The Endless Debate: Talent or Hard Work?

I have a confession to make: I love sports dearly.

Oh and no, it's not the type love you are thinking of.  It's definitely not the fan that attends every game.  It's not the crazy guy who calls into sports radio stations to complain vehemently.  I don't have a tattoo proclaiming my love for my home team.  I can't even recall the last pro sports game I attended.

Sports: Where Crying is Funny

Some people love sport for the feeling of peer group acceptance, social camaraderie or just for having a team to root for (or whatever).  These are all great reasons  but it goes much deeper, geekier and dorkier than that.

Sports are a magnificent microcosm (definition: a miniature representation of something) for life and all the struggles, victories and learning (and pretty much everything else) that happens throughout the course of one's life. 

Plenty of people pooh-pooh this sort of idea because they see a sport like soccer as just a bunch of men or women kicking a ball around and being way too serious about a childish game.

What a terribly superficial way to view athletic competition.  Competitive sport contains layers and layers of beauty from the breathtaking athletic ability of the human body to seeing years and years of hard work culminating in both the joy of victory and the crushing blow of defeat (and so much more).

How can everyone not relate on some level?!?

How many people slave away at their job, working to improve and move up in the company and have to face the ups and downs that come with striving to achieve things? How about trying to lose weight? Or learn a language? Or get married? All involve ups and downs, wins and losses, learning, require you to adapt and change yourself and they all put a giant mirror in your face in which you see who you really are.

MY FAVORITE SPORTS-RELATED TOPIC

My favorite debate in the area of athletics is the ageless debate of what matters more; talent or hard work?

This goes far, far beyond sports but it is so magnificently on display in this arena.

Think about an athlete like Lebron James, a man who is 6'8” tall, 260 pounds and is a one in six billion type of athlete. He very well could have the most athletically gifted genes on the planet. That is innate talent right there.

As a fan or even casual viewer of basketball you see him and say “Of course he's a great basketball player, he's gifted/talented/lucky/athletic”.

It makes sense.

How could it not? The man can literally jump over people (see video below) and that's simply not something the average person can do.

But it's a slippery slope of thinking; it isn't an accurate picture of reality. It reinforces the false idea that talented people are the successful ones, so if you aren't talented then don't even try.

WHAT IS A MORE ACCURATE PICTURE OF REALITY THEN?

I feel I have an especially intimate relationship with the sport of basketball and can help reveal more of the picture.

Let's look at someone who isn't Lebron James. Someone who isn't “talented”. Take the 12^th man on any NBA basketball roster, the guy who doesn't play and who the average fan assumes “sucks” because he is surrounded by the world's BEST BASKTBALL PLAYERS.

Take Brian Scalabrine from the Chicago Bulls. He is a slow, tall, goofy looking white guy. Everyone (it seems) stupidly assumes they could beat the guy one on one. 

But a guy like Scalabrine works his ass off and he's worked his ass off for longer than most people have worked at their 9-5 jobs for. From middle school (assuming he started in middle school) on he has put hours of effort in the gym, sacrificed a normal social life and has gone through the long hard grind of an athlete. For all those people who think athletics is just a merry-go-round of joy, ask a division one college athlete about how much time they have to commit on a daily basis to their sport.

I remember speaking with a football player who played for a divison one program telling me that they had to lift every morning at six, attend a study hall in the afternoon, practice in the evening, all while having a full classload and trying to have a normal social life. Meanwhile your average college student is getting high/drunk in the middle of the day and struggling to attend class because they were so wasted the night before. That sounds more like a merry-go-round of joy to me.

A famous story athelete commitment is of Peyton Manning. Manning will go down as one of the best quarterbacks ever and the man (along with being “talented”) works his ass off. A lot of his success can be attributed to the amazing connection he had with one of his wide recievers, Marvin Harrison, who seemed to have a psychic connection with his quarterback. But was their success rooted in luck, or was it really a psychic connection they had?

Niether.

Their success came from the hours and hours and hours they spent alone, repeating the same thing over and over and over again. They would be on the practice field, practicing snap after snap, running routes and timing. They wouldn't just do this once a week. Or twice a week. Or a couple times a month. They did it ALL THE FUCKING TIME! That was their life. The same boring shit.

Could you imagine their conversation after years of the same routine;

Peyton: “Ready to do the same shit we did yesterday?”

Marvin: “[SIGH] Yup.”

HOW EXCITING!

And yet most people think a professional athlete just swims around in a bathtub of cash and hangs out with groupies and then just shows up for the game (some do but those guys usually don't stick around too long).

The casual fan assumes these two guys just have a connection; Peyton Manning was born with the ability read defenses, time the pass and throw a perfect spiral without years and years of practice.

Actually, I'm sure a majority of people “get it” and have some appreciation for this aspect of the game. But even then, to see how day in and day out, even the supposed “worst” athletes of any sport work their ass of is truly something to appreciate.

(As a side note: I'm not advocating for treating athletes like god figures who work harder than the average person. It's simply an illustrative example of the "behind the scenes" reality of any great skill or proficiency)

REAL LIFE ANALOGIES

How about a real life example; I think most people view entrepreneurs or CEO's as being talented. Someone will say “but they are so smart” or “they have so much energy” or “they have such a business sense”.

"He's smart, that's why he's successful"

All these could be true but there have been waves and waves of smart people coming out of Harvard and Yale who never did shit, who never worked hard for whatever reason or just settled for “good enough”.

Then you had junior college graduates who had a chip on their shoulder, saw that the odds were stacked against them, stuck with their commitments for a long period of time and still bulled their way through every obstacle to end up where they were.

Sports or business, it's all the same thing. There are millions of guys and gals who had the talent to play professional sports or just play at a high level in general who didn't having the burning desire to grind out the boring day-to-day work that it takes to play at a high level.

If you have access to one, ask a high school coach or a college coach of any sport about their experience with "wasted talent".  There is nothing more sad or indelible to the memory of a teacher of a sport to see someone with a God-given talent not use their abilities.

ANDY, YOU DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION

Ok, so you noticed that I haven't really answered the question raised earlier; is it talent or hard-work that matters more?

...Because it doesn't matter. It's a bunch of silly mental masturbation to debate it and try to predict whether or not I could play in the NBA if I had worked harder or if this guy's business failed because he's not smart enough.

All I know is that you and I control only one end of that equation; how hard one can work.

The cynics of the world will say that you shouldn't work hard because the government will fuck you over, the 1% control everything, the odds are stacked against you, you aren't smart enough, you aren't special, you have to know somebody, people are out to scam you, you should be more realistic or WHATEVER other BS you can think of.

It's Always Someone Else's Fault

But looking at the reality of the situation you see something different. All people who have had a large degree of success worked their fucking ass off. Like WORKED THEIR ASS OFF. Imagine in your head what that means......have a good mental image of that.....now multiply that by 100. That's better.

I suppose I'm venturing into very controversial territory with this topic. To a certain degree, most of us would like to blame our lack of achievement on external factors and this certainly messes with that reality. “But what about x,y,z example of the world fucking me/this guy/this gal over” is going to pop up in your head and motivate you to comment below.

Any counter-example you can think of makes for great discussion but this whole post is not about me being right or you being right or this guy being wrong.  We are just looking for a more useful way to look at things to achieve a modicum of success. 

So if you liked this little write up or even hated it, I would simply ask you:

What is more useful? 

(1) Seeing the world through the lens that you have ultimate control over your fate 

-or- 

(2) Seeing the world through the lens that you are mostly at the whim of outside forces that control what will happen to you

That's the whole point.

[By the way, it's a rhetorical question. ;-) ]

Thanks for reading.