On Retiring Old Ideas
I think that in many ways “talent” is an adolescent idea that we unknowingly carry with us into adulthood, failing to question its worth or validity ever again.
Much like labeling yourself as an introvert or an extrovert in high school, and simply never looking back—never reevaluating the accuracy of such a label, or the relevance of such an idea.
Now, clearly there are those who are talented. Few would disagree. But I think it’s few who would also recognize the degree to which talent comes to mean something very different in the “real world” than it did on the playground.
Potential
The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.
Naval Ravikant
While we’re not strictly talking about intelligence, this idea is rather lucrative in our case. Naval is making a commentary on the ego-stroking nature of IQ discussions vs. their relevance in attaining something much more valuable—a life that we actually want.
This duality between a metric and a metric we actually care about is something I want to explore today in respect to talent.
I think that closer to 30, people are living the lives that they dared to ask for—in all the ways that one can dare.
David Kennedy
…that in many ways, the playing field starts to level out. Life becomes less about whatever potential you had and more about the potential you actualized.
I don’t mean to say that by the time you’re 30 you’re living the life that you want. For many it’s the opposite in fact. What I mean to say is that regardless of where you started, the compounding interest of your decisions starts to realize in a way that outweighs the subtle advantages or disadvantages you may have had when you began.
Now, there’s an army of people with pitchforks somewhere ready to impale me for suggesting that an individual can be responsible for their own fate in any capacity.
These people simply resent me for the lives they are living. And any mention that they could have had a hand in their own destiny is terribly sobering. I understand. I’ve had my day carrying pitchforks.
But for another group of people, this realization will be incredibly freeing. To realize that most of what you could want in life is not gatekept by some arbitrary factor outside of your control—at least not nearly to the degree that you might believe.
But that you can have what you want. Provided you know what it is, and you truly ask for it.
Talent is an idea that is overly-absorbed with the concept of potential. That to have more talent than others is to have more potential than them as well.
Maybe in school this made sense. Your entire life was about your future. Your future was all you had, in some ways. Back then, everyone was trying at something. Even the kids that were slacking off or were too cool for school.
Whether it was:
- playing a sport
- playing an instrument
- getting good grades
- looking pretty
- being the class clown
- being popular
- having good taste in music
- not paying attention in class
- throwing the best parties
- looking like you weren’t trying
…everyone had something they thought was worth doing. And they tried. And they cared. Now I suppose that not all goals are created equally, but the point is that everyone had one.
And of course when everyone is trying to the best of their ability, the few with the greatest ability will rise to the top. This was talent.
But beyond the walls of high school, there aren’t that many people trying anymore.
There are far too many people today who still think that the outcome of their life is hindered solely by the talent that they do or don’t have. But it’s audacious to assume that you’re even anywhere close to the edge of your capabilities.
I once heard Sam Sulek (a bodybuilder for the purpose of this discussion) talk about the number of people who warn against “training to failure” in the gym. And he made the remark that while these people are “right” in some sense, most people have no idea what kind of physical exertion it actually takes to get to failure.
And that it’s almost like an entrepreneur saying “I don’t want to get too rich”—as if that will even—or ever—be a problem to start with amongst other things.
Even if your potential were the bottleneck on your operation, it would still likely be far in excess of what you’ll actually actualize.
As your life goes on, it becomes less about the options you had available to you, and more about the ones you dared to choose.
David Kennedy
Even if you consider yourself to be talented today, I challenge you to reexamine the utility of such a label. Could talent just be a socially acceptable way of labeling your narcissism? Perhaps it’s not about the skill itself, but more about the feeling that you’re cut out for more than this, or that you could do better.
Maybe believing you’re talented is a way of excusing yourself from having earned the life that you have.
I don’t know. I can’t say.
Or maybe you don’t think you’re talented, and that’s the only missing piece you need.
In either case, talent often serves to get you out of responsibility in some way for the life that you actually have.
I don’t think that’s a very useful idea in the enterprise of long-term fulfillment and satisfaction with one’s life.
If you’re going to keep the idea of talent around, at least make sure that it’s in service of a life that you actually want to live. And if not, it’s alright to retire old ideas.
Sometimes it’s not about old ideas anyways. It’s about identity. And it’s alright to retire those too.
All the best,
— David Kennedy