Why skill, not talent, is the path to purpose and meaningful work

It’s easy to think talent paves the path to purpose, that it will by design make work meaningful, and that it will also make life easy, success inevitable, and everyone love you. Not necessarily.

Thinking of ourselves as talented feels good, too.

When’s the last time someone told you you were talented? Nice, isn’t it? For that moment, you feel good about yourself, like maybe you’re better than you thought. Like maybe you’ve got something here.

Your ego eats that up. And to be clear: It’s all about ego.

It’s no different, really, than wondering whether or not you’re beautiful. Am I really? Is it true? Beauty is a loaded word. So is talent.

Our assumptions about talent are often wrong and profoundly unhelpful. I can tell you this much: Worship at the altar of talent, and you’re bound to be disappointed — whether you think you possess it or not.

Allow other people’s judgment of your talent to define you, and you’ll spend your life proving them right. Let their dismissal of your talent define you, and you’ll spend your life proving them wrong.

And the point isn’t to prove we have talent, but to enjoy the experience of meaningful work and a purposeful life.

Some of the biggest misconceptions about talent — and how they trip you up

Talent is slippery, seductive, and will break your goddamned heart if you pin all your hopes to it. Consider yourself warned.

Talent isn’t easy, or easier.

Ask anyone who’s ever worked on something they cared a lot about if it was easy—a bestselling author, athlete, photographer, a founder, whatever and whomever you associate with talent. Fulfilling? Sure. Easy? No.

And I also hate that list I just gave you. Talent is hardly limited to publishing or performance — it’s just that their work is most likely to be seen by a lot of people.

There are scores of teachers, copywriters, sales analysts, administrators builders, and landscapers whose work you’ll never see or appreciate. But whether or not they’re “innately” talented doesn’t matter: If they care about the work and they work hard, there’s something at stake. And easy isn’t the word to describe what it takes to do it.

Consider the study published in Psychological Science that looked at the effect of fixed vs. growth mindset, specifically as relates to passion. One group considered their passion predetermined (fixed mindset), and the other didn’t (growth mindset). Turns out, the people who believed they were born to do a specific thing were actually more likely to quit when things got difficult. Why? Because they thought it would be easier if it was meant to be, and if it wasn’t, they must have the wrong passion.

Things worth doing are rarely the easiest thing to do — which is what makes them worth doing in the first place.

Talent isn’t a sure thing.

For every so-so actor who’s struck it rich, there are hundreds of incredibly skilled and talented actors who haven’t gotten their break. And may not.

One thing’s for sure: Talent cannot guarantee an outcome, particularly commercial success—that lightning strike of recognition and cash that we tend to think of as the only reason to do anything.

Do you know how many rejections I got before I landed an agent? Enough, that’s how many. And you know how many publishers wanted the book? One. Everyone else passed. You only need one, so that was good news. But it wasn’t easy or guaranteed, regardless of whatever I bring to the table.

Of course I doubted myself and worried the book wouldn’t sell. But not once did I think, “Oh I guess this means I’m not a good enough writer, so I guess I’ll stop forever.”

Someone else’s assessment of my work has little to do with what I’m capable of. Of course rejection is tough. But I also knew it wasn’t a single definitive rejection from “the world.” It was that the people I did reach out to didn’t know what to do with me and didn’t know if they wanted to bother figuring it out.

Talent isn’t bulletproof.

Talent makes for a lousy life vest. You might feel better having one on, but it cannot keep you afloat.

We think being talented—truly, inarguably talented—will render us confident, fearless even, immune to criticism and judgment. That it will on its own yield purpose, passion, a meaningful life. Nope. You can be talented and terrified (cut to Barbra Streisand, who famously suffers from stage fright, having a pre-show panic attack). You can be talented and torn apart by critics and detractors. (Hi, have you met the Internet?)

An egoic, linear view of talent presumes that if I have talent, I’m “above” you, and so what you say can’t hurt me. But talent isn’t linear, or democratic, or fair. And you find out that criticism stings regardless of where it comes from. (Pro tip: Don’t read your own reviews.)

The world is teeming with criticism and envy, and if your star is rising, they’re looking at you.

Talent isn’t the boss of you.

We tend to think talent leads and makes it clear what to do next. Hardly. To assume that because you’re good at a thing you have to do it is ass backwards.

Just as we don’t have to let other people tell us what we “should” be doing, we don’t let talent dictate our lives, either. Talent alone cannot and will not yield purpose.

Take my sister Lori for example. She’s got one of the most powerful, gorgeous singing voices I’ve ever heard in my whole goddamn life. And anyone who hears it agrees.

When she sings, which she does a few times a year, someone will inevitably ask her why she never “did” anything with it, or why she isn’t auditioning for America’s Got Talent right this second. She knows it’s intended as a compliment, but it doesn’t hit that way anymore.

“Frankly, I resent the implication that I should have done something else, or worse, that I’m crazy or stupid for not pursuing a career as a professional singer,” she said in my book Unfollow Your Passion. “You can have a gift, a talent, and not have to make a living from it.”

Lori realized long ago that the best-case scenario and outcome of a successful singing career would be hell on earth for her.

“I’d either be on the road all the time, or performing every single day and that’s if I was lucky,” she said. This would also mean her life would revolve around her voice — caring for it, worrying about it, babying it, and she was pretty sure, resenting it.

Today she works as a director in commercial sales operations at a pharma company, and no, I don’t know what that means. And while she didn’t grow up with a passion for sales ops (does anyone?) the work draws on other skills that she finds challenging and fulfilling—and she performs the work with passion. Her coworkers say she’s quite talented, in fact. Funny how that works.

No thank you. Lori’s vision of an ideal life involved a challenging, fun job that ended at a reasonable hour, and a couch where she could spend the evenings with a dog and a couple kids. And she is living that dream.

Talent doesn’t motivate.

I love when people say, “Would you read this and tell me if it’s any good? Because if not, I won’t bother.”

My response: You probably shouldn’t bother.

If you believe in talent as the reason to do a thing, and put a lot of stock in someone else’s assessment of your talent, you may find yourself stuck. Why? Because you didn’t actually want to do it in the first place.

Being good at a thing does not mean you’ll want to do it, or to keep doing it. You have to want it — and not just a favorable outcome of the effort, but the effort itself.

When someone tells me they’re going to write a book because everyone tells them they should? I know there’s a good chance that book will never see the light of day.

Not because they aren’t capable of doing it. But because the second-hand idea of doing it, even the vote of confidence, cannot alone sustain long-term effort if it isn’t rooted in you to begin with. If you’re going to sit down for months on end to write a book, or do anything, you’re going to need another reason.

Talent isn’t rare.

When we had all of three networks to watch on TV, it was easy to think that like five people had real talent. After all, they were the only five people we ever watched.

Today, plenty of funny and talented people fill our TikTok feeds with genius jokes, funny skits, creative and clever ideas. They may not be millionaires, and you may not know their names, but that doesn’t mean they’re not as talented as anyone else.

While the internet can be a serious prick, it has given us access to inexpensive tools that allow us to build platforms, publish books, and share our work without the conventional gatekeepers. Turns out, the world is crawling with talent — which means you really have all you need.

Why skill is actually your superpower

In First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham says that great managers don’t see talent as a rare gene exclusive to the gifted few; they define it as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.”

This means that talent isn’t a pre-programmed thing, but something we cultivate by programming ourselves to do it through repetition.

Skill is not the opposite of talent; it’s the expression of talent; it’s craft. Nor is it linear. You don’t have talent, then develop said skill, in that order. Lori didn’t know she could be great at sales ops until she was doing it. That means skill is both how-to and the door through which we explore our own ability.

If you don’t allow yourself to learn a thing, you may not be giving yourself a chance to reveal your own talent.

Buckingham is pretty particular about not confusing skill and talent—skill is transferable from one situation or person to another; talent, not necessarily. Talent is holistic in that it draws on your experience, your perspective, as well as your practice, and that’s why even if I train a person to take over someone’s role, the role will be changed by virtue of the person in it.

But what I love about skill, and why I talk about it so much, is because it’s in the practice of skill that we put in the effort that counts, and we learn so much about ourselves doing it, too.

Practice makes purpose. The more you do it, the more meaningful it can become.

“It’s insulting to call a professional talented,” writes Seth Godin in The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. “Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned.”

You know why it’s rarer? Because talent is everywhere. The world is lousy with it. But effort and focus? That’s another story. It requires practice and failure, on a loop. And unless you do that, no one, including you, will know it’s there.

Here are a few ways skill differs from talent:

Skill builds confidence.

How do you build confidence? Well, how do you get better at lifting heavy things? Lift heavy things. Simple, but not easy. Confidence, like skill, is born of effort, practice, and mastery. It takes time to earn both, which is why they’re worth so much.

It also does the one thing your ego, and everyone else, can’t: Gives you evidence you can point to that you are entirely capable.

Skill doesn’t give a F@!.

Skill by nature demands that you be present—in every sense of the word. When you’re focused on the work, you have little time to entertain foolish and unsolicited opinions.

Working on the craft itself, whether it’s writing or woodworking, is an invitation to lose yourself in the act itself, which is the best part, and where you do your best work.

While the ego is tying itself in knots trying to avoid risk and secure approval, skills says “Could you keep it down? We’re trying to get some work done over here.”

Skill is one bad bitch.

Skill improves — and expands.

The prize of skill building isn’t just an improved ability to do that thing, but an expanded sense of self. You become your actions, rather than your ego, which also makes you a lot more interesting at dinner parties.

And because skills are transferable, what you build now can be useful in lots of places. This is where your creativity and ingenuity come in: The sharper and stronger you are doing x, the better you may be at y.

Skill takes talent by the hand and says, “You can’t just sit there looking pretty. Roll up your sleeves and let’s see what you’re made of.”

YOUR PROMPT:

What’s one thing that comes easily to you? Take us into the moment of doing it, what it feels like, what it requires. Where you learned it. And also: Where you can take it next.

…What if you could change your relationship to the ideas about what you’re allowed, and not allowed to do? I’ll tell you what — everything would change.

If you like the idea of exploring your ideas and unearthing your own talent, check out my brand new program, Breakthrough. It’s my singular, proven process for helping people get free of old ideas so they can do the work they’re dying to do.

Learn more about it here.