Where talent becomes achievement

Inspired by a conversation with a previously close friend, they mentioned a changing interest, more recently finding the field of physics something they would have wanted to pursue during their undergrad. The only reservation lies in the present, the belief their math skills wouldn’t be up to the challenge. The person I'm talking about also happened to play sports at a very high level, graduated with a degree in one of the other hard sciences, and is, more or less, an intelligent and very hard-working person. My question to them, or maybe statement is a better word, was, “wouldn’t you just do the work to succeed?”

This sounds like an obvious question to some, and maybe an untasteful question to others. On the one hand, all of the previous evidence (i.e., achievements) indicates a drive to do whatever it takes to reach their goals. On the other hand, who is to say what someone could or couldn’t do?

The Science of Human Achievement

There’s a paper that has seemed to fly under the radar, at least amongst my peer group. The lead author is Angela Duckworth, and the topic is human achievement. Basically, the researchers were inspired by Newtonian classical mechanics, suggesting that distance traveled acts as a metaphor for human achievement.

“... just as distance is the multiplicative product of speed and time, achievement is the multiplicative product of skill and effort. And, finally, with effort, not only does achievement increase, so, too, does skill, since skill is the multiplicative product of talent and effort.” (Duckworth, Eichstaedt, & Ungar, 2015)

Achievement is defined as the movement from a starting point to a desired end. The variables creating achievement are skill and effort. Skill is composed of talent and effort, so effort plays into this process twice. So, what does all of this mean? From our starting point we have talent, “defined as the rate at which skill is acquired with effort”, and effort. Then, talent and effort create skill. When skill is introduced to effort, we get achievement. Let me paint that out a bit more obviously:

Talent = the rate of change in skill, per unit effort

 Skill = talent · effort

Achievement = skill · effort

As you can easily tell, effort is far more important than talent in this understanding of human achievement. Effort and talent create skill, then skill and effort create achievement. Effort influences skill and achievement. Talent is a latent potential; effort is the realizing force. 

You could understand my surprise when my friend said they would have a hard time with a physics major given their less-than-ideal math skills. Maybe an initial starting point wouldn’t suggest success, but effort heavily influences that over the long run. And in this example, effort isn’t deficient.