Talent

Pundits once esteemed talent to be an innate gift that was inherited at birth:  one was either born with talent or without it.  That definition is less one of talent than of the ability to acquire talent.  Contemporary research suggests that talent is not entirely heritable, but is the result of thousands of hours of practice.  An article I recently read suggests a rule:  Mastery of any subject requires approximately 10,000 hours of practice (20 hours a week for 10 years).  The preceding rule suggests that talent is not what most deem it to be:  talent must be learned.  I was quite taken aback by these findings prima facie, but the rest of the article assuaged me.  The article asserted that though talent is the result of study, only subsets of people have the capacity to acquire any given talent; accordingly, certain people are more inclined, whether due to nature or nurture, to acquire specific talents than others.  For instance, if I were to adopt Michael Phelps’s diet and swimming routine, I would most likely not proceed to win any gold medals in the Olympics due to the simple fact that my muscles, joints, and height are not conducive to Olympic-level swimming.  Talent is analogous to proficiency in a language; certain people are able to gain proficiency faster than others, but in order for anyone to become proficient he or she must practice.  It seems that talent is a self-fulfilling prophecy; as people become more talented their lives tend to become more and more consumed by developing their talents since the talents become sources of income and/or entertainment.  While the general public would probably say that a person is either always or never talented, it is decidedly clear to me that talent is the result of labor (but is not universally attainable).