
I Have No Talent - jnunemaker
http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/01/12/i-have-no-talent/
======
bg4
I hope that this quote isn't so well known that it's cliche but it is one of
my personal favorites.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is
full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are
omnipotent. The slogan Press On, has solved and will always solve the problems
of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge

~~~
codexon
It's rather ironic that this quote is coming from someone who advocated doing
as little as possible as president, refused to run for a second term because
he felt he would be elected for too long, and very arguably contributed to the
Great Depression that happened the year after his term ended.

~~~
miked
_and very arguably contributed to the Great Depression that happened the year
after his term ended._

The Great Depression was triggered by the US Fed (created in 1913), which
massively increased the money supply, and the passage of the disastrous Smoot-
Hawley trade protection bill in 1929.

Note that the money supply increase gave birth to the Roaring 20's, not unlike
what we've had for the last seven years (up till early 2008). Note that the
current US administration is also increasing trade protection as well (Chinese
tires, etc.)

~~~
codexon
And by your own admission, it was through his own inaction that he let the Fed
run amok. Also during his term, trade tariffs went up.

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ellyagg
"I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those
projects on my Github profile from years ago."

This is so much the key. At college I read a sports psychology textbook which
described the empirical profile of a "winner". One of the traits was that
winners compete against themselves, not others. A marathoner's goal should be
to beat their best time in their next competitive marathon. An example of a
basketball player's goal might be to improve their free throw percentage over
the next 5 games.

If you focus on improving yourself, beating other people takes care of itself
(if you're capable and that sort of thing matters to you). But, either way,
you do the best you can and that's all anyone can ask of themselves.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _If you focus on improving yourself, beating other people takes care of
> itself (if you're capable and that sort of thing matters to you)._

As you note, unclearly, this only works if you're at the top of your game. If
I do a marathon in 12 hours then beating my personal best isn't going to get
me anywhere close to a gold medal. Also I've always found that competing with
my betters tends to bring up my game.

I feel I have to say, to counter any false assumptions: To win at sport for me
has always meant to feel I've performed well and enjoyed the game - and that's
not because I'm totally rubbish. Winning is something I enjoy, but winning
badly is worse than losing well.

------
edw519
Great post!

I can easily identify with OP. I also learned hard work from my father and
from my first job (McDonald's), where you simply could not go home until all
the work was done. I've had that same work ethic ever since.

This post also reminds me of most successful business people I've even known.
Their single biggest differentiator (that I noticed) was a refusal to stop
trying to get something done, not just with each business, but with every
thing they did _every single day_.

The other thing I love about this post is that it's clearly by someone who has
been through the wars. A poser would never even think to say things like:

 _I’m exhausted physically so I should go to bed, but mentally I feel on fire
so I let the code have me for another hour or two._

 _a GitHub profile stuffed with code I regret_

 _I ran into something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed
through._

 _I sat there in front of my computer for hours and wrestled with class and
class instance variables._

 _I have attacked each thing that I do not understand until I understand it._

 _There are still so many people out there who are far better than I am, but
that does not stop me anymore._

And +1 for my favorite:

 _I beat code that isn’t working into submission (though often times the code
wins)._

------
derefr
People say "I wish I could do that" about everything. Playing a musical
instrument, for instance. It's not that they _can't_ \--it's that they don't
have the time in their lives to devote to practicing it. "I wish I could do
that" really means "I wish I had the extra time to do everything I'm currently
doing, but also fit in something low on my priority list, like that."

~~~
igorhvr
Time rarely is the real problem. Fears, lack of energy, lack of focus, etc
usually is what prevents people from doing things... And even when time _is_
the issue, often stopping yourself from wasting time is an effective solution.

~~~
Timothee
That sounds corny, but… My grandmother has always said: "Don't say that you
didn't have time, but only that you didn't _take_ the time".

Every time I'm tempted to say that I didn't have the time, the reality is that
I wasted my time doing something else. (like writing comments about my
grandmother on Hacker News)

------
oliveoil
Then your talent is the ability to work hard.

~~~
praptak
> Then your talent is the ability to work hard.

That's not necessarily a talent. You can get it from practice.

~~~
bd
The ability to work hard seems to be even more talent-based than being smart.
Executive functions [1] are supposed to be highly heritable, more so than the
intelligence [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions>

[2]
[http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_ge...](http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/05/99_genetic_individual_differen.php)

~~~
RK
One of the guys I went to grad school with a was just an obsessive worker. He
was the kind of person who could not sleep if a problem was left unsolved. I
remember thinking that it would take more effort for him to work as
(relatively) little as I did, than for me to work as hard as he did. He also
finished a couple years earlier than most of the people we started with...

------
ggchappell
A key concept that is not mentioned in this article is _interest_. He is right
about practicing. However, practicing things I am not interested in is
drudgery, while practicing things I am interested in ... mostly just happens.
The result is that most of us get very good at the things we are interested
in.

Blessed are those who are very interested in something that the rest of the
world values.

~~~
mtoledo
I have to agree with you that those that are interested in what the world
values are the most blessed, but no practice 100% enjoyable. Risking
misquoting him, I remember reading in one of Kasparov's books "I only love 80%
of chess. I do the other 20% so that I can do the 80%".

In Ericsson's book about deliberate practice, he shows thru multiple studies
that practice for world class performers is usually painful and not enjoyable
at all. He even says that 'if you're sailing thru it, you're not practicing'
(or I read this on an article about it).

In the end, liking what you do helps you put up with the practicing you need
to do to perform what you like

edit: wrote 80% where I was supposed to write 100% (facepalm)

------
richcollins
_I used to think that I wasn’t smart enough. I was jealous of those that did
crazy code stuff that I couldn’t even comprehend. Then, one day, I ran into
something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed through._

You shouldn't be jealous of people that do "crazy code stuff". It's a sign
that they haven't learned how to create simple solutions yet.

~~~
j_baker
Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily true. In my experience a "complex" piece
of code is more often a piece of code you just don't understand. You should
generally try to understand a piece of code before you dismiss it as overly
complex.

~~~
richcollins
It isn't necessarily true but it usually is. Developers spend way too much
time getting cute, optimizing for the infrequent case. Choosing a slight
increase in verbosity in favor of simplicity of implementation is usually a
better decision.

------
whyme
I couldn't find the quote, but I think it was Wayne Gretzky who said he'd take
someone hard working over someone with talent + poor work ethic. Now hard
working + talent = something to really watch for.

A few I did find:

    
    
      “The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, 
       that I never dog it.” – Wayne Gretzky
    
      “It is one thing to be talented but if you do not work hard, it is worth nothing..."  
      – Wayne Gretzky
    

The last one might have been what I was remembering...

------
coffeemug
Ahh, the half-truths that sound so nice, people don't bother to look at the
other half :) Hard work is necessary but not sufficient. Talent (or genetics,
or natural inclination, or a good teacher that came along early on, whatever
you want to call it) is another variable that's necessary but not sufficient.

When I was just starting out my friend and I both got the same computers. Our
parents sent us to the same Sunday computer class to learn. We were both
pretty bright. Except I quickly excelled at it, and he was stuck. No matter
how hard he tried, he couldn't catch up. What came naturally to me was an
uphill battle for him. If he started out again today, there's no way he'd ever
catch up to me, not in a million years.

He was far better at sports than me. During gym, he'd run circles around me
while I barely stood there, gasping for breath. No matter how hard I worked, I
could never outdo him. I suppose if I set out to practice my running full time
every day of the week, I could (with huge effort) outdo all the lazy people
that have the talent for it. But it's unlikely I'd ever outdo the talented
people who work for it, and I certainly have no chance in hell to outrun
Donovan Bailey, not in a million years.

Oh, and talent and hard work together are necessary but not sufficient. You
could work 24/7 at hammering a mountain with a toothpick, and you could get
really good at it, but you still won't get anywhere. You have to have enough
sense and enough luck to stumble on the right thing (or to have enough sense
and enough luck to stumble onto the method or process that will help you
stumble onto the right thing).

It's not _just_ hard work - that's a pipe dream. There are as many workaholics
that toil for years and never see the light at the end of the tunnel as there
are lazy talented people that never get anywhere. The truth is, you might
never succeed at what you've set out to do despite being hard working _and_
talented. In fact, the statistics are overwhelmingly against you. It's not
empowering and it's not romantic to say that, but it's the truth.

~~~
nostrademons
I'm not sure that's really true. There was a discussion on it here about 3
weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012986>

I think there's a feedback loop of sorts, where people tend to enjoy things
they're good at more, so they spend more time at them, so they get better at
them, so they enjoy them more. This feedback loop gets started by what we
normally think of as "talent" - inborn ability. But what if that talent is
just the random chance that your first try happens to be the right way to
perform that skill?

There're ways to interrupt the feedback loop too, which is why both talent and
hard work seem to be necessary but not sufficient conditions. If you decide
you really don't want to do something, you're not going to practice, even if
you're good at it. Or if you decide you're going to keep trying approaches
until you get over whatever block is holding you back, you can become talented
at something even if you weren't initially successful at it.

------
chriseppstein
Great post!

I feel exactly the same way. But one thing I do think I have (and you do too,
obviously) is taste. I can look at my code and see it as good or bad (most of
the time bad). That means I can keep striving to make it good. And my eye for
what is good and bad keeps maturing so when I go look at code I wrote two
years ago that I was pretty proud of, I see bad code now.

Without the ability to see that your code can and should be better, your work
ethic cannot kick in.

~~~
dschobel
This video from Ira Glass (of This American Life fame) sums up the discrepancy
between taste and ability beautifully.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE>

He talks about how you get into a creative field because there are works of it
which you love and you can distinguish early on between good/interesting and
bad/banal work.

But then you start making stuff. And for the first few years, it just isn't
very good, and you realize that.

He talks about bridging that gap and how it took him eight (!) years before he
started making things which he even recognized as being interesting and good.

It's probably the best piece of advice I've ever seen for people still at the
frustrating end of a creative career.

I know too many kids who showed an early eye for quality in some field
(architecture, CS, etc) but then gave up out of frustration when the stuff
they made wasn't up their own standards.

~~~
wallflower
+1 for remention of this Ira Glass video

------
freakwit
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein

~~~
arthurk
I also found this quote in the comments: “I’m not a great programmer; I’m just
a good programmer with great habits.” (Refactoring, Beck Fowler, 1999).

------
sunkencity
I am addicted to the phase of working with something new when I feel totally
humiliated because there's too much to understand. the feeling of victory when
things work properly is so great, but it takes hard work and perseverance.

I'm getting back into rails for a project and this time I really try to not
hold back on looking things up and doing it right. I feel I can pull it off in
a rather good way this time, it takes a lot of work and research to know
enough to be able to read the docs efficiently and when to expect a one-liner
solution in the framework. But I still feel totally stupid. It is also easier
to judge plugins. There are so many juicy things in rails these days, like
nemed scopes that take lambdas, it's really getting there.

------
richcollins
_I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those
projects on my Github profile from years ago._

This is good advice. It is the best way continually increase your status
without constantly feeling like you are trying to one up your peers.

------
nadam
I think you need both talent and persistence to be successful. And I agree
that talent is generally overrated (but needed).

If you have some talent and also some persistence in things which you like,
than you may still have some problems: you need some time management strategy.
This is by far the key issue for me: What am I really interested in? Shall I
dig deeper in that subject? Or shall I go and learn new things in which I am a
beginner and not THAT interested? Shall I do things which I am really
interested in, or shall I work in a day job for more money, to make enough
money to take care of my family? Shall I practice creating algorithms, which I
am pretty good at right now but not the best, or shall I learn more about
marketing, in which I am a beginner? Shall I choose a hobby project in a
theoretical territory like creating an interesting programming language, or
shall I execute my other idea which is not THAT interesting intellectually,
but still interesting enough, and can earn me money if successful?

So I think the key is not only persistence, but to choose what to do, to find
your style, to find out what is the thing you are really talented/interested
in, what you want to excel at. Hacking is still a very broad territory in
itself. You cannot be the best in every aspect of it even if you practice for
years or decades. To reach a very high level the key is to choose what to
learn and practice very cleverly (or luckily).

------
latortuga
Talent has always struck me as a strange thing to compliment people on, much
like complementing them on the country they were born in or their last name.
It's not something you can really help if we accept it as something innate. If
however you think that someone shows particular adeptness at a skill of some
kind, imo it's more applicable to compliment hard work or to note that years
of practice has clearly paid off.

~~~
Psyonic
People comment on good lucks all the time, and it's largely inherited. You can
work out, eat right, etc, but you can't change your bone structure (without
surgery, at least).

------
christofd
Great advice. My Dad always told me I suck at music. But I just wouldn't give
up. I destroyed one Cello bow along the way in frustration for my lacking
skill, but now 20 years later I got this beast under control.

Then, of course, there are the people that are hopeless, and no amount of
practice will get them over the hill.

~~~
larrywright
I think there are people to whom these skills come more naturally, but people
seem to underestimate the degree to which fierce determination and persistence
can overcame a lack of natural ability.

This is probably less true for purely physical pursuits (athletic activities,
for example), but not entirely untrue.

------
Arun2009
IMHO, this is like saying, "I am not really beautiful. It's just that my face
and features are symmetric and they just happen to confirm to traditional
norms of attractiveness".

A lot of what we take to be talent _is_ "hard" work, except that the work
doesn't seem hard to those who love doing what they do. In other words, talent
is just a transformed form of obsession with a subject. The more you work with
something with the _intention_ of getting better at it, the better you get at
it. And the rate of getting better just keeps accelerating until there comes a
point where few other humans could hope to catch up with you in your lifetime.

------
arthurk
Thanks for editing the title. It previously included "RailsTips by" and I
thought this was for Rails developers and didn't click on it.

------
xhuang
great post, i thought i was the only one like that, sometimes i feel really
stupid that i can't come up with a good solution for the problem, and in the
end fail to do anything.

this really remind me: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent
perspiration" - Thomas Edison

------
alanthonyc
I love the point that he makes.

At its worst extreme, people use the fact that "others are talented" to excuse
their own mediocrity - which really just stems from their unwillingness to put
in the time.

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t3rcio
This post remember the Thomas Alva Edson's. He said: "Genius was 1 percent
inspiration and 99 percent perspiration"

------
ippisl
can't good memory become very helpfull in programming? and how good is the the
author working memory ? my point is that being smart is not the only important
capability for programming.

------
Gilson_Silveira
Great Post!

Code Forrest! Code!

------
timinman
'fantastic perspective.

