I have been reading a really thought-provoking book by Angela Duckworth, called Grit, subtitled Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success. I have long held the belief that talent isn’t everything, and Duckworth backs me up – yes! The idea which really struck me between the eyes is this – that effort counts twice. Duckworth’s theory is most simply put in the form of two equations:
talent x effort = skill
skill x effort = achievement
“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them.”
Impressed onlookers often miss the distinction between talent and skill. My personal stance is that we all have talent in whatever particular field. For some people that talent is already at the surface, visible to all, whereas in other cases it is buried and we might need to go digging for it. In some instances, we’re going to need to dig deep!
But however small that talent might be, with effort we can grow it. And with a lot of effort, we can achieve amazing things and we will even surpass the person with more talent but who puts in less effort. Plugging a couple of numbers into the first equation illustrates the point:
talent = 5, effort = 1 yields an achievement of 5
talent = 1, effort = 3 yields an achievement of 9
Now I know that’s a bit simplistic, but my point is that, with hard work, we can raise our skill level. And after that, we’re on a level playing field with the ‘talented’ person, with effort once again being the determining factor as to how highly we achieve.
As a musician I have easily clocked my 10,000 hours, and whether you subscribe to the 10,000 hour rule or not, there is no doubt that a substantial amount of deliberate practice (ie effort) has furnished me with some excellent skills. Am I talented? Well in many respects I just don’t think that’s relevant! I have worked hard, but very few people have seen all of that hard work – they just see the end result and jump to the conclusion that skill equals talent.
It’s a dangerous conclusion to reach. Effort is the critical factor, the one which is going to make all the difference. Many students are far too quick to write themselves off musically; they assume that notation is a cryptic, tricky language, and claim not to be able to sing, but actually the problem in most instances is that they simply haven’t realised that it takes effort.
Fortunately, I’m not interested in teaching talented pupils! Sure, they have a head start I guess, but for me the real joy comes in those lightbulb moments when a pupil realises that the outcome doesn’t just depend on whether they’ve been dealt a good hand, but that actually it is their own actions which are going to make a significant contribution to their future success.
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