WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT: TALENT OR HARD WORK?

Many factors contribute to success in a thing. Talent, the natural ability to carry out a particular task, is a necessary factor to accomplish success. Hard work, the act of putting in considerable effort to getting a task done is also very important in achieving success at a thing. Of these two factors, I favour hard work over talent as a more important factor in achieving success. The reasons for my position are enunciated below:

First and foremost, I believe hard work sharpens talent. While talent gives one a head start in a venture, it is the person who works hardest at the venture that will ultimately be more successful in it. There is a reason why the saying, practice makes perfect, is very commonly made. A person who works very hard at something ultimately becomes very good at it; as good as, or even better than a talented person who is naturally good at that thing. It is continuous practice that makes one excel at a thing. Renowned professionals in every field of human endeavour attained such heights because they worked hard to hone their talents. Talent alone was never enough to get them there. A good example is Doctor Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, who in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, stated that he noticed he had extraordinary hand-eye coordination which is a very valuable talent needed to excel in surgery. He developed this ability and worked very hard to become a renowned neurosurgeon. Having just hand-eye coordination would never have been sufficient to make him an excellent neurosurgeon. He had to put in the effort to develop other skills required to be a proficient neurosurgeon. This statement from Professor Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, puts it aptly: No matter what your current ability (talent) is, effort (hard work) is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.

Whenever I think about the more important factor between talent and hard work in achieving success, the story of two popular and renowned soccer players- Ronaldinho and Messi- comes to mind. Ronaldinho was a very talented footballer at his prime. He could do a lot with a football that very few footballers- past and present- can do. He was the playmaker at his club, FC Barcelona, and contributed in no small measure to the dominance of the club between 2004 and 2006. He won many club and individual awards within these years. But thereafter, Ronaldinho became very lazy and stopped working as hard as he used to. He partied often and was often found sleeping in the gym. This habit of his, in spite of his enormous talent, led to a decline in his form and translated to poor performance on the pitch, and poor results for his team. He was eventually ousted from the club when a new coach was brought on board, and was replaced with another prodigy- Messi- by the new coach.  Messi, also a very talented footballer by all standards had a completely different habit and lifestyle from his predecessor. He was much more focused and hard working. He already shone through as a star in Barcelona’s youth system, but he worked much harder to sustain that level in the senior team. He added to his natural dribbling skills, the ability to score free kicks, give through passes, and generally create scoring opportunities out of nothing. This has made him an all-round footballer and has led to his club being the most achieving club in Europe and the world since 2008 when he became the club’s playmaker. This has also earned him a record-breaking five FIFA World Best Player awards, in addition to numerous other club and individual honours.  He is often talked about alongside footballing greats, Pele and Maradona, as greatest footballers of all time. So while Messi and Ronaldinho had natural footballing talents, Messi worked harder to improve his talent over the years, while Ronaldinho faded after just two years of being best due to his lack of hard work. This clearly illustrates the saying: Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

Secondly, it can be argued that talent is overrated and that when a person develops an interest in a thing, sets a goal towards achieving that thing, and works hard at it, success most likely follows. Like Malcolm Gladwell posited in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, being an expert at a thing requires putting in up to ten thousand hours doing that thing.  A recurring factor in the stories of very successful people is hard work. For some of these renowned people, there was no indication of talent; they developed interest in a thing and then worked very hard to succeed at it, putting in approximately ten thousand hours to become very good at that thing. Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger are very prime examples of this. Bill Gates, whose parents initially intended for him to study law, took an interest in computer programming at a very young age. He was so fascinated by it that he skipped school and night rest a lot of times just to go to the computer centre and write computer programs. It was programming almost non-stop that made him talented at programming, and ultimately made his software company- Microsoft- a success, and has made him one of the richest men in the world for over a decade now. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the other hand, was a professional body builder who was initially an amateur soccer player, became interested in body building, aimed to become a professional body builder, trained relentlessly, and eventually achieved it, winning various world body-building championships and setting world records at a very young age. He applied a similar method to achieve successes in both acting and politics. It can’t be said that Schwarzenegger was naturally talented in body-building, acting or politics. But he developed interest in these areas, set appropriate goals, worked hard at achieving them, and ultimately became successful in them. Similar stories abound of people who succeeded in ventures through cheer interest, determination and hard work.

In conclusion, both talent and hard work contribute to the accomplishment of a venture. But while talent is an important factor and cannot be overlooked in order to succeed at a venture; hard work is a much more important contribution to the success of any venture. Without talent, one can succeed at a venture if the person has the interest, is determined and puts in the required effort. But without hard work, success at any venture will be near impossible, even when talent is present.