“Hard work beats talent”

In my line of work, I am lucky enough to work with many talented people. I have noticed that a lot of these same people would reject the idea of being talented, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. They choose to use Pascal’s Wager instead.

Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher and his ‘wager’ summarised his rational position on religion: to believe in God. He argued that if God doesn’t exist it doesn’t make any difference anyway. Everyone spends infinity in oblivion. But, in case God does exist, the smart bet is to believe because you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

It’s very similar with hard work versus talent.

If you choose to depend on your talent always beating hard work, there are two possible outcomes.

One: if you are right and you actually are talented, your complacency and laziness could prevent you being successful.

Two: if you’re wrong and you’re not actually talented, you don’t even have hard work to fall back on.

You are guaranteed to fail.

But, if you choose to believe that hard work beats talent, there are two very different outcomes.

One: if you are right and you aren’t actually talented, hard work will certainly make you more successful than you would have been otherwise.

Two: if you are wrong and you are talented, but act as if you aren’t, hard work will make you doubly successful.

So the smart bet is to believe that you aren’t talented, and to act as if you have to rely on hard work. You win at least one way, and possibly two.

Which is why hard work beats talent!

Cheers, Damian