{"id":10108,"date":"2021-04-20T02:48:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10108"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:02","slug":"talent-and-skill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10108","title":{"rendered":"TALENT AND SKILL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watching Sarah running track has highlighted an important difference between me and my kids &#8211; much to their advantage: it took me decades to learn the difference between talent and skill.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a kid, I typically gave up on any enterprise that I couldn&#8217;t excel at within the first ten minutes of effort.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried out for track during junior high but quit after the first day. My excuse was &#8220;sports asthma&#8221;, but in reality, I was slower than everyone else. At the end of the first day of practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I quit.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried out for the swim team in the 9th grade. The other kids in the pool that day had been swimming competitively for years. Unsurprisingly, I was far behind. One disparaging remark from the coach after the first practice sent me packing. I remember it started &#8220;Technically I&#8217;m not supposed to cut any student from the swim team who wants to participate, but &#8230;.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Say no more!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It took me a long time to learn that every expert, regardless of his or her level of natural talent, began as an amateur.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Skill takes time. Eventually I stopped quitting so quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watching Sarah running track has highlighted an important difference between me and my kids &#8211; much to their advantage: it took me decades to learn the difference between talent and skill. As a kid, I typically gave up on any enterprise that I couldn&#8217;t excel at within the first ten minutes of effort.\u00a0 I tried [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10109,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions\/10109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}