Skill and Talent

The distinction between skill and talent is very important to me. I like to use "talent" to refer to innate abilities and "skill" to refer to developed abilities. I believe that, given an infinite amount of time, anyone can develop any skill. However, since in life we have time constraints, it's prudent to be aware of our talents and build upon them.

"Soar With Your Strengths" by Donald Clifton and Paul Nelson (which I have yet to read) warns of the tendency to focus too heavily on weaknesses. While it is important to compensate for your weaknesses, in order to be successful you should focus more heavily on maximizing your strengths. I couldn't agree more.

My personal story: I would not list athletics as a talent of mine. I'm not horrible, but I'm just about average at any sport I pick up. I spent an ungodly number of hours practicing basketball in high school. I was better than average, but I was never going to be great. Greatness was not attainable for me in four years given my talents.

Meanwhile, my philosophy for academics was "the minimum necessary to get an A." As I realized later, my biggest talent is academics, especially analysis, and I would have had far more success building on that talent (as I do now). I'm not saying I should have completely avoided sports, just that it wasn't the wisest focus for all my practice time.

This video deals with the distinction. Although he uses "talent" to refer to acquired abilities, which doesn't lend credibility to my definition... I'll keep using the words as I defined them though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUuJo_DeyI

My favorite part is about taking 10,000 hours to develop a skill. That's 3 hours a day for 10 years. It's ironic that at age 14 I started playing basketball about 3 hours a day. I'm 25 now. Maybe I should have kept it up... I think according to this definition, my only current skills are eating and sleeping. Hopefully by the time I'm 35 I'll have gathered a few more.

Talent: An innate affinity for a certain activity.
Skill: An ability acquired through practice.