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Talent is more accessible than genius
Hours compound. Working 100 hours a week coming out of school adds up to somewhere around 10,000 hours in two years, which accelerates learning.
A person may or may not be the smartest in the world, but the one thing under their control is being the hardest working. The extra time compounds.
Squeezing a lot of juice out of each experience opens the next opportunity, where the same thing can be done again. A path built this way doesn't have to be linear. That compounding is what pays off.
Where did the 10,000 hours idea come from?
Psychologist Anders Ericsson and two colleagues studied violin students at a Berlin music academy in a 1993 paper. The best students had accumulated about 10,000 hours of practice by age 20, compared with fewer for the less advanced groups. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the figure in his 2008 book Outliers. Ericsson later said the number was an average, not a threshold, and stressed focused practice with feedback.
Why do small early advantages keep growing?
Sociologist Robert Merton described the pattern in 1968 and named it the Matthew effect, after a line in the Gospel of Matthew that those who have will be given more. In his study of scientists, well-known researchers received more credit for similar work than unknown ones. Recognition brought resources and collaborators, which produced more work and more recognition. Economists later described the same dynamic with the term cumulative advantage.
Did high-IQ children grow into geniuses?
Psychologist Lewis Terman began a study in 1921 that followed more than 1,500 California schoolchildren with IQ scores of 135 or higher. Many had successful careers, but none of them won a Nobel Prize. Two children who were tested and screened out, William Shockley and Luis Alvarez, later won Nobel Prizes in physics. The study is known as the Genetic Studies of Genius.
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