What is a talent? and how to develop one.
A talent is a natural phenomenon
Imagine a seed, A chestnut or a walnut. Once the seed is planted in a fertile ground, with enough water and sunlight, it will create a sapling. Which will eventually become a tree. There is no miracle in it. Nobody goes woooow.. look at that chestnut tree. I wonder how it came to exist? Nobody talks like that as there is no mystery to it. It is just a natural process with a sequence of steps involved, unraveled by the part of science called botany.
But when we see an Olympic medalist, everyone will go Woooow. Look at that talent. How fast they run, or swim or throw a hammer? And we speak like they were born champions when they were kids. Which is far from the truth. It is really unfortunate we do not have a science called "Talent deciphering" to learn about the process of building a talent, so everyone can have one.
A nut is not a tree; a Tree is not a nut.
A child is not an adult; an adult is not a child. A child is exploring, learning, broadly experiencing everything in life. It seems it is exploring stage of life, compared to exploit stage of an adult. A child's life is random, chaotic, full of emotions and novel experiences. Adult on the other hand is more likely having developed patterns of behaviors. Limited exploring, but a lot of exploiting in whatever talents he/her had built over the childhood years. So, a nut is not a tree, a tree is not a nut. But sometimes, it is better for a tree to adapt a behavior of a nut if it feels like there is limited growth. Now with all the recourses, a tree has some novel advantages than a nut, in succeeding during a phase of exploring.
Raw talent is not a true talent; a true talent is not a raw talent.
If you are just starting with some skill you need to develop. A talent you need to explore. It is good to treat it as a starting talent. At this stage your main objective is to play around. There is no need to confine yourself to one task. You can try different versions. You can change your playground, as often, try new shoes, and fire your coach every month until you find a one who knows what they are doing. If something feels wrong, acknowledge this and move on. Do 10,20 30 different exercises and see which one fits you. There is no need to commit yourself until you resonate with your talent and conditions that you seek. However, experimentation should continue until such. If you find it all dull, maybe that skill you're trying to develop maybe not suited for you. Maybe you're just a walnut trying to become a chestnut.
Once you find a true passion, capitalize on that until it becomes a true talent.
Talent is A belief, a system, with iterative improvement
These ideas may seem, abstract at first. As, it's just the broad picture of what happens in a career development. Individual actions that you have to follow may vary depending on the talent and your environment. However, what is more important is to note that this path is totally different from whoever had succeeded before you. As there are unlimited paths one can take, you cannot just blindly follow a role model and be successful. But there are few traits to those who do, regardless, and these are universal. Explore and Exploit is one such. Furthermore, the following.
A belief - talented individual strongly believe they have ability to improve their talent, and it is in their willpower to do so. Later this belief will spill over to others.
A system - They have built a system around them filled with actions, which handle failures, willpower and worry.
Iterative improvement - In each iteration of their cycle of action they marginally improve on previous day, so there is a feeling of continuity and growth have the potential to compound over time.
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