this episode is sponsored by netflix and
their new movie the gray man which is
out july 22nd 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 6 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 their
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 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're 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 u.s 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 percent 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 s.a.t 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
percent 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 in 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 increased
structure and an explosion of practice
in one area it's believed that this not
only gives them a range of physical and
mental proficiencies 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 expert's 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 new movie the grey
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 grey 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