The secret to Hikaru’s success is that he learns something regardless of whether he wins or loses. If he loses a game, the important thing to him is that he got stronger – that he learned something he can use in the future. Is this talent?

I’ve bought the Kindle version of the book Talent is overrated by Geoff Colvin. It is liked and quoted by Farnam Street, the wisdom-seeking blog, which is a pretty good recommendation. Even Bjørn Stærk has been known to retweet Farnam Street occasionally.

I have only read 19% yet, but it strikes me how similar the impact is to the Japanese manga and animeHikaru no Go, which I have been rewatching lately. (It is no coincidence: One of the Farnam Street quotes got me to start watching it once more.) The book of course is more scholarly than the fiction, although the book is also very accessible at least for us who are used to reading non-fiction.

As the name of the book signals, the author believes that talent either does not exist or is unimportant. The great masters throughout history became great because they started early, were schooled by experts and continued practicing for a long time. For instance, Mozart’s father was a composer and teacher who trained his son from early childhood. Even so, the early works are unremarkable. It was only as a young adult that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came into his amazing abilities. And even after that, people did not realize how amazing these were until later – in other words, his semi-divine status is a later addition. In his own time, he was just one of the greats.

There are various such anecdotes and scientific studies quoted, all of them implying that being “gifted” (intelligent, in general or in some specific category) only matters in the beginning. After years of practice, only the practice matters. Those who did the right type of practice and lots of it, they are the ones who become grand masters. Those who practiced less or stayed in their comfort zone during practice, they become the also-ran.

This may be so. But I don’t think we should underestimate talent either. I think so based on my own experience, but also an interesting detail that I picked up elsewhere. It turns out that a disproportionate number of athletes are born in January. Now you may think this is proof of astrology, but even astrology does not claim this. Besides, the number of successful athletes continue to drop over the months, to a minimum in December. The explanation is of course that kids start school depending on the year they were born. And they do so at a young age, where months of lifetime still count. So the ones born in January are nearly a year older than those born in December. Naturally they are better at sports. They are bigger, stronger and have better control of their bodies. If there is a competition, they win, and if not, they still get more praise and encouragement. This causes them tolikesports, and do more of it, and over the course of growing up this makes them athletes.

This is my model of how talent works. Talent is when you can practice something so intensely that you make progress, and like it. I know I did with programming. I rarely left my “comfort zone” in the sense that I always did it for fun. Sure it took some thinking, but I enjoyed it. My intelligence and particular talent for programming was the equivalent of being born on January 1st for an athlete. Because it came easier to me, I did more of it; and the more I did, the easier it became. I did not even need to be praised, the feeling of accomplishment, the feeling of succeeding was enough for me. And so it became possible for me to create the debt collection software that my best friend’s father made a living from selling for some years, and which helped Norwegian companies save millions.

Of course, the mysterious entities that projected solutions to programming problems into my brain telepathically also deserve credit. But I am told that such muses are common in many arts. You may call them a form of talent too, I suppose?

Back to the anime Hikaru no Go. The secondary character Touya Akira is the son of one of Japan’s best Go players (a board game played with white and black stones) and the son (an only child, it seems) is trained from he is little more than a toddler. This is exactly the recipe for creating super “talented” people according to Geoff Colvin’s book. The main character Shindou Hikaru has a more peculiar origin, as the ghost of an ancient Go player attaches itself to him toward the end of junior high school. His original success is as a medium for the ghost, which causes Touya to blink him out as his rival. This becomes Shindou’s motivation for practicing day and night once it is him and not the ghost that plays. He learns first from spending every day of the summer vacation watching the game, and later from playing every day. He plays against ever harder opponent, getting out of his comfort zone, exactly as recommended by the book. And he gets timely feedback, another crucial factor. From the book, it is not hard to guess that these two boys are going to go far.

So, the anime is a great way to learn what talent really is. But if you want to go outside your comfort zone, by all means buy Colvin’s book. ^_^