Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life

by K. Anders Ericsson

Both willpower and natural talent are traits that people assign to someone after the fact: Jason is an incredible tennis player, so he must have been born with this natural talent. Jackie practiced the violin for years, several hours each day, so she must have incredible willpower. In neither case can we make this determination ahead of time with any likelihood of being right, and in neither case has anyone ever identified any genes that underlie these supposed innate characteristics, so there is no more scientific evidence for the existence of individual genes that determine willpower than there is for the existence of genes that are necessary for succeeding in chess or piano-playing. Furthermore, once you assume that something is innate, it automatically becomes something you can’t do anything about: If you don’t have innate musical talent, forget about ever being a good musician. If you don’t have enough willpower, forget about ever taking on something that will require a great deal of hard work. This sort of circular thinking—“The fact that I couldn’t keep practicing indicates that I don’t have enough willpower, which explains why I couldn’t keep practicing”—is worse than useless; it is damaging in that it can convince people that they might as well not even try.