

Michael Crichton on talent: "I just work hard" - henning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0bQnqD9dLA

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kul
If you're interested in more analysis of 'talent', read this:
[http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_col...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm)

"Why talent is overrated

It is mid-1978, and we are inside the giant Procter & Gamble headquarters in
Cincinnati, looking into a cubicle shared by a pair of 22-year-old men, fresh
out of college. Their assignment is to sell Duncan Hines brownie mix, but they
spend a lot of their time just rewriting memos. They are clearly smart - one
has just graduated from Harvard, the other from Dartmouth - but that doesn't
distinguish them from a slew of other new hires at P&G.

What does distinguish them from many of the young go-getters the company takes
on each year is that neither man is particularly filled with ambition. Neither
has any kind of career plan. Every afternoon they play waste-bin basketball
with wadded-up memos. One of them later recalls, "We were voted the two guys
probably least likely to succeed."

These two young men are of interest to us now for only one reason: They are
Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Ballmer, who before age 50 would become CEOs of two
of the world's most valuable corporations, General Electric (GE, Fortune 500)
and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). "

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yters
I'm not getting the argument for talent being overrated. Two bright slackers
become much more successful than all their driven, but less bright, co
workers?

~~~
electromagnetic
Who cares if two slackers succeed? The whole argument is that talent is
inherently pointless. I wasn't a talented writer as a child, hell my 3rd grade
teacher told my parents I might be dyslexic and I'd need to take special needs
classes until I graduate. Before the end of the summer after I graduated I got
a job as a journalist, and at the same time my friends who in 3rd grade were
supposedly phenomenally talented in English were going to take a 2 year
introduction to English at university and then a 5 year journalism course.

I wasn't born with an uncanny writing talent, I was thought to be retarded but
I liked telling stories. So I spent a lot of my childhood from 13 years old,
when I realized that I wanted to write books for a living, practicing writing.
I read huge amounts of books to learn how different people write and taught
myself.

At 17 (I'm from the UK I graduated at 16) the editor was telling me I was the
most talented writer they had. I surprised him one day, he sent me an email at
around 6 saying one review I did wasn't how they wanted it (which was the
reason I left, the product I reviewed sucked ass but because it came from a
big company we couldn't offend them) so he said it needed changing. An hour
later I emailed him back with the entire thing rewritten the score from a 1 to
a 8. For everyone who doesn't know the review game; for example a video game
review, if it takes 10 hours to play the game it will probably take you around
20 hours to review and edit it, so getting an essentially new review in an
hour was amazing to him.

The reason why I could do a review in an hour that would take anyone else a
day to get back. Well because I'm driven. I'm sure there were more talented
people on the staff, but that doesn't mean shit when I can consistently out
perform someone 10:1.

So yes being talented will help you, but if you're a slacker you're not going
anywhere to begin with.

~~~
LPTS
Wrong. Slacking is great. You got a brain? Why not use it to figure out how
not to work. Work is for people who don't know how to get everything they want
without working. Slacking is surfing the path of least resistance and riding
it to build up incredible momentum.

One game to play with the few waking hours you have to live is to work hard to
get what you want.

I'd much rather not work hard and get what I want anyways. Relax, the
structure of the universe will catch you if you do what you want and don't
work.

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whacked_new
Wow, awesomest thing I have seen in a while! This video just made me really,
really like Crichton. A successful person is never truly great without
humility. Thank you for submitting.

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danw
Related reading: "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert
Performance",
[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

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liuliu
I don't expect that I can work hard. I do my best to avoid the laziness. Yes,
I am only 21 and have much to learn. But my experience told me, it is not that
one work so hard to get success, instead, it is that the rest of us just too
lazy to pursuit what we really want.

~~~
josefresco
If I could tell my 21 year old self one thing it would be: Just be consistent
with your work and build upon something, it will pay off for you. Don't work
feverishly on something for months/days and then slack for months/days
expecting your hard work to pay off. It's no so much 'slow and steady wins the
race", fast and steady can win lots of races, the important part is steady.

~~~
rthomas6
My problem is trying to find which things I want to devote effort to. (I am
also 21). Right now I try to put as much effort as I can toward every part of
my life, and I usually become burnt out very quickly and get stuck in a sort
of "waiting place" for a month or two. If I could figure out some solid
priorities as far as what I really want to devote my effort to, I feel like it
would pay off a lot in the long run. Right now I'm still trying to figure out
how to do that...

~~~
13ren
This isn't a bad strategy to try, for morale, confidence and people wanting to
help you: <http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html>

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mixmax
This is more true than most people believe. Particularly people that haven't
tried hard.

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13ren
Another good "talent vs effort" article:
[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-
sm...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids)

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mhartl
Each of talent, hard work, and luck is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition: achieving great success requires all three.

