4 Reasons Hard Work DOES NOT Beat Talent

Learn about the importance of working smarter, not harder.

Every week, I distil what really works for improving results, memory, depth of understanding, and knowledge application from over a decade of coaching into bite-sized emails.

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=== Timestamps ===

0:00 Intro
00:59 How I realised that hard work is not enough
03:38 When hard work becomes futile
04:20 Problem 1: Diminishing returns
06:27 Problem 2: The purpose of effort
10:33 Problem 3: Effort vs output
12:34 Solution 1: Pull back
13:48 Solution 2: Know more things

=== About Dr Justin Sung ===

Dr. Justin Sung is a world-renowned expert in self-regulated learning, certified teacher, research author, and former medical doctor. He has guest lectured on learning skills at Monash University for Master’s and PhD students in Education and Medicine. Over the past decade, he has empowered tens of thousands of learners worldwide to dramatically improve their academic performance, learning efficiency, and motivation.

[JustinSung]

Every week, I distil what really works for improving results, memory, depth of understanding, and knowledge application from over a decade of coaching into bite-sized emails.

[julesinmed]

Personally, I think hard work should lead to smart work. We tend to associate the term hard work with concepts like long hours, lack of sleep and exhaustion, while it would be more useful if these circumstances were seen as a ''prompt'' to find a way to work smarter (simply to avoid being crushed by them, following natural evolution and self-preservation). Also, the process of simplification is itself ''hard work'', just not in the conventional, general view!

[misestudios]

“Talent is just the natural ability for someone to intuitively use more optimal processes.” Wow that was open eyes sentences

[vikshi]

Hardwork beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.

[zirakmistry]

"You can work hard and still do poorly". Can't agree more. All my engineering years, I worked fairly hard, put in multiple extra hours, and attended extra classes. Even after all this extra effort, I managed to get slightly about average grades whereas my few talented peers worked half as hard but produced double the results with exceptional grades. That was the moment when I realised that it is more to it than just hard work.

Everyone always says to work harder and harder. They say that you have not yet achieved success because you have not worked hard enough.

I feel it is only so much hard work you can do because you have limited time and energy and it is only a matter of time before your genetics give up and you get burnt out (probably multiple times) and give up eventually.

Finally someone can understand my point of view. Glad I found you and your channel.

[eagle]

“Talent is just the natural ability for someone to intuitively use more optimal processes.”

Wow, that is some deep insight!

It basically means, you need to discover the optimal processes that will give you the desired results . And then train yourself on making them intuitive; second nature.

Then keep upgrading them. So you are able to do more with less.

Thank you Justin! You have literally changed my life.

Thank you brother!

[shenghongzhong]

"Taking action is rarely about changing your action immediately. Most of time, especially for things that are difficult and complex, taking action means making decision to learn what action you should take"

[alphaomega]

4:21 1. Hard work has diminishing returns
6:27 2. Effort is fuel
10:29 3. Hard work is also about the type of work that you do
12:22 Two things to do to solve this

[debeatz]

can't beat a guy with both hard work and talent. Met a guy like that....dude was a machine, my man is gonna be a good doctor after 3 years. Wishing him all the best 👍

[PixelatedApollo]

It’s also enormously BASED when someone who struggles more at doing something, (or has less talent) but works hard anyways. They can see peers easily progressing faster than them, but yet they struggle on and achieve greatness within their own time. I respect people who accomplish something very challenging, even if it was easy for other people.

[dhaufjebzjchseis]

when I was in elementary school I was in special ed. Teachers considered holding me back a year. I grew up believing I was stupid and was told so by many around me. I graduated high school with a 95% average with nearly 100% in physics and over 95% in math and chemistry. I'll now be graduating from UCLA with a bachelor's in electrical engineering. My point is a lot of the time when you consider yourself untalented in something it's because you haven't put the work in to discover your talent. If I had listened to everyone around me claiming that I would never be good at math and science because I simply lacked the talent I would have given up. Instead, I worked hard and realized I was never dumb but that instead I just needed to try different learning methods and discovered I actually had an aptitude for these subjects. People underestimate how much work It takes to be good at something and how much work so-called "talented" people have put in. They look at a new subject or skill they want to pick up and give up quickly. Telling themselves "My brain simply isn't wired for this stuff." If you are passionate about something give it your all.

[eagle]

“Working hard never had anything to do with it. It’s not about how hard you work on something. It’s about doing the right thing.”

[aljongreat]

Hard work might not beat talented people but its the only way for ordinary people to stand a chance. Plus hard work is never a waste of time and effort. You might not beat some people but u will definitely improve with hard work and it works 100%

[Darknight]

12:06
Success = Hard work x Talent x Processes
Talent is the natural ability to intuitively use more optimal processes.
Thanks Justin!

[IamKudos]

Really love this video. I think the reason people love to say "Hard work beats talent" is because they see talent as this mysterious gift that people have been privileged with by genetics or something. People don't want to flip a stone to check and see what really is talent. It's just better cognitive recognition and higher-order learning that people do accidentally for one thing. And because they didn't realize that they were doing that, they cant seem to apply that for others. Hence that becomes their "talent". And people like things explained in simplified terms. So they don't even want to wrap their head around what talent really is, or if they can DEVELOP or LEARN to be smart, to be talented. Deploying your brain is seeming to be harder to people than just passively putting in a grind of 10 hours of hard work. When you're active and aware of the processes you're using to improve yourself, you will achieve something even better than talent.

[whoda]

Someone can work hard memorising their textbook word-for-word. They probably won’t finish and they probably won’t get top marks.
Justin has said himself that some people take in knowledge faster than others and that they succeed in spite of their methods, rather than because of their methods.
Taking responsibility for as much of your life as you can is great, but there are some things you can’t control and you’ll end up beating yourself up because you think you should be able to control them.

[deletedaxiom]

The sharpening the axe section reminded me of an instance where I was tutoring a student. He was in cal 2 and he was having trouble with some problem and was an engineering major. I asked him to go through the problem and he was going in circles because he didn't remember log rules.
I told him, "hey this problem would be way easier right here, if you used log rules so just go back and review them it'll take you like 15 mins."
He decided that he would rather just memorize and keep doing the same problem again and again rather than going back to basics for a refresher. It was frustrating watching someone just "work" hard for little results.
The best thing about tutoring mathematics was constantly going over the basics as you see new things and connections. So going back to the basics is often very very useful, occasionally.
Edit: Had to fix confusing sentence structure.

[clashguideswithdusk]

Definitely resonates with me. I have seen so many of my peers struggle through high school while I easily gotten an ATAR of 99.3 without much studying, I wasn't even in a good school.

Thanks to your course, I realised that I have an inherent deep processing ability, which I am fine tuning now

[jakaan]

"Talent is just the natural ability for someone to intuitively use more optimal processes", this is one of the hardest lines I have ever heard. It literally explains everything

[Don-kwnu]

Hard work doesn't beat talent, smart work beats talent