The author concludes that "I should make sure I sweated blood working on a strength, [and] do more of what comes naturally." Something I found was that sometimes the things I have the most passion and interest for are _not_ the things that are strengths. But they have become strengths. Today, I would consider myself to be an OS and systems programmer person. It was abjectly _not_ something that came to me naturally. To understand assembly language, C, and other things, and gain any sort of a proper grasp on, it took years. Sometimes, I tell people how long it took me and how much I struggled, and they are bewildered that I found these subjects so difficult. But I did.
However, my motivating factor was my interest in the subject, not my innate strength in it, and that has pushed me to study it and become strong enough that I can (hopefully, I'm still in college!) succeed in that space.
There are subjects where I could probably succeed if I tried harder and effusively sweated blood (probably pure math related). Pure math is one of those things I just suck at. But the difference is that I don't find it personally interesting, and so the burden of learning and building talent feels infinitely more overwhelming.
Sometimes I wonder if interest influences not just my motivation, but my capacity for learning and talent. Sometimes I also wonder if my "lack of innate talent" is that actually "I generally learn more slowly." But maybe learning more slowly helps me learn things more deeply as well. Who knows.
* As a side note, the quote I was told is "if you want to be known as a dog killer, you should kill dogs."
Well, the absolutely best-case scenarios is when you both have an innate talent for something and deep interest/obsession about it; I think that the article encourages you to find exactly that and then focus on it, because once you combine innate talent + obsession, you do have unfair advantage over the others
I also think it's not super easy to evaluate whether you have an innate talent for something. The example of Ramanujan reading math textbooks when he was twelve is definitely an exceptional case, but I also think it's not clear to a lot of twelve year olds that such deep resources in a subject even exist. I was lucky that my county's library system had a literal treasure trove of computer science related books that I could check out as a tween and teen, so I was exposed to a subject before most people were.
If your parents present you with your first computer when you're five years old, and it drops you to a bash prompt, and that's all you have, then you'll probably know considerably more than everyone else just from that being your only choice for a computing environment.
So sometimes it's hard to quantify whether or not being more successful and growing faster is about the luck of exposure. There are times when I have switched textbooks for learning something or changed my learning style and suddenly catapaulted myself to having the highest scores in classes or understanding a topic infinitely better. People said assembly was easy for them, but maybe spending a year aimlessly typing "si" into GDB was not the most effective way to learn assembly.
But having access to all these resources for exposure allows people to develop their interests and find their talents. It's just hard to say sometimes if that's innate talent and aptitude or just interest and being exposed before everyone else.
> If your parents present you with your first computer when you're five years old, and it drops you to a bash prompt, and that's all you have, then you'll probably know considerably more than everyone else just from that being your only choice for a computing environment.
Only if you have the interest and aptitude to dig in. Compare this with OP's story about trying to learn music instruments at an early age, and his brother. Like others have mentioned, it's a combination of things - you have to have the innate interest (or, if you're unlucky, really overbearing parents who force you to learn it, like Tiger Woods IIRC).
Yeah. I think it's about exposure, though. You can find your interests, talents, and such more easily if you have the luck to have the smörgåsbord of cool things in life presented to you at a young age.
> You can find your interests, talents, and such more easily if you have the luck to have the smörgåsbord of cool things in life presented to you at a young age.
That is called school, everyone goes there. Before school was mandatory and most kids didn't go there was little opportunity to discover your talents, but today most kids gets to try crafting stuff and reading about a wide range of subjects and doing a wide range of physical sports and learning basic music in school.
There might still be some undiscovered talents after all that, but most do get in contact with something that relates to their talent if they have one.
I'd contend that you can develop interest and talent but struggle to grow without extra exposure. I became interested in computers literally because of Scratch in middle school!
But I wouldn't have progressed without having a parent who was a Java programmer at some point and local libraries with deeply technical books. I had to explore out of class to find my niche and develop my interests.
That really helps, indeed
I would partially agree. Speaking from experience, I can say that if you're naturally good at something, you can learn it pretty well even if resources are of poor quality. Obviously it makes all the difference if they're good, but you get it easily in any case
Soo it's not just about what you're talented at, it's about what you're willing to suffer through
> [S]ometimes the things I have the most passion and interest for are not the things that are [natural] strengths.
Whic implies that most of the time, they are.
And that's a good thing. If it took you years to grasp assembly and C, whereas e.g. asynchronous TypeScript is bequem for you the same way polynomials were bequem for David Hilbert in grade school, you would probably make more money, contribute more to the economy, and be an overall happier person overall working a job that is about 80-90% asynchronous TypeScript, and maybe 10-20% the interesting stuff you don't have natural talent at.
Exceptions exist to this rule but they face a double filter:
1. How are you so sure you know better than the people waving money in your face?
2. Even if you have a good reason, why are you the right person to be doing this? Wouldn't someone else whose strengths and talents already align be better still? Is it really impossible to find them and put them in that position instead?
This seems to place interest and talent as equivalent. The issue is that while I might be talented at TypeScript, I have zero interest in it. I know this because I got paid an unreasonbly high amount of money as an undergrad to write async TypeScript code and do full-stack development.
The conclusion is that I would not be an "overall happier person" from this, even if I could be great at it. Besides, long-term, I would not be great at it, since my lack of interest implies a lack of motivation to succeed at it. And it was a real waste of time when it came to my goals in systems.
Interest plays a big role beyond talent. I would feel more fulfilled being a mediocre dog-killer than an excellent something-else. Either way, interest feels almost equally as important as talent to me. Interest can sometimes make up for what I lack in talent. To succeed at what I want to do, I am more than happy to put in twice the time as someone with natural talent.
Obsession beats all. Being interested or talented help in different ways but obsession is the drive that shines talent.
Yes, this is so true for me. Especially when I had this revenge arc, where I knew I could be good. Most of my strengths came later. Now people think that I am talented in that stuff, but there's always hard work behind it, and I was mostly the worst in class. But there was always a shining light in sight, where I knew I could, and that it is a good pathway.
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>Sometimes I wonder if interest influences not just my motivation, but my capacity for learning and talent.
It does. Anything you have an interest in, you will spend more time thinking about in general, be more focused while learning the relevant bits, and will breed a willingness to learn something related, but not specific to what you need.
I'm senior technical in my dept and have had a lifelong interest in tech, how it works, why it works, etc. and in my case, my interest definitely influenced my ability to handle work, broad skillset, practical application and more.
YMMV, but imo, your statement is true.
GL!
True! But it feels like that if you find something that you're both naturaly good at and interested in - you're unstoppable
fwiw i think u hit the nail closer on the head.
especially the example of the indian boy who borrowed and worked through math textbooks of local college students made it pretty clear to me that the difference between him and the poor kids in the US was the inherent drive he seemed to have in this anecdote.
Same as for when the author described feeling to be deserving of praise for the work put in to get a C in math. He would not be satisfied with a C if he had an inherent drive to do math, hell he wouldn’t have gotten that C if he had and if he did he wouldn’t have felt deserving of applause since the work he put in would have felt like playing almost.