4 Things Talent Can’t Overcome

Let me say this first– talent is overrated.

I’ll take someone driven, or visionary, or hard-working over just talented any day. I actually think we falsely label hard-workers or fast-learners or fail-fasters as talented all the time as a way to make ourselves feel better about our inadequacies.

That said, talent isn’t everything. In fact talent can lead to nothing quite easily!

Here are 4 things talent can’t overcome

1. Laziness – It doesn’t matter how good you are at something, if you’re lazy and you don’t deliver on time or do the right things… you’ll fail every time.
2. Bad timing –  This would be a horrible time to develop a talent on the accordion. Or get really good at writing code for the Palm Pilot. Success in the present age is about timing. It’s not good enough to be talented. You have to be talented at the things that people are looking for.
3. Immaturity – Maturity brings the wisdom to know what to do with talent.
4. Character flaws – No one cares how talented you are when you’re a jerk or a liar or if you step on kittens tails.

The other side of this coin is pretty fantastic. We all have something which could be labeled a talent. That’s the very nature of a free market society. I have skills/talents in one thing and you have talent/skills in another. So we trade goods. Or I trade your good for cash.

If we all had equal aptitude life would be pretty boring.