Does hard work matter?

You've probably been told that if you just grind it out and put in the hours, no matter what your field, you can be successful.

I mean, the 10,000 hour rule to become an expert at something has been touted for years and many are convinced that dedicating yourself fully will yield results.

But what if I told you that was all wrong?

This idea was inspired by Sierra six from “The Gray Man”, the most skilled CIA operative in the world.

So, it got me wondering how does somebody become the best at what they do?

Like, being a top CIA agent is skill earned through hard work or natural talent?

Or is there another factor at play?

Let's start by looking at athletic ability.

In sports research studies, scientists have taken groups of people and subjected them all to the exact same training regime to see what the results would look like.

Now, even though they all did the exact same work, everybody saw different levels of improvement.

But interestingly, individuals who were related by blood saw similar improvement, indicating that their genetics were playing a role in their athletic potential.

If your parents or siblings saw amazing results, and so would you.

And these people were deemed high responders.

After doing more statistical analysis, it's been estimated that around 50% of athletic improvement is linked to genetics.

So, good athletes are born with good trainable genes.

But these studies also found that individuals had different baseline abilities, too. Without any training.

Some people were just more fit than others, and this was found to be linked to genetics as well.

In the case of cardio, these genes may have coded for larger volumes of blood, giving an early advantage.

If we look at muscle growth, we know that the size of your muscles is under pretty strict control of a protein called "myostatin".

As your muscle reaches its limit, myostatin prevents any further growth.

But the thing is, some people naturally have lower myostatin levels, allowing them to achieve greater muscle growth.

Belgian blue cattle actually have a deletion of the gene GDF8, which just so happens to create myostatin.

And as a result, without any special diet or exercise, they have incredible muscle mass.

They'e absolutely jacked.

Again, this highlights the hugely important role of genetics and how you can start with a high train ability for a skill; a high baseline, or both.

Or none, in my case.

Now chances are that our best athletes have both a high baseline and a high train ability on top of pushing themselves really hard to reach those potential limits.

But there are probably just as many if not more people putting in the same amount of hard work that will never see the same extraordinary results.

Now don't get me wrong.

They can still improve and even become great, but their chance at being the best, much lower .

But your potential for greatness goes far beyond just your body, your circumstance can matter just as much.

Take a look at these SAT scores for an average US college, which are out of 800, by the way.

Those that have the highest SAT scores end up representing over 50% of the people who get degrees at these schools while the lowest SAT scores only represent around 18% of people who actually graduate, not so surprising.

But now let's look at a top school like Harvard here.

The students with the lowest SAT scores are still smarter than the best students at an average school.

And yet, when we look at their rate of completion, it looks awfully similar.

The top students represent just over 50% of people who graduate while the lower SAT scores represent around 15% of people who actually graduate.

This phenomenon is known as “the Big Fish little pond effect”.

Simply put, we compare ourselves not globally but to our neighbors or people who are in the same boat as we are.

As a result, students at top schools compare themselves to their brilliant peers.

And if you're in the bottom half of your class, you're likely to have feelings of inadequacy, even though compared to the rest of the world, you are one of the most talented.

We can even see this effect translated into real world success or failure.

A study looking at publications produced by economists in their first six years after graduation

showed that the top students in the 99th percentile, i.e., smarter than almost every other person at the school from the top five schools in America were producing an impressive amount of publications.

But those in the 75th percentile, still the top quarter of the best students are publishing next to nothing, essentially failures in their field.

But if we now look at the best students from the 30 worst schools, we see that they're publishing more than those in the top quarter of the best schools in the country.

Clearly your surroundings and peers matter.

So even when you put in the hard work, your circumstance and environment can dictate just how valuable all those hours are, which brings us to the concept of time.

Do super talented people put in more hours of practice or work?

Nope.

Well, at least not in the way you probably think.

In particular, their developmental paths may seem surprising to you.

If we look at this graph of practice time and athletes from childhood,

you can see that elite athletes typically devote less time early on to deliberate practice in the activity that they will eventually become experts in.

And this pattern holds true for most fields outside of sports, too.

How does this make sense at all?

It turns out that people at the top of their game, whether that's an athlete, a musician or even a scientist, are more likely to go through something called a "Sampling Period" when they're younger.

Instead of being told to pick one topic and specializing in it, they often try a breadth of activities, whether that be multiple sports instruments or fields of science,

it's only later on in life that they see a narrowing focus, increase structure and an explosion of practice in one area.

It's believed that this not only gives them a range of physical and mental proficiency from the different fields that they can draw on,

but it also allows them to explore and learn what their own abilities are and figure out what they like by trying different things.

Studies on musicians show that sheer amount of practice is not a good indicator of exceptionality.

In fact, the best students often come from less musically active families and are less likely to have an instrument at home.

Those deemed as exceptional most often turn out to be the ones who distributed their efforts and explorations more evenly across multiple instruments and only later in life focused on one.

Even if we look at Nobel prize winners, they're actually 22 times more likely to partake as an amateur actor, dancer, magician or other type of performer.

Uh, I would pay like a lot of money to see a Nobel laureate perform magic.

Even nationally recognized scientists are much more likely to be musicians, painters, woodworkers, mechanics or writers ,etc.

Having lots of experience to draw on from other fields, even if some of those fields are just for leisure, and not only specializing and zoning in on one thing seems to provide a huge benefit.

At the end of the day, what does this say about hard work?

Well, it's certainly not the main factor to extreme success.

Though, of course it plays a role in every experts path.

But where and when that hard work comes into play is clearly not set in stone.

And it's definitely not a direct correlation in skill acquisition research except in really simple tasks that never change.

This means, honestly, it's never too late to find something that you love and have a natural ability for and put a bunch of effort into that.

Of course, if you already are really good at something, it may also help having a little humility knowing chances are you had a bit of luck with your genetics, your circumstance, and your exposure to many different things.

Now, this video idea was inspired by Netflix's new movie, The Gray man, which comes out on July 22nd on Netflix and it follows the most skilled CIA operative agent as he becomes the target of a global manhunt.

It's an amazing film with some of the coolest, most action packed scenes starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans.

And this track jacket, which Netflix so nicely sent me to celebrate the launch of "The Gray Man".

Be sure to check out this absolute blockbuster of a film.

And now, you know whether their incredible skills in the movie were earned through pure hard work, or were the result of a variety of different factors.

Thanks again to Netflix for sponsoring this episode.

If you liked it, give it a like, make sure you subscribe and we'll see you next time for another science video. Peace.