There is no talent
<i>You will look around and find other people at your age who are way better than you at playing guitar... in reality, all they did was starting earlier than you or have been spending more time doing it.</i><p>I don't want to disagree with this essay... to first order. But it's important not to take the emphasis on passion too far.<p>Because this hypothesis doesn't explain the existence of passionate but untalented people. Such people exist. Dear god, do they exist. There are people who play a hell of a lot of guitar and are nevertheless not very good. There are people who write a lot of novels and stories but can't produce enjoyable prose, or sellable prose.<p>To paraphrase Edison, success is 90% perspiration. But that still leaves 10% for inspiration. You need <i>directed</i> passion, and the ability to properly channel and manage your passion is a talent. It might not be an <i>inherited</i> talent -- you can develop it -- but you need to do more than just noodle around for more hours than the other noodlers. You need to develop a specific constellation of skills in order to make progress.<p>At the risk of overgeneralizing, the most important talent is meta-analysis. You have to be able to self-analyze and self-correct. (If you can't hear the fact that you're unable to play on the beat or keep a steady rhythm it doesn't matter how many guitar chords you know.) You need the social skills and awareness to seek out criticism, listen to it, and act upon it. (If you don't hear your fellow musicians dropping hints, or don't act upon those hints, you won't get better.) And you have to cultivate abilities that may seem unrelated to the problem at hand... because <i>you</i> recognize, consciously or instinctively, that they are essential to your goal. (Professional scientists, for example, need a lot of sales, political, management, and literary skills. And, famously, our stock consumer PCs ship with lots of fonts in part because Steve Jobs audited a calligraphy class during his brief career as a college dropout.)