Lucky

The old myth claims that excellence is 1% talent and 99% hard work.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success and Matthew Syed’s Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice suggest a greater role is played by the environment, chance, relationships and sweat.

But the feeling remains that the 1% talent is the key to being really great. And that that 1% is genetic.

Of course, one’s unlikely to be a top MBA player if one is 5’2”, so there are set factors which might limit or enhance one’s chances of success.

Talent, though, is generally thought to be the magical sine qua non of genius in whatever discipline.

Mariano Sigman smashes that hypothesis in The Secret Life of the Mind: How Our Brain Thinks, Feels and Decides: he claims that the magic ingredient with which one is genetically blessed – or not – is the willingness to put in the hard work. He says that the upper limit of achievement, which was thought to be predicated on the presence of absence of talent, is less genetically determined – because practice is key. However, the motivation, discipline, resolve and patience that hard work demands may be genetically determined – or at least more genetically determined than had been assumed. Robert Sapolsky makes a similar point in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.

So what does that mean? Excellence becomes no more obtainable for the majority of us than if talent were key. Or maybe it does… The precious gift of a sublime talent does appear impossible to manufacture, but perhaps pushing through a disinclination to practice, though hard, is possible. Perhaps. But how?

There have been various books written about grit and will power in recent years, with academics claiming that these traits are essential, admirable and achievable. Are they right?

If the personality trait research is correct (in defining five basic categories which are consistent over a lifetime), and conscientiousness (which includes industriousness) is genetically determined, how much can one change? It is certainly the case that introverts can learn to speak in public and not shrink away in a corner at a cocktail party. Those high in neuroticism can work on mindfulness and relaxation. The traits might remain as a default, but behaviour does not have to conform rigidly and mechanistically to the trait.

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and Stoicism both forcefully make the claim that through practice, one can turn intention into behaviour and behaviour into character. It may be a life-long process and hard work, the Stoics admit, but an angry person can become calm and a mean person generous. Indeed, the very premise of these philosophies is that through the application of reason and effort we can become virtuous (courageous, socially motivated and self-controlled, essentially).

Richard Davidson says that Emotional Styles (which seem to include behaviours labeled by personality profilers as arising from the traits introversion, extraversion and neuroticism) change considerably over time depending on environmental and social factors. Crucially, in his telling, none of this appears to be internally motivated. It seems to be purely the effect of chance occurrences.

But what if you want to change? That does require motivation. But often the motivation is offered by a goal rather than some intrinsic value placed on a different trait. An academic who has to speak before an audience, for example, has a powerful motivation to use the energy to overcome the disinclination to do so; a neurotic is likewise motivated to lessen the negative impact of high stress levels, and of course many people low in conscientiousness overcome that trait when they have to in a work environment. The value of the benefit (maintaining employment, say) outweighs the effort required. The reward is external.

Is there such a thing as pure internal motivation to develop a particular virtue for itself? If it’s not about money or ambition, social recognition or familial pressure. If there are no external factors.

My assumption is that those high in willingness to work (conscientiousness) can feel some intrinsic motivation and my question is how to replicate that?

The ramifications are far wider than striving for excellence. In many cases, they are about seeking general mental or physical health.

If we lived in a society where we had to walk ten miles a day to seek out food and water, there would not be an obesity issue. If Norman Doidge is right, dementia and other cognitive complaints would also decrease. If we lived in a society where communities were smaller and more tightly knit, with greater equality in resources and so on, all of which contribute to chronic stress, there would be fewer mental and physical health problems.

But we don’t. We live in a society where the least healthy foods and lifestyles are the norm. We live in a society where it takes effort to be healthy. And not everyone is equally blessed in the motivation to make an effort. The goal – to be healthy – is abstract and easy to defer. It’s tough to take the long view.

That makes me think of pensions and I wonder if the same people who defer worrying about their financial health, put aside concerns about physical health. I’m inclined to think there might be interesting distinctions between those groups, despite considerable overlap.

Beliefs, fears and goals build motivation. But they have to be very strong to overcome the effort of moving from inaction to action, let alone maintaining the work.

How do you convince someone that it’s worth it?

First, they have to believe that change is possible. That in itself is a challenge for many people. If they have a closed mind, it’s unlikely that any arguments – emotional, rational or rhetorical – will have a great deal of impact. They will fall back on the conviction that ‘I’m just not that kind of person.’ That is an easy way to switch off any motivation to change.

They have to really, really want to change – which means taking responsibility for their situation. That’s hard for many people because it forces them into a situation where action, work, effort is required. Admitting one’s responsibility is also challenging because much of what has shaped us was not our choice or responsibility. Thus, there is an emotionally strong case to claim that we are entirely the result of deterministic processes and cannot thereby do anything about it. If they are to accept that some kind of personal influence (free will?!) can act as the end of a chisel and prise open the deterministic structure, well, surely that takes a leap of faith.

Yet the impact of ideas, of being told that, ‘Yes, you can do something – if you follow these practices, if you keep at it’, that in itself is part of the deterministic structure of the universe, an external influence that one may be moved by. And yet, one has to choose. What has softened the ground enough for that choice to seed, grow and bear fruit? Previous environmental influences? Nudges and specifically created conditions that can shape the character from the outside, while allowing the individual to feel they are asserting a form of agency?

Once influenced and nudged, the agent must either continue to be influenced and nudged or come to believe that they are capable of carrying on the work. If they don’t have the motivation, they aren’t. Unless the motivation can, like a snowball, grow in force over time with the evidence of improvement. Then perhaps it can become self-sustaining. Until an external block stalls its progress.

Back to square one.

I wonder about this for various reasons. One is that I took up drawing and painting maybe fifteen years ago. I started with books for primary school kids and worked through them, conscientiously, until I could start copying photos and other people's drawings and paintings. After a few years of considerable effort, I could draw and paint to a low level hobbyist's standard. I lost a little motivation, invested less time, the standards decreased, and I knew I needed to invest more time to get back to where I had been, let alone to improve. I hit a point where I thought it was enjoyable and not too bad and have somewhat stalled at that plateau.

I do not believe that I have any talent. What I do have is the ability to focus on something and work at it to make it as good as I can given my level of practice and technique.

However, friends, wanting to praise me, say I am talented. This is both untrue and unfair.

Untrue because I have no ability to imagine an idea and put it on paper, no intrinsic sense of colour and composition, no vision of how to turn a copy into something unique. Sometimes, the flow of paint and lucky chance at a choice of tone offers a certain pleasing richness and texture. More often it doesn't. They don't see all the absolute rubbish I generate.

Unfair because what I have managed to achieve has come through the application of a great deal of commitment and effort. And unfair to those who praise me, in that claiming I have 'talent' is a self-limiting perspective: for the vast majority of people could attain the same level, or better.

We accept that an average person who trains to run a marathon has put in work and time, and give them praise for that. When it comes to artistic and scholarly pursuits, we say it's all about talent. But in fact, with the exception of those who achieve greatness (they, though, will have put in an inordinate amount of effort to realise their talent), the sum is entirely made up of parts from the category 'grit'.

Likewise, in my academic studies, though here I admit that I am moderately bright, hard work and motivated commitment allowed me to attain the results I did. Like a county level marathon runner, I was blessed with a little extra in the way of fortune, but I still had to exercise the full complement of my 'gritty' traits (investing time, effort and dedication) to reach the level I did. Maybe I could work harder and achieve more; but without a shadow of a doubt had I not worked incredibly hard, putting in, if you like, the slow miles and the fast sprints, the strength conditioning and fitness training, I would have not have run my marathon in the relatively good time I did.

But maybe I am just lucky. Blessed with a good old dose of conscientiousness, a father who praised hard work and commitment beyond anything and a mother who offered unstinting encouragement. Genes and environment. Nothing whatsoever to do with me.

That said, I do believe that character traits are somewhat malleable. I have invested notable effort into attempting to be less neurotic: better able to regulate my emotions, less inclined to catastrophise, more impervious to external factors outside my control. This has been harder than learning to paint, but I have made some progress. Thanks to my conscientiousness...