Talent is mostly not real.

Now, there is a reason I used the term “mostly” in that description. I do think that there are people who are generally more skilled at picking up any given activity than other people, and there are activities that any given person is more skilled at picking up than any other given activity. However, like Daniel Chambliss, I think that “talent” is a basically useless explanation for what makes people skilled.

Fundamentally, we attribute to talent that which we cannot see — mostly hard work and luck. For instance, if someone saw me play the piano in sixth grade, after I had been attending lessons six years and had made about as much progress as some three-year-olds do in a a year, they would rule that I was not talented at the piano. After all, six whole years of piano, and I had nothing to show for it.

Yet, yesterday (as of my writing this), I gave a recital where I played Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude and Bach’s Prelude in E Major, and played both well.1 I picked up the piano back in college after a six year long hiatus, and played it for three of my four years here. Unlike my parents’ first attempt at making me learn the piano, I actually practiced here, with predictable positive results. I progressed far more in these three years of playing than I did in the six of my early childhood.

Was I suddenly “talented?” Well, no. And obviously people would not rule me as such. But, aside from a difference of degree, it’s basically the same phenomenon. If I had a few more months to practice, I might have been able to play a piece like Clair de Lune, which is both incredibly difficult and incredibly beautiful — or I might have learned the second movement of the Moonlight Sonata. I still wouldn’t have been “talented,” I’d just be a hard worker. What separates that potential version of me from one who did that at age 10, aside from age?

I think we need to stop talking about talent. “Talent,” as I see it, is only one part of the skill acquisition process; someone who is “talented,” but lacks the qualitative differences at every other step in the skill acquisition process will not appear talented. Meanwhile, someone who “lacks talent,” but does separate themselves in the qualitative aspects of skill acquisition will suddenly appear to be talented once their efforts bear fruit.

If I’m being honest, I’m always going to be a little sad that I never practiced the piano when I was a child, never studied for math competitions, or never really did much with anything that required an extensive early introduction. Maybe I would have been “talented” if I dedicated myself to those endeavors early in my life.

Instead, I’ll just have to settle with being Phi Beta Kappa, graduating (hopefully) summa cum laude, and going to a highly competitive PhD program.2 Oh well.

  1. I did make one mistake on the grace note when playing the Raindrop prelude, but that was basically it. ↩

  2. What I am being facetious about here is the idea that you have to have your life figured out when you’re a child — and dedicate an extensive amount of time early in life towards particular endeavors that will help bear fruit later on. To an extent, this entire spiel is a self-justification for my lack of focused effort earlier in life — that it’s okay to feel a little aimless. If anything, that makes finding yourself that much more rewarding. ↩