A Thought from The Professor: Hard Work Beats Talent
High Performance
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In my line of work, I am lucky enough to work with many talented people. I have noticed that a lot of these same people would reject the idea of being talented, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. They choose to use Pascal’s Wager instead.
Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher and his ‘wager’ summarised his rational position on religion: to believe in God. He argued that if God doesn’t exist it doesn’t make any difference anyway. Everyone spends infinity in oblivion. But, in case God does exist, the smart bet is to believe because you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
It’s very similar with hard work versus talent.
If you choose to depend on your talent always beating hard work, there are two possible outcomes.
?One: if you are right and you actually are talented, your complacency and laziness could prevent you from being successful.
Two: if you’re wrong and you’re not actually talented, you don’t even have hard work to fall back on.
You are guaranteed to fail.
But, if you choose to believe that hard work beats talent, there are two very different outcomes.
One: if you are right and you aren’t actually talented, hard work will certainly make you more successful than you would have been otherwise.
Two: if you are wrong and you are talented, but act as if you aren’t, hard work will make you doubly successful.
So the smart bet is to believe that you aren’t talented and to act as if you have to rely on hard work. You win at least one way, and possibly two.
Which is why hard work beats talent!
Cheers, Damian
HR Leader
2 年Interesting! I like the thought ??
Head of Performance Sport Programmes at sportscotland institute of sport
2 年Reminds me of the words of a legendary Scottish Badminton coach who always said, “hard work only beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”.
ex Wanderer, Owd Red, Red Devil, Seasider now Regional Football Representative for the North West ?????????????? at @TeamFeePay
2 年attitude + talent + opportunity = success ?
coming soon...
2 年Gifts. We have gifts we have to employ through work. Not all have the same gifts and the same measure of gifts either. The only way to maximise the impact of those gifts is to work. Work input none - no impact Work input low - low impact Work input medium - medium impact Work impact high - high impact Cheers,
Automotive Leader Success Coach ?? | Less Stress ?? More Success | ?? Automotive Trainer & Thought Leader | ??♂? Executive Coach & Mentor | ? Alcohol-Free Ambassador
2 年So, I love the hard work- talent analogy. But the believing in God- doesn’t a belief in god suggest our destinies are not decided by ourselves? Does it suggest we believe someone/thing will rescue us? Do we hand our power over to someone else? I recently undertook a bible study to see if I was a believer, so I ask from a point of trying to understand rather than dismiss. ??