Our potential is one
thing, what we do with it is quite another.
Why do we assume
that it is our talent, rather than our effort, that will decide where we end up
in the very long run?
As much as talent
counts, effort counts twice.
"Greatness is
doable. Greatness is many, many
individual feats, and each of them is doable." Dan Chambliss
Mythologizing
natural talent lets us all off the hook.
It lets us relax into the status quo.
Talent is how
quickly your skills improve when you invest effort.
Talent -- how fast
we improve in skill -- absolutely matters.
But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill
productive.
Those who struggle
early may learn it better.
Skill is not the
same thing as achievement. … Without effort, your talent is nothing more than
your unmet potential. Without effort,
your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't.
Enthusiasm is
common. Endurance is rare.
Passion as a compass
-- that thing that takes you sometime to build, tinker with, and finally get
right, and that then guides you on your long and winding road to where,
ultimately, you want to be.
At his magazine [The
New Yorker], "contract cartoonists", who have dramatically better
odds of getting published than anyone else, collectively submit about five
hundred cartoons every week. In a given
issue, there is only room, on average, for about seventeen of them.
By getting better,
each kid inadvertently enriched the learning environment for the kids he or she
was playing against. The one thing makes
you better at basketball is playing with kids who are just a little more skilled.
Grit grows as we
figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and
disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that
should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity.
Passion for your
work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a
lifetime of deepening.
Even the most
accomplished of experts start out as unserious beginners.
Novelty for the
beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the
beginner, novelty is anything that hasn't been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance.
Rather than focus on
what they already to well, experts strive to improve specific weaknesses.
Nobody wants to show
you the hours and hours of becoming.
They'd rather show the highlights of what they've become.
At its core, the
idea of purpose is the idea that what we do matters to people other than
ourselves.
"So much of
sticking with things is believing you can do it. That belief comes from self-worth, and that
comes from how others have made us feel in our lives." Francesca Martinez
Following through on
our commitments while we grow up both requires grit and, at the same time,
builds it.
There are fewer
Finns in the world than New Yorkers.
"Success is
never final; failure is never fatal.
It's courage that counts".
John Wooden
