Hard work matters

the case against talent

What’s good young and eager mind?

Stumbled on this post today:

Since my maxim is “Chop wood. Carry water.” it won’t surprise you to learn that my views differ significantly.

So here’s my counterpoint.

This is a misleading half-truth

This is strictly correlated with the number of dimensions.

If you play a game of "who can jump and touch the highest spot on the wall"

You got (roughly) 2 dimensions:

1. Standing height

2. Jumping ability

Roughly 2 because jumping ability could be broken up into multiple factors like internal force production, external force production, technique, etc.

Jumping ability can be trained so if you're slightly smaller, you can still beat someone who's taller.

But if you're competing against Shaq or a sufficiently large player, he'll win no matter how low he jumps.

BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF ENVIRONMENTS THAT HAVE MANY DIMENSIONS

Mixed Martial Arts being one of them.

In these areas, conscientiousness CAN ABSOLUTELY be a differentiator.

But don't listen to me...

Listen to some of the greatest coaches on the planet like John Danaher in BJJ or Firas Zahabi in MMA.

Relevant links

Danaher on becoming elite level in 5 years:

"This is not an unrealistic goal. There is a lot of empirical evidence. There is a mountain of evidence to show that you can go from a complete beginner to being competitive with some of the best people on the planet in 5 years."

Firas Zahabi on talent and hard work

"Talent is definitely a factor, no doubt about it. But some sports are more dependent on talent than others. The more restrictions a sport has, the more talent correlates with outcome. How many ways can you win at sprinting? There are not many options and possibilities.

Imagine I'm racing Usain Bolt. We're both training from birth. But I train 6 days a week with the world's best coaches, in elite conditions. He trains 2 or 3 times a week with shitty coaches in suboptimal conditions.

At age 20 we're gonna race. How many of you think, I would win? I would lose every time. Why? Because he has more talent in a game where talent is the most important factor.

Now let's change the sport to MMA.

I'm gonna mop the floor with him. He doesn't know the positions, he doesn't know the setups. He's gonna lose bad. Why? There are more ways for me to win. Talent is less of a factor.

In sprinting, there's not much I can do. I can't compensate by finding other things you're good at.

But in MMA, if you're bad at boxing, I can make you good enough and then make you world-class in wrestling. There are more options."

Or listen to some of the greatest athletes like Kobe Bryant

"Kobe was talented, but he wasn’t the most talented guy out there. I’m telling you, and I’ve seen em all, there’s nothing really special about Kobe. There were other players that had more talent than he did. So what was it about him that more talented players had 0 rings and he ended up with 5? Let’s go back to that talent thing. Kobe taught me that talent is the most overrated thing in life. It’s what you do with your talent. And this is what he did. He not only worked harder than anyone else, but he also worked smarter than anyone else. He was intellectually brilliant at his job.”

- Lakers athletic trainer Gary Witty

These quotes aren't from your neighbor Jim

These are all guys working with superlative athletes.

The GOATS: Kobe Bryant, George Saint Pierre, Gordon Ryan, etc.

And they're all saying the same thing.

People are fond of completely discounting anecdotes (only when it suits them of course), completely ignoring the fact that science uses qualitative forms of research as data points all the time but okay.. let's look at this then

Professor Chambliss in The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers

He takes an even stronger position than I do.

He goes so far as to say that talent, even in low-dimension sports (Olympic Swimming) is overrated.

Sometimes, we talk of a 'gift' or 'natural ability'. These terms are generally used to mystify the essentially mundane processes of achievement in sports, keeping us from a realistic analysis of the actual factors creating superlative performances, and protecting us from a sense of responsibility for out own outcomes.

I.e. he's saying to stop being such a little bitch using 'talent' as a justification for your lazy fucking ass.

I always tell my own students... you wanna talk to me about talent, fine.

BUT YOU BETTER HAVE EARNED THE RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.

Come talk to me about 'talent' after you're not getting results and literally every single thing is dialed the fuck in.

But please fuck off and then fuck off some more, talking about 'talent' when you're trying only 4 things and half-assing 3 of them.

Running is a low-dimension sport.

There's not much strategy involved.

It's mostly about optimizing your biological capabilities, similar to our "be tall + jump" game.

BUT ALL OF THIS IS INTELLECTUAL MASTURBATION ANYWAY

No one who's reading this is in a 1 in 200 million domain, and you know I'm right.

Even some of the biggest founders on this platform who're building huge companies are operating in domains where being "merely" top .01% reaps MASSIVE benefits.

So this message, which you already know is going to be interpreted as a case against hard work, is just plain silly.

You are not Larry Page. And you aren't building Google.

You're Geoffrey trying to build a simple $500K a year service business.

You’re Roy trying to earn $100K as a solopreneur.

Or you're Sarah, CMO at a big advertising agency trying to grow the revenue a bit.

You're not in a winner-take-all market.

You're in an if-you-do-great-work-there's-plenty-of-rewards-for-you market.

Doesn't roll off the tongue, but much more accurate.