Talent is work, art is work

I’ve just read a nice post about the nature of talent at freelanceswitch.com. The word “talent” is used quite often and is sometimes being tossed around freely. Now i have a slightly different understanding of this word.

But first let’s see, what wikipedia has to say about this. The word talent refers to, talent, as a intellectual giftedness, and a skill,which is the ability to perform a task well or better than average. Which is true, but still, we understand this word differently. Most of the time people use it as talent equals “i really like your work”.

Sometimes if a person is talented, people think, that he doesn’t have to work hard to achieve something good. Let it be creativity, design or sports, this is not true. For me being talented means a ability to let’s say learn some skills faster or maybe yet, taking less time to finish something or taking the same time as others, but making it better. To make good work, you need to put effort in it, being talent only helps, but doesn’t do the job for you.

There are also differences in being talented and being a hard working person. My personal opinion is that a hard working person, can beat a lazy talent whenever there’s time. But, you’ve got a problem if you’re competing to a hard working and talented person. To catch up to him, you’ll need to work twice the hard, or even more.

Let me tell you my own short story. I’ve been learning and doing web and graphic design for couple of years, when i started, i saw a lot of good designs, especially those amazing flash sites. And since i only knew the basics i really got depressed looking at those. It even got me thinking of quiting since i didn’t think i was able do such great things. Well the problem was i wasn’t that experienced at that time. But since i love what i do i started to feel more and more motivated and started working and learning hard.

A lot of people get depressed if they see talented people and their portfolios. After that, they think they’re not talented. If you don’t believe in yourself being talented, you should start believing in your work. You can always be a talent of hard work!