If you want to offend someone whoās truly great at what they do, call them talented.
Wait. What? Isnāt that a compliment?
Not really.
Sure, some people seem to come equipped with more than their fair shareālucky jerks. But talent is random. Itās out of our control. And when you call a highly-skilled person ātalented,ā youāre accidentally dismissing the massive effort theyāve invested to make their performance appear effortless.
Take Steph Curry. The man is a magician on the basketball court. He could probably drain a three-pointer blindfolded, riding a tricycle, in a hurricane. Is talent a factor? Undeniably. But not nearly enough to overshadow the hundreds of thousands of practice shots heās taken to hone his craft.
Or Ed Sheeran. One of the most successful singer-songwriters of our time. Talented? Sure. But if you listen to his early recordings, youāll wonder what gave him the courage to keep going. (Spoiler: relentless effort.)
And then thereās Angela Duckworth, the psychologist who made grit a focal point in classrooms and boardrooms everywhere. Through her researchāand her own lifeāshe proves that effort consistently outperforms natural ability all day. Her formula:
Performance = Talent Ć EffortĀ²
Talent matters. Effort matters twice as much.
Which brings us to you.
Do you consider yourself talented?
However you answer, it doesnāt let you off the hook.
Some of us hold back because we think weāre just not that talented. We didnāt hit the genetic lottery. We werenāt born brilliant, gifted, or extraordinary.
Others of us are very talentedāand we hide behind it. Most of what we do is better than average, so we settle. We stop pushing.
Either approach is wasteful.
Talent is just a starting point. Itās a patch of soil. What you grow is up to you.
So, work so hard and get so good that people canāt help but offend you by calling you talented.
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