? Talent literally means: A natural aptitude or skill. Natural? You have heard of talent, seen talent, and may have been told that you even have talent. Talent is all over the media and is overly hyped by everyone; whether with sports, movies, at work, in music, or even in your traditional school talent show. According to Geoff Colvin the author of “Talent is Overrated” he believes that ‘natural’ talent is all a myth. These specific ‘natural’ abilities don’t even explain or measure up to great performance. High achievement isn’t reserved for those few with ‘natural’ ability or talent, it is available to us all who are able to reach that stance of success. Initially, talent comes from the desire and hard work to achieve something that you want.
According to Colvin, “Mozart was merely a human performer with human motivations, not a demigod propelled solely by the divine spark.” (Colvin, page 48) Mozart wrote sheet music just as any other human musician; he constantly revised and edited his work to where it was good enough for him. This was nearly perfection. Mozart worked hard and had been through 18 years of extremely hard, expert training. Mozart’s work clearly demonstrates that the harder you work at a skill based off of your talent; the better you get at it.
This proves that hard work is obviously crucial. No matter how much ‘natural’ ability anyone has for something, they will not achieve a high level of skill; without putting in the time and effort to improve that based on only itself. For example, Mozart was a phenomenal musician and everyone was sure that he had been born with a gift due to him composing his own music at the age of 5 is unimaginable. The man behind this so-called ‘inherited talent’ was his father Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist.
Leopold is best known today as the father and teacher Of his son Wolfgang Mozart. Mozart was a cheat! He used other composer’s music and put them all together changing the pitch and rearrangement of different notes to create his own ‘masterpiece’. This my friend, is called plagiarism: “Using another person’s words, but changing some of them, or rearranging them.
This is plagiarism even if the source is cited.” (“Can You Use Someone Else’s Work?”, 2017) This gives an explanation to why Mozart was so outstanding and successful. Mozart was just like any other great performer (such as: Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach) he didn’t create music perfectly that fitted the approval of himself and his fans, Mozart constantly revised and edited his work to go above and beyond any other musician. The difference between ‘natural’ talent and skill is that Mozart actually wanted it; he wanted to be the best and prove to others that he was, so he was able to achieve that high stance and name as being the greatest classical musical/composer to ever live. On top of that, The thing that all ‘talented’ people have in common is the drive to succeed, determination, social and familial support, and the fact that they are products of the social conditions of their time (such as mozart). What makes hard work really hard isn’t even the work itself. It’s everything else that you take on when you make the decision to work hard toward your goals or to build-up your strengths and weaknesses. It’s the brutally honest self-evaluation (assessing yourself); the tough personal sacrifices and the uncertainty of whether or not you will make it.
Furthermore, the “Better Idea” is as simple as deliberate practice: repetitive performance of intended cognitive or psychomotor skills. According to Colvin, “Their framework is not based on a simplistic ‘practice makes practice’ observation. Rather, it is based on their highly specific concept of ‘deliberate practice’.” (Colvin, page 100) What really makes all the difference is a highly specific kind of effort, what he calls ‘deliberate practice’ and this equals great performance. Practice needs to be adapted with the ambition to work on “sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved.
” Identifying these elements of performance that need improvement and knowing how to go about with improving them can be difficult at times. Most importantly, in The Better Idea chapter of Talent Is Overrated focuses on Jerry Rice, perhaps the greatest wide receiver ever to play in the NFL. That must have taken a lot of football playing to get that good, right? Wrong! One of the secrets to Rice’s success is that he played very little football. Almost none of the time he invested in preparing for games involved actually playing football. Instead, his prep work often focused on exercises that weren’t fun at all ; usually exhausting and repetitive drills, mostly ones that focused on his certain weaknesses, and a willingness to work on his own weaknesses or mistakes made in the past far beyond what other players were willing to do. Looking into his perspective, practicing whatever one desires is the key to success. Jerry Rice had that desire; for years he had epitomized effectiveness and efficiency both on the football field and off it in off-season and preseason training sessions. There are no shortcuts to what you want in life, everything is attainable if you keep that desire as your motivation.
Nothing is impossible. Practicing as much as you can is basically promising yourself that you will become amazing in that particular field or if you already have. Colvin’s proposal for this alternative method is convincing because according to him: continuous practice will promise what one desires to earn. In order to achieve this stance successfully you have to actually put in the disciplined time to do the ‘deliberate practice’ it takes to make it work.
“It’s the foundation of peak performance.” The reality of deliberate practice is continuously stretching someone just beyond his or her current abilities that you have already reached, you have to push yourself to the limit. Usually, most people practice on something that they have already mastered, so that is only perfecting one skill of your actual ‘talent’; which is not helping completely. You can develop ‘talent’ or expertise in any skill. You have to realize that practice and experience are not the same thing; for personal performance or matavation it means that having a slight edge against others can actually lead to bigger motivation to practice, you need better coaching, more support, this will come together to greater that advantage that you have already had or that has been given. In conclusion, hard work is what really matters and shows your area of expertise in any field that you choose. You have to understand that you find your passion then work, you can’t work on something that you don’t feel passionate about or else you won’t work as hard.
Passion is one very important element of ‘talent’ that produces extraordinary results. The reality of passion is revealed through working hard for something that you earned, yet passionately. Hard work along with passion and great skills will help you get toward success, what really makes you worthy is if you can keep up with all the struggles and stress coming your way. Nothing is handed to you in life; you have to work hard in order to achieve that success.
