Turning Your Talents Into Skills

Nature vs. Nurture

A lot of people are under the impression that nature and nurture are two opposing forces. That each defines particular characteristics of your personality. This is a half-truth. Nature and nurture do not oppose one another; they work in tandem. The synthesis of the two defines who you are and what you are predisposed to doing.

Talent vs. Skill

The best example I know of this is seen in the difference between skill and talent. Talent is essentially nature: it is the group of abilities at which you are genetically adept. Talent is what you were born to do. Skill encompasses the nurture aspect: it is the group of abilities that you learned to do.

Though two Olympic athletes may be trained under the same coaches for their whole lives and trained the same amount, the athlete with the most talent will naturally be more capable than the other. This is not to say that a person born with no talent in an area could never learn to do the craft well, she just may fall short of being the “best of the best.”

How to Utilize Talent and Skill

One of the best pieces of career advice I was ever told was to list the things I enjoy doing most and make a career out of one of them. The reason, I learned afterward, that this is such good advice is people are naturally drawn to activities for which they have talent. And if you have talent in an area, then it will be easier to develop skill in that area. And if you enjoy doing something, you are more willing to learn new skills. That is why it is natural to see children with a certain talent grow up to become experts in the field.

Finding a Career

If you are looking to acquire a new career, the best way is to choose an area that you enjoy. It will probably be a broad field such as writing, mathematics, or science. Even if you can narrow it down to a more specific discipline, you should research all of the similar fields. For example, if you enjoy psychology, you should also learn about sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc. Try to articulate to yourself what you find interesting about each of these fields, even if you do not like some of them, because this will help you discover exactly what you should be doing.

By simply getting your feet dirty in all of the related fields and developing skills and understanding in them, you will effectively increase your skill level in whatever area you end up doing. This is because you will be able to bring what you learned from the other fields and use them to your advantage in the one you choose.