Freakonomics and hard work

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dunbar

I found this to be very interesting!

"We’ve written before on what is generally called “talent,” which most people seem to define as some sort of innate skill that, if properly trained, can result in excellence. But in our article, which relied heavily on the research of Anders Ericsson, we presented a slightly different definition of talent. Here’s one key paragraph:

“I think the most general claim here,” Ericsson says of his work, “is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.” This is not to say that all people have equal potential. Michael Jordan, even if he hadn’t spent countless hours in the gym, would still have been a better basketball player than most of us. But without those hours in the gym, he would never have become the player he was.

The main idea of our column is that “talent” is overrated; that practice really does make perfect; and that it’s a good idea to do what you truly love in life, because if you don’t, you probably won’t work hard enough at it to get really good."