I started thinking about talent versus skill after reading a comment on Twitter, which I have since given up (it no longer gave me joy). Iona Italia, a sub-editor of Areo commented on one of antihero_kate’s posts saying that she would love to work with Kate because she is so talented.

How did Iona know whether it was talent or skill? Is she saying that Kate is naturally good at writing? I don’t know, but maybe Kate spent years developing her technique to arrive at the tweets that are so well written.

When you see a highly skilled person do something, it often looks easy for them. It might be talent, but more likely it is talent combined with thousands of hours of practice.

When you compliment someone for being talented, do you really mean to compliment them for doing something so well that it looks effortless? Instead of complimenting talent, you could say, “You are such a great writer” or “I love that piece you wrote, it really changed my perspective on…”

Which do you value more, the things that you did well naturally or the things at which you worked really hard?