This weekend I decided that it was time I started to blog. It became clear to me that my random thoughts were too good to keep to myself. It was time I started to share them with you too. How fortunate you are, eh?

Joshua Davidson (@dasjoshua) shared a blog “The mindset all successful people have in common” by Jessica Stilman (@EntryLevelRebel). I really enjoyed the piece and shared it myself. The piece talks about a fixed mindset in comparison to the growth mindset. In short the more successful people, are those that have the growth mindset. They believe they have the ability to change, learn, adapt and grow. The fixed mindest are those that believe you are what you are and there is nothing you can do about it.

This got me thinking on the whole talent theory. Having read the following books on the subject;

1. Talent is over-rate

2. Bounce

It became clear that it is those that practise the best become the best. Both books look at it slightly differently, but both conclude that to become an expert on anything requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. I agree with this and feel that talent is often a term that belittles peoples achievements and is an easy excuse not to have achieved it yourself.

“Oh he’s very talented at that”

“She’s a real talent”

What these comments really mean is that the only reason this person achieved what they did is because of this unknown gift they have that separates them from the average. It’s not the fact they trained better/ harder than us — no, definitely not that!

So, to clarify, my views on talent are that it’s an easy excuse for people to explain why others have achieved more.

The next thing I want to look at is the idea of hard work. Talent is gone so the only thing that separates people is the work, so it must be hard work and long hours. After all I did say it’s 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything.

Chris Byrne (@BYRNEC), the owner of SENSORPRO, has a saying:

“Remember the other guy puts their pants on one leg at a time too”

I really admire what Chris has achieved and I learn from him as often as I can. To be the best you have to out train, out think, out perform and out do the other person. At times this may seem difficult as the other person is very “talented”, but in reality this person is just another person with no more of a right to success than you. When you think of it like that it becomes possible and the responsibility rests with you.

For the optimist and the pessimist this means two very different things:

1. It’s a fair fight, it’s my opportunity to become the best.

2. If I fail it’s my fault…. Ah lets blame the ref!

I agree that work determines the result, it takes time to become the best and it’s a fair challenge to become the best.

Now, the twitter conversation with Joshua also mentioned talented lazy people. What does this mean? By calling a person talented implies they are good at the particular task, but I just said I don’t believe in talent?

Here’s how I explain this. We mentioned the idea of hard work earlier and I believe to be the best at something it takes hard work. I believe that within work there is focused and unfocused. Focused work takes less time to achieve results than unfocused work. By calling a person talented, but lazy is really saying they work smartly, but could achieve more if they worked smartly more often. By calling a person a hardworker, but not as talented as another person it means they are not working as smartly as another person.

In a future piece I will look at the different aspects of working smartly.

Eagles Flight Ireland (@EaglesFlightIre) have a programme called “Gold of the Desert Kings” that shows people, by working smarter and not harder you can achieve greater results. The programme is used by leading multinationals to increase the performance of their teams.

If this blog has interested you and you’d like to see how you can increase your own teams performance I suggest a great place to start is with Eagle’s Flight.