Hard Work VS. Talent

"Hard work beat the talent if the talent doesn't work hard"

That every line above was what my trainee told me when I told him I'm not that skillful, just the product of hard work. And I was like nodding slowly and told myself "yeah, it does makes sense".

When I was still in college I use to (silently) compete with my classmates. I know I'm not the cream of the crop so I always work hard and though my output may not be as good as theirs still they are threaten by it.

I think this topic is somewhat connected with the my other post, Why I Won't Go For The Best. Personally, I saw people who are talented enough who slack around just because they thought they could learn anything within a blink of an eye. They tend to just roamed around to useless stuff while the people (not so talented) around them are busy searching and reading things just for them to fully understand the subject.

Yes, the talented people may have the disadvantage for they could learn things easily but their "slacking around" attitude may have a bad effect on them in the future. One common and obvious effect of this is they may end up being lazy because they got use of being lazy. Let's say in workplace, talented (yet lazy) people tend to get the job done few hours (or minutes) before the deadline because they are too lazy or thinking too proud of themselves that they could finish the job easily. I personally saw this kind of people at my workplace. Yes, they could easily finish the task at hand (or so they thought). Not all the tasks are as easy as it look. There maybe some hidden flaws that you can't identify right then and there but needed some research.

Being talented is a gift that we must use but was wasted by other people so hard working people do excel. I guess the right quotation for this must be "Hard work does beat the talent but only if the talent doesn't work hard."