Effort > Talent

Carol Dweck, Stanford psychology professor, ran a simple test on the effects of praise. She took 400 5th graders and gave them a simple IQ test. Afterwards, the students were praised one of two ways:

  1. “That’s a really good score. You must be smart.”
  2. “That’s a really good score. You must have worked hard.”

Then the students were asked to take another test and were given the choice between an easier version that they would “do well on,” or one that was “more difficult but presented an opportunity to learn.”

It turns out, 67% of the students praised for their intelligence chose the easier test while 92% of those praised for their effort chose the more difficult one.

The difference in praise is subtle. But this shows that talent doesn’t scale. Talent is something your born with. And you either have it or you don’t. But effort, on the other hand, is a skill. One that anyone of us can learn.

It’s effort that drives us to go deeper into the science. It’s effort that gets us to make better art. When we as a culture acknowledge someone for their efforts, they might just get hooked. Which leads to passion. And the world will always need more people with passion—those who care enough to change it and make it a better place.

Someone to lean on

There are 7.4 billion citizens of the world. That’s more people occupying this planet than ever before in history. Yet, people still feel alone. (Maybe now more than ever.)

We all yearn for the same thing. And that is a connection. A connection with someone we can trust. Someone who loves us for who we are.

The culture would have us believe we’re alone. But there’s a difference between alone and lonely. Most of us don’t know what it’s actually like be alone anymore. We’re not trapped on deserted islands. No, we are more connected than any generation that has ever come before us. On the other hand, lonely, the feeling we get when no one see us, that’s a universal, rampant feeling.

We would like to think that if we spend more time turning stones and more time updating our pages or checking our email, we will find the connection we are all so desperately seeking to make. But that’s not hope. It’s an expectation. And we will always fall short when we’re looking for a tweet to touch us.

What we need to do is learn to see. To see the world for what it is. Chances are what you’re looking for has been right in front of you this whole time. But the choice is yours: You can look up and see the endless amount of possibilties that the world has to offer or you can keep your head down, turning over rocks, hoping expecting to find something different.

[“If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” – Zig Ziglar]

[If you’re fortunate enough to have a friend to lean on, you should cherish them. It’s rare to have someone who can truly prop you up when your feeling low.]

Professionals don’t seek credit

You should go above and beyond what you normally would do today and tomorrow and the next day.

Be extremely generous and genuine with your work and words.

Go make something happen that you’ve been putting off.

Leap first.

Make a ruckus.

Don’t worry about the credit.

Credit and motivation are for amateurs.

You’re a professional.

[Professionals don’t first seek credit or money. No, first they seek to do the work. They seek to earn your trust and attention. Even when they don’t feel like it. They show up. Again and again. Day in and day out. Getting better with every interaction. Generosity doesn’t go unnoticed. So we give you something in exchange for more work. For more of your art.]

It’s a stretch

The internet has destroyed the perfect and enabled the impossible.

There are no more edges.

No edges means no shape.

So you can mold yourself into whatever it is you want to be.

The problem isn’t access or time. It’s whether you’re willing to decide.

You have more opportunities than anyone ever in history.

We won’t know what it’s going to look like in the end.

But we can be assured that when we stretch others will want to emulate.

Retain your brightness

Culture wants to tear people’s dreams apart. It wants you and me to be average, mediocre, to not stand out, and, of course, it wants us all to fit in. Average products for average people.

Culture amplifies mistakes and minimizes leaps. We point to an outside force called luck instead of celebrating the 20 years of day in and day out labor. We call people an overnight success so we can reinforce the search for a short cut. But overnight success isn’t by accident and it isn’t overnight. Culture downplays the years of generosity—people who freely give their gifts expecting nothing in return—because deep down inside we know we can do better.

Find a way to retain your brightness. What makes you that special snowflake. That thing that makes you you. Your talents. Your gifts. Your art. Because we now live in a world where there is a culture activily seeking for us to be ordinary.

Formalities in an informal world

The world is becoming more and more informal.

Communication, for instance, has progressively become more informal. Since Alexander Bell created the Telephone a hundred fifty years ago, we’ve seen communication go from face to face verbal conversation to letters on a screen.

But there’s still a place for formalities in an informal world.

The ones that are going to produce remarkable products, goods, and services in the future will be the ones who figure out how to make formal experiences for there customers. We live in a culture where it’s constantly get pushed on us to be average. People don’t want that. They are wanting more substance.

[That’s why marriage is so highly valued. It’s a formal, unique experience that isn’t replicated anywhere else in the culture.]

Management vs leadership

Managers tell people to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper. Making the status-quo exhausting to maintain. So, you quit.

On the other hand, leadership is finding a common goal, aligning your views, and getting out-of-the-way. That last part is important.

You won’t find great leaders doing a lot of pushing or pulling—but I think the good ones are masters at persuasion (not manipulation).

From bigger to smaller

Tom Goodwin said, “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”

And as Kevin Kelly has pointed out, “Access is better than ownership.”

Over the last 200 years, the way to get rich was to own the factory. But over the last two decades, the internet has changed everything. The factory is no longer a building where the goal was to do the same thing you did yesterday but a little faster and a little cheaper to make a little more profit. Now, the factory, is a laptop. Now, anyone with 500 bucks can own the factory. There is no leverage by owning the building anymore.

So we’re seeing this door opening. One that Walmart and Goldman Sachs are too big to go through. But we’re seeing freelancers and small business owners and entrepreneurs who are now entering the game. And they are flipping the marketplace upside down.

The future isn’t about how big you can get. No. It’s about being small. It’s about leading a tribe.

[If you want to change the world, think smaller. Don’t worry about changing the entire world. Focus on changing your world.]

Something worth crossing the street for

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, sold a shoe store for a billion dollars. A shoe store! How? Because it wasn’t a shoe store. It was something worth crossing the street for.

So if you want to produce art, do something remarkable. Something that will change us. Because finding the fastest and cheapest good, product, or service is only one click away.

But the ones we’ll notice, the one’s will miss when they are gone, the one’s worth crossing the street for, are standing up and standing out.