MM#33--Talent vs Hard Work

Hello I’m David and welcome back to another MOJO Minute

In our last MOJO minute we talked about the virtue of hard work

And how our culture is now shunning that concept 

yet we know that since the beginning of the human species hard work was considered a good thing.

So with that recap let’s continue on this theme of hard work yet, lets examine where talent comes into play within hard work.

We all have known very talented individuals.

Often we hear people say of this person or that person, “they are a natural talent”

But does talent account for the success of extraordinary performances?

Most people would say yes, 

...UNTIL NOW!   (In my best Dr. Gregor voice). LOL

Geoff Colvin wrote a suburb book titled Talent is overrated.  

And he drills down to the question if Talent is overrated then what accounts for everyone’s success?

Answer?

Wait for it.  Wait for it....

Deliberate practice ie Hard work.

You are exactly right.    Deliberate practice is hard work.

Geoff defines for us what is Deliberate practice.

To the book, 

“Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a

lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.”

Ahh, it isnt much fun.

Huh?  So its like hard work, huh?

All this is coming into focus now.

Lol 

Geoff goes on

Back to the book, 

“Noel Richy, a professor at the University of Michigan business school and former chief of General Electric’s famous Crotonville management development center, illustrates the point by drawing three concentric circles. He labels the inner circle “comfort zone,” the middle one “learning zone,” and the outer one “panic zone.” Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can one make progress. That’s the location of skills and abilities that are just out of reach. We can never make progress in the comfort zone because those are the activities we can already do easily, while panic-zone activities are so hard that we don’t even know how to approach them.

Identifying the learning zone, which is not simple, and then forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes, which is even harder—these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.”

And there we have it.

Hard work most especially getting outside one’s comfort zone is the first and most importance characteristic.

So in todays MOJO minute let us examine how we view talent and hard work.

Let us ask ourselves, are we putting in the hard work required to grow in our abilities?

Or are we using our talent to coast in our abilities?

If we do have talent and we have the virtue to put in the deliberate practice and “do the work” as Steven Pressfield teaches us, do we understand the potential we have?   Do we know the opportunities we are blessed to have come our way, the doors that will open, the people that will notice, the rewards that will come

If we just “do the work”.  

Lets us strive everyday to reach our potential knowing full well that talent is just that, its talent, 

but hard work is a virtue well worth exercising each and every day!

Now Lets go to work!