Effort vs Talent? Try Ability

There's an ongoing debate in the area of human performance as to which counts for more, effort or talent. Arthur Lydiard, the famed track coach, was once asked what the most important thing a person can do to make it to the olympics. He answered, "choose good parents." On the other hand, the much misquoted "10,000 hour rule" implies that it's the effort that makes the difference.

My own experience, both in professional athletics and at one of the world's top universities, is that it very much depends on what you count as success. I was good enough to ride for a pro team and good enough to get an engineering degree from Cornell, but both were very hard. The hardest things I've ever done. No additional effort would have made me a really good pro or put me at the top of Cornell's class; I simply didn't have that kind of talent. But, I did have enough to do what I did. Some people aren't even that lucky.

That said, I think a person can find modest success in just about anything unless they are boxed in from birth by truly bad genetics or circumstance. Conversely, no matter how much the stars have aligned in your favor, there comes a point where you have to put out some effort to actually accomplish something.

So, you need both. I call that "ability". It's independent of how you got there; it's just a measure of where you are. And from that point, you can choose to apply more effort to increase it (or, if you're a 54-year-old runner like me, limit it's decline) or you can choose to put effort into something else where talent gives you more room to grow.

Or, you can do what so many people do and not even think about it. Simply cruising through life is an option, and I'm not even going to say it's a particularly bad one, especially if you are blessed with a lot of advantages from the outset. It's just not a path I'm interested in.

I started thinking about all this because tonight was Yaya's concert at school. The middle school had two bands (7th and 8th grade) and the high school had two (there's more mixing of years in the two ensembles there, but it can basically be viewed as varsity and JV). The 8th grade band sounded the best, at least to my ear. Sure the Symphonic Band (Varsity) played harder stuff, but they didn't play it particularly well. In their defense, they are all coming right off marching band season and threw this thing together in just a handful of rehearsals. But, that's my point. It was the extra effort of 15 weeks of prep that made the 8th graders better. At the end of the day, people are (generally) rewarded for what they actually do. Ability is the key to doing things, regardless of how you come by it.