Effort Is What Turns Talent Into A Skill

It’s what separates the amateur from the professional.

If you’re born with it, it’s talent. But if you’ve worked hard for it, it’s a skill.

You earn skills through commitment, practice and self-discipline. It gives you a lifelong advantage.

Why? Because it’s hard work that can’t be replicated unless another person spends the amount of time you put in.

However, talent often dies young. It’s not protected nor cultivated because we take advantage of its innate nature.

Talent draws attention but it’s skill that keeps the attention for a long time later. It’s skill that leaves the impression.

I have some talent as a writer. Not bucketloads. Just some.

I can transport you to another world within the first four sentences. Or I can cut all the fluff and present the bare bones of an essay.

But I am nowhere near as skilled as the likes of J K Rowling, Stephen King or Zadie Smith.

But I can cultivate and leverage talent to make it a skill. It’s what freelancers and entrepreneurs do time and time again.

You can use both as competitive advantages in your business. But skill is the real asset.

What makes a talent skill and brings entrepreneurs big bucks is the attitude towards skill.

Entrepreneurs know the awe of talent but understand the asset of a skill.

The difference between skill and talent is simple. Effort.

The people we label as overnight-successes or the lucky few are outliers in the grand scheme of society.

Once we delete these outliers, effort becomes directly proportional to success.

It is the better learner, harder-working, better informed and better-liked people that do leaps better than the masses. At least, most of the time.

Effort comes in many forms.

Whether it’s showing up prolifically or constantly learning, you take steps towards making your talent into a skill.

When your talents become skills, you can monetise them. You become a greater asset. You have studied the game.

But there’s a paradox thrown in the cogs of understanding our perception of talent and skill.

Although we know that effort is how we set ourselves apart, we desire and wish for luck.

Luck is more appealing even though it’s scarce and unreliable. Effort, on the other hand, is readily available in abundance, all the time.

But why are people reluctant to put in the effort?

We convince ourselves that we were not born with talents or that are talents aren’t that great to be turned into skills.

We stand in our path to success.

We decided that the skill is not worth the effort. Or we’re crippled with fear. We put too much of ourselves at stake. If our talents don’t translate into monetised skills, it’s because we aren’t good enough.

We take ourselves too seriously.

In reality, any talent, no matter how small can be a skill. Truth be told, we don’t even need any talent to learn a skill. Today, tech-dummies can learn how to code with a little perseverance and effort.

Effort has become the new currency. It translates skill into shiny gold coins.

Fatima Sultan is a writer, tutor and self-proclaimed nerd. She writes about life and its many excitements and disappointments. She also apparently likes referring to herself in the third person. You can read more of her writing by subscribing to her free newsletter.