# 4 Reasons Hard Work DOES NOT Beat Talent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHTEhQp1g0

[00:00] hard work beats talent I don't believe in Talent I'm here because I worked hard my whole life hard work Talent
[00:09] okay but what if what if it doesn't what if hard work does not beat talent
[00:15] in this video I'm going to be telling you four reasons why hard work in reality very rarely beats Talent
[00:24] at least in the way that most people think about that statement and then at the end of this video I'm going to give you two ways that you can find the missing ingredient that does allow hard work to beat Talent
[00:34] the missing ingredient that if you were to miss would mean that your hard work will probably be very likely to not beat Talent
[00:44] for those of you that are new I'm Dr Justin sung I'm a former medical doctor and full-time learning coach and for the last decade I have worked with thousands of Learners around the world to teach them to learn more efficiently
[00:56] so here's the thing about hard work and talent when I was 18 trying to enter into medical school I studied a lot I
[01:01] tell the story all the time I was studying 15 20 hours a day very very very little sleep yes it is very unhealthy.
[01:08] uh no it is not a good way to live I was not having a good time my efficiency was terrible but at the time 18 year old me I really didn't know anything about efficient study methods at all.
[01:17] I had you know like writing lots and lots and lots of notes just a lot of time reading through textbooks and writing notes and doing my flash cards so when I was entering to medical school I managed to get good grades good enough grades to get into medical school.
[01:29] but I also had friends that were studying like half the amount of time while studying and they were getting in some cases even better grades so you could say that they were more talented than I was but my hard work allowed me to overcome that.
[01:40] having said that I also had a lot of other people around me that were studying more than these friends and they weren't able to overcome it so what's the difference.
[01:48] fast forward a few years well several years I'm doing my master of education I made some videos about that as well and I spent about 15 of the amount of time studying for my master of education compared to the other people in my cohort I was doing a full-time master of education and
[02:04] part-time requirement significantly less time and at the end I graduated top of my cohort.
[02:09] I got the dean's award for academic Excellence I was a top graduating student my grades were essentially perfect which is while I was invited back to Monash to actually lecture people on the skills that I use and I continue to do that today.
[02:20] but one of my peers in the master of education group I know that she quit her job to do this full-time.
[02:28] she was studying 60 hours a week for this Masters and she was still struggling and she did not manage to get really even close to the grades that I got.
[02:34] so in her instance if she had just studied even more instead of 60 hours maybe if she did a hundred hours would she have caught up or beaten me.
[02:40] probably not because even as it is she was putting in like 10 times the amount of hard work compared to me and so clearly the formula for success is not simply hard work times Talent.
[02:53] there's a missing ingredient here in fact eight years ago when I first started getting into the education space I set up my first company.
[03:00] it was a non-profit social Enterprise and the whole premise was can
[03:03] we teach younger students in high school.
[03:05] especially from underprivileged backgrounds.
[03:06] some of the skills on how to use their effort more effectively and the reason I said that company up was because I started noticing so many students from these lower socioeconomic positions that went to these less academic schools coming into uni and they were really really struggling and it was certainly not because of a lack of effort that they weren't doing very well.
[03:26] it actually felt from my perspective that their hard work seemed to be futile and the thing is that I now know that this is true hard work can be futile.
[03:37] you can work hard and still do poorly and what that causes is a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety and a lot of pressure and over time it makes people believe that they are simply incapable or not smart enough or not good enough and that is just not true.
[03:50] we like to say that hard work beats talent because it is a message of hope I get that but it is oversimplified or at least people see it in a way that is oversimplified.
[04:03] especially young people putting in a lot of work they think the answer if they're not doing well is to Simply work harder.
[04:11] and this is especially true in a lot of Asian countries it's just part of the culture.
[04:15] so let me tell you the problems with that approach.
[04:17] reason number one is that hard work has diminishing returns.
[04:22] when you put in a little bit of work if you start from having nowhere to doing a decent amount of work you're getting really good returns.
[04:30] however if you go from having high amounts of work to even more work you're gonna get less bang for your buck.
[04:36] every extra hour you're putting in is giving you less results.
[04:39] and at a certain point it actually starts being worse.
[04:42] more hours actually makes you perform worse.
[04:44] so for example if you were to study 180 hours a week is that even possible.
[04:51] let me just think about this.
[04:53] if you were to study 140 hours a week then you would be so so sleep deprived that your cognitive ability is probably in like 10 20 of what it would be at its
[05:05] peak and so really at that point you may as well have only studied like 10 hours a week and you'd probably do just the same.
[05:11] now here's the thing in the low levels of competition especially like Junior High School it's enough just to have some hard work because most people around you are just not working hard.
[05:21] so if you're the person that's putting in seven or eight out of ten effort well everyone around you is putting in two or three out of ten effort then you're probably gonna do better than them.
[05:30] but this is not the case usually later in life a lot of people feel this in their seniors of high school going to College University with things a little bit more challenging certainly in you know the professional world just putting in more time and more effort is not really enough to change things enough.
[05:45] and part of this is because usually for things that are difficult and competitive people with Talent are not doing two or three out of ten effort they are also putting in five or six out of ten effort.
[05:55] so if the difference in Talent between you and this other person is too much you just cannot compensate for it.
[06:02] there is not enough time to give and the other side is that the person with Talent has
[06:06] stuff left in reserve if they notice that they're starting to fall behind.
[06:10] they can go from a 5 out of 10 to a 7 out of 10 and then beat the competition again.
[06:14] they have stuff left in the tank.
[06:16] whereas if you are at 9 out of 10 just to keep up that's not going to be sustainable.
[06:20] and so far if this is making sense to you then I would appreciate if you leave a like because it helps this video reach more people.
[06:26] reason number two is that effort is fuel.
[06:29] hard work is important but it's more of a prerequisite.
[06:31] for example if a machine doesn't perform very well and it produces low quality products with half a tank of gas does it get better just because you add more fuel to it.
[06:43] so for something like studying and learning spending more time and effort on using methods that aren't Well Suited and optimized can actually make things worse.
[06:52] the classic example that I often give is Flash card over Alliance.
[06:56] we know that flashcards are an excellent tool for its purpose.
[06:58] you can root memorize lower order facts and details especially in the short term but beyond that relational thinking conceptual thinking.
[07:07] complex problem solving deeper application or having better long-term memory.
[07:10] we know that this is not a good tool but lots of students over rely on this and actually in some cases that's the only technique that they have in their Arsenal and this means that we can easily become overwhelmed because the brain's ability to just prune out unnecessary of relevant information which is what the brain thinks about stuff that you're just repeatedly cramming in through flashcards your brain's ability to do that is much much more efficient and faster than your ability to just do and repeat more of the same flashcards you're never gonna win against your brain in fact research on forgetting curves shows that irrelevant information can be pruned from the brain within seconds to minutes at most which is why it can feel like you're constantly fighting against your memory because you actually are but then Justin isn't that better than nothing.
[07:54] well yes it's better than nothing but it's not better than the alternative see if we commit all of this time to using that strategy and we're taking time away from using other strategies that might be more beneficial for different purposes and so you can easily see how
[08:08] just thinking harder work is the solution can be problematic.
[08:13] we can use a method that's not giving us good results and therefore we think the reason is because we're not using that enough so we just put more time and more effort into it.
[08:20] and so here's a rule of thumb that I follow for myself and for any students that I work with.
[08:34] if the amount of effort you're putting in is reasonable for example if you're in high school I'd say 10 to 20 hours a week of studying is pretty reasonable and you're not getting consistent or predictable or desirable results then your methods can probably be optimized.
[08:42] in fact for most things in life you should be able to get pretty predictable and consistent results with only a decent amount of effort if you have the right method and then once you know that this entire system works and as well tuned then you can start pumping more fuel into it more time time and more energy.
[08:55] and this is actually kind of intuitive we probably already know this.
[08:59] a famous example is the late great Kobe Bryant you know one of the greatest NBA basketball players of all time I guess some people would debate that I'm not really a basketball guy but that's what I hear.
[09:08] but the thing about Kobe is that he was always always
[09:11] Practicing he was like famous to be a hard worker.
[09:13] In fact there's actually the story that I saw like a clip of before where another NBA player decided to come in early to training and then he got there at like 4 or 5 a.m and he found that Kobe was already there practicing.
[09:25] And then he you know trained all day and then when it was time to go home Kobe was still there training.
[09:31] And then when he asked him why did you train so late that night Kobe is said to have replied because I want you to know that I will always work harder than you.
[09:41] So after the news I'm like hey cob like why why were you in the gym for so long.
[09:46] He's like because I saw you come in and I I don't want you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work that I'm willing to work harder than you.
[09:56] And let's just take a moment to appreciate that that is a badass statement and Kobe is a beast of a man.
[10:00] However what's also implicit there is that Kobe one of the best basketball players in the world using one of the best facilities in the
[10:11] world being coached by a world-class you know coaching team is probably practicing using methods that are pretty good.
[10:19] which is why Talent aside just because you practice as much as he did it doesn't mean that you're gonna be an NBA player.
[10:26] which brings me to reason number three which is that hard work is also about the type of work that you do.
[10:33] and the way that I like to explain this is using the term asset when we work hard we want to build an asset.
[10:40] in financial terms you can consider an asset as something that allows you to improve the amount of cash that you can earn without needing to do more work.
[10:48] so for example example if you buy a very rare and precious Jewel like a diamond and that diamond increases in value when you sell it you've made a profit.
[10:57] that diamond has by just the value of it existing made money for you so it's an asset.
[11:03] so we should also think about spending time to invest in our own personal skill assets.
[11:07] imagine two Lumberjacks that are trying to cut down
[11:12] some trees one may spend all of their time and effort on just cutting down the trees.
[11:16] while another may spend half of their time and effort on sharpening their ax.
[11:20] over time the person with a sharper X is going to be more efficient and they're going to win if these two Lumberjacks are competing.
[11:27] but both Lumberjacks worked very hard in fact some might even say that the one that spent all of their time just swinging their blunt acts around was working harder.
[11:36] which is why we often say work smarter not harder.
[11:38] I believe it actually should be work smarter and then once you've figured out how to work smarter then feel free if you want to to work hard as well.
[11:50] well and then you become Unstoppable and so even though hard work can beat talent and even though the statement hard work beats Talent can give people hope in reality it can actually do the opposite it can rob people of Hope if you only see hard work and talent as a two parts of the equation to success whatever success means to you because really the equation should be success equals hard work times Talent times your processes in fact you
[12:12] could even say that Talent is simply just the natural ability for someone to intuitively use more optimal processes.
[12:21] think about that.
[12:23] and so here are two things that you can do to help turn your effort more consistently into results and give yourself the chance for your hard work to beat Talent.
[12:31] first one is to pull back.
[12:34] if you're already at a hundred percent capacity you do not have the time to invest to learn how to work smarter to sharpen your ex.
[12:41] you need time to sharpen your racks and what that means is that sometimes you actually have to accept the short-term loss.
[12:47] you have to accept that maybe right now in the short term you may not perform as well as you want to.
[12:55] and I know that can be really really difficult for some people but if you don't spend the time to improve your skills and learn how to work smarter then you're going to be stuck in the spiral forever.
[13:05] there's going to be no hope for you because you're never improving the future version of you is always stuck with the same problems with
[13:13] the current version of your hairs plus the new problems the future version of you has inherited.
[13:17] if right now you feel like you're not able to stay on top of things and that means that you are giving the future version of you the things that you weren't able to deal with today to deal with later.
[13:25] the future version of you has all those same things to deal with plus the stuff that you weren't able to deal with before but if your ability to deal with it is not improving that backlog just build and builds and builds and that's why we can get overwhelmed.
[13:38] and so this is what short-term pain long-term gain really means.
[13:41] it doesn't mean just put your head down and work hard right now so that you can get a good result later.
[13:46] it means accept defeat now lose the game so that you can win the championship which brings us to number two which is to know more things.
[13:56] a lot of people will say that I don't know how to work smarter so I can't I don't know what to do but it doesn't stop you from taking the next step which is to learn what to do to gain more information about that.
[14:08] if the reason that you can't work smarter is you don't know how your next step is to
[14:16] know how so maybe you're not taking time to sharpen your ex.
[14:18] maybe that time is spent on learning how to shop an ax.
[14:21] which would lead to you being able to sharpen your ex.
[14:23] taking action is rarely about changing your action immediately.
[14:26] most of the time especially for things that are difficult or complicated taking action means making the decision to learn what action you should take.
[14:31] so if you want to learn how to improve your learning or studying efficiency and work smarter in that way then you might be interested in checking out my video on encoding.
[14:46] or if you want to see me apply some of these techniques in real life for example like I did with my master's program I actually documented that and you can check out that video here as well.
[14:58] as always if you found this useful leave a thumbs up share it with your friends I appreciate your support thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.
[15:05] [Music]
[15:13] foreign
[15:18] [Music]