The Most Important Thing: Belief in Yourself

Talent is overrated. Way overrated.

It seems like a strange thing to say in these times, because last decades have been all about the individual and the individual's talent. We've become obsessed about child prodigies, super-talents, people that "just seem to have it in them." The research, however, is beginning to draw a slightly different picture on the whole subject.

This is not to say that there are no individual differences. There are. This is not to say that anyone can be the best in the world. That's impossible. (By definition.) Neither it is the case that the whole story is known. But what research suggests pretty much contradicts the common knowledge. The short version is that talent is overrated. The longer version I try to present in this article.

Note though that this is not some tree-hugging hippie philosophy of "everyone being the same and equal." All this is based on research. I wouldn't mind if it was the other way around. If that was the case, then I would advocate and preach an opposite message. But I think it's fair to say that the importance of talent as represented by common knowledge is mistaken. Furthermore, I think it has very important consequences for the individual.

Research in the area of expertise has been popularized by a guy named K. Anders Ericsson. He and other researchers were determined out to figure out what made some people experts in their respective fields. The findings can be summarized in two words: deliberate practice. Or four words: shitloads of deliberate practice. There are pretty much no exceptions to this. Even those that have historically been classified as exceptional child prodigies, like Mozart or say Judit Polgar in chess, turn out to have been practicing a huge amount before they really blossomed in their thing.

Now, you can argue, justifiably, that these people who have practiced countless of hours (and then some more) are more talented too. (Maybe they are more talented in practicing, who knows.) And it is probably true, to some extent. But it brings up bizarre comparisons. You look at yourself and think "well I'll never be the best" and compare to someone who already is there and forget the amount of work they've done. It's like you could simulate in your mind your skill (or lack thereof) after thousands of hours of practice without actually doing the practice.

The bottom line is that the only known correlation to expertise is the amount of deliberate practice. Why assume other correlations like the inborn talent when research has not found any? So long as you don't actually practice for years, who knows what your potential could be. To be fair, it is likely that there are inborn and perhaps learned characteristics to do in fact determine whether you can become an absolute top player, but I can guarantee that you can become a pretty fucking good player in pool if you practice, deliberately, for years on. Most pool players never know, because they never practice for long periods of time and deliberately.

The message that an individual should take home from all this, I think, is to not worry about whether you have it in you or not. The only way to find that out is to practice shitloads. In the process, you will become better. Not probably a top player, but certainly the best you can be. There's incredible amount of potential to be filled anyhow. Where exactly it would land you, no one knows. But you can't stop before you even started, just because you're afraid that you can't make it to be a really good player. You can. Believing that you aren't constrained by fixed, inborn characteristics will help you become the best you can.

Coincidentally, this is what another researcher, Carol Dweck, has found in her studies. She has studied what the difference in one's beliefs makes to one's current performance. She divides people into those who believe that "they either have it or don't", aka. the fixed mindset, and people who believe that it's the hard work that determines whether they succeed or not, aka. the growth mindset. Unsurprisingly, people with growth mindset actually perform better. When they fail in something, their response is "well, I have to try harder." In contrast, people with fixed mindset respond to failures by thinking they aren't talented enough.

This can be replicated very easily in for example classroom setting by conditioning one group to think in the fixed mindset and the other group to think in the growth mindset. Then they put all to fail in a test and see how they fare in the next one. Just a simple conditioning like this makes the fixed mindset people to not try at all in the next test. They think that failing is an indication of them being inferior and they do all they can to avoid failure. The growth mindset people think that failures are good indication of where they should be concentrating on. They think they should just try harder.

Dweck has a popsci book about her research called Mindset, which contains solid advice about the effects of one's mindset. The book to me seems a bit too touchy-feely, but it's based on solid research nevertheless.

So, all in all, I think we should all stop worrying about our inborn restrictions. One, they are not so important as we tend to think. And two, those worries are hampering our progress anyhow.

[Although I'm not part of Pool Synergy, I figured I could follow their theme and write an article what I think is The Most Important Thing.]