Destroy Your Mental Limits & Unlock Your Best Self - Adam Grant

"What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation." What does that mean?

Well, I, I did write that, and I think I believe it. (laughs) So if you look at, if you look at the, the history of, you know, of great talent, we tend to see people at their peak, and we assume that they were just naturals, right? Steph Curry could always drain three-pointers. Um, Mozart was, you know, a natural musician. And in some cases, w- if you trace back, these people were pr- child prodigies. Um, and Mozart, I think, was a great example, but for every Mozart, it turns out that there are multiple Bachs and Beethovens, um, who actually bloomed late and took a long time to improve. And I guess the, the study that really open- opened my eyes to this was, Benjamin Bloom looked at world-class athletes, musicians, scientists, artists, and he went back to their, their childhoods and wanted to know, were they, were they innately just brilliant a- at these skills from day one? Um, and the consistent answer was no. That (laughs) very often, their early teachers and coaches, even their own parents, had no idea how great they were gonna become. And when they did stand out, it wasn't for natural ability. It was because they were unusually passionate, they loved to learn, um, and they had early opportunities to get lots of practice in. And I think what that suggests to me is that sometimes we overestimate the importance of raw talent, and we underestimate the, the importance of, uh, of creating opportunities that open doors for people and then giving them a chance to, to actually showcase their enthusiasm.

What about motivation? Where does that, where does that come from in, in this context?

I think in a lot of the cases, if you look at the Bloom study, at least, um, the, the world-class performers tended to have an early teacher or coach who made learning fun. And I think that's, that's not common for a lot of us (laughs) , right? Like, learning to do scales if you're a musician, doing drills if you're an athlete. It can be a slog. And the idea that this, this boring task they, that might just lose your interest or might exhaust you, um, could actually be exciting, um, it draws you in and it makes you wanna keep learning. And, and over time, that becomes self-reinforcing, because after all, it's hard to like something that you, that you just suck at, right? (laughs)

Mm-hmm.

As you, as you gain skill and build up mastery, that's when your motivation begins to really soar.

Yeah, when you turn, uh, any task into... Or any, I guess, activity into a task that needs to be ticked off, it sort of s- takes one step toward drudgery, uh, which just doesn't sound fun.

Well put.

Uh, I think, I wonder whether people will be uncomfortable to think about motivation as something that's almost bestowed on them by the environment, because, you know, highly agentic, meritocratic world, I can make my own way, I can... Eh, yes? But as the other part of it, differences in opportunity and motivation, and it seems like motivation can quite often be brought about by the right opportunity, too. Uh, it's very much out of our hands also.