‘Hard work’ does not beat ‘talent’. This refrain is built on many false premises and is ultimately the result of a poor assessment of what ‘hard work’ and talent mean.
Hard work is a precondition to success at the top level in most, if not all human endeavors. Because hard work is something we can all afford, if we care enough. The world is optimized by and for average people with average abilities. Work consistently and you’ll rise.
If the world were optimized for the talented, it would be generally impossible for most people to live in. In fact, the world as it is today can do with outliers. We would not know what we’re missing if there’s no one showing it to us to begin with. Think about this:
Without Newton discovering calculus, the world would have gone on just fine. If Messi or Maradona did not play football, people would have enjoyed it regardless. We only know what we’d have been missing now, because they happened anyway.
It may not even be true that everyone on earth is talented in one way or the other because there’s no way to verify that. People generally lead very similar —unremarkable—lives. There’s no practical evidence of this commonly distributed talent.
All these is to say that human day-to-day affairs do not require anything beyond the ordinary. Talents upset the common design. It’s why they’re hard to miss. Immediately a talented person is put in the mix, you recognize the inherent unfairness for what it is.
If you put a gifted child in a class of average students, the first thing the average kids will observe is that what makes that kid different is not something that can be measured up by more work. So long as he applies that talent, he’ll always humiliate their talentless grinds.
Talent is natural aptitude beyond the ordinary. This explains why it’s rare. Too much of it will upset the entire balance of ordinary life. The more talents discovered in a given area, the more optimized that field becomes, the fewer the participants.
It is flawed to compare it with plain rigor. Note: this does not mean a non-talented person cannot be successful at the same thing. Success is usually the result of a combination of factors acting all at once. Plus, a talented person may not care to compete to begin with.
Talented people only compete with talented people because it’s quite impossible to present a real challenge if you don’t operate at that level to begin with. This is where hard work matters. This is where “hard work can beat talent if talent does not work hard”.
People make those statements as though the hard-worker in that situation wasn’t talented to begin with. While the degree may slightly vary, there’s no chance against talented people if you’re not in that category to begin with. Unless you’ve never truly met a talented person.
