Like some others mentioned above, a lot of it comes down to motivation and encouragement. As a pianist, I noticed other pianist peers often went in a sort of K-shaped trajectory, some just getting better and better and others stagnating or quitting. It often all came down to how much you were praised for your first few performances. Those who got that vital big dopamine boost at the outset were motivated to play better to keep harvesting that praise and admiration, while those who flunked their performances at the beginning were discouraged and often just felt “I’m just not cut out for this.”
I ended up becoming quite good at piano, but I can see how easily I could have quit at the outset at age 9-10 if it weren’t for people telling me I played well, and set down piano forever. I don’t consider myself “talented” at piano, in the sense that I never dreamed or aspired to be one as a kid, it’s just something I somehow became good at eventually.
I read the opposite: in countries like Spain, in which school class assignment are divided by calendar year, but school years are divided in the summer pause, kids born between Juli and December are up to six months younger than the average, and kids born between January and June are up to six months older than the average. That is a big difference whether you are aged 6 or 7, or 7 or 8, or even 12 or 13 when practicing some sports, particularly team sports that rely on strength and coordination. It was claimed Spanish professional footballers are predominantly born before Easter.
The talent that always confuses me is singing. I’m not good at it and I don’t understand why some people can sing the proper notes and some can’t. I can start uttering a low vocal sound and continually raise the pitch to a very high note, so I know my vocal chords are capable.
If I sing along with a song I can do much better, but it’s still lacking.
And I don’t think practicing or a coach will help.
Another topic in one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, besides the 10,000 hour rule, is the connections rule. (The Kevin Bacon game). He pointed out that while most people have a few close friends, some people are friends with everyone, have hundred of acquaintances. When you say X knows Y who knows Z etc, the connection between these diverse groups is likely one of these people who “knows everyone”. This is a “talent” (?) that we cannot attribute to practice. Some people are just plain charismatic by personality. (Perhaps like some people are just plain a–holes by personality). The moral being the human brain works in funny ways and not everything is a learned capability.
I think you’d be pleasantly surprised; a singing coach would certainly help you to convert your physical asset into a singing voice. Singing isn’t just a natural gift for most people, it’s a skill that is learned.
This is absolutely something that is almost pure practice. There are many people who naturally are rather closed off, few close friend type peoples who suddenly are thrust into a Business Development/Partnerships/Co-ordination style role where their value suddenly becomes the breadth and quality of their network and they either realize it’s not right for them and switch out or they get good.
People who are natural extroverts find the practice easier to engage in but, at the end of the day, it’s a time in:results out kind of activity.
I, myself, am an extreme introvert but when I first moved to San Francisco in my 20s, knowing like, 3 people in the city, I knew I didn’t have that much immediate value to bring to people so I figured the easiest way I could start adding value was by connecting people who should know each other but didn’t. I later counted and in my first 180 days there, I sent out 150 email introductions between people which was almost one a day on average. It was that concentrated effort in the early days that formed the basis for my network and ease of time there.
I think there’s a common misconception among people that for many skills, there’s a blessed subset of people for which the skill comes natural and with zero pain and it’s not worth competing with those people. You talk to anybody who is good at anything and they will all report, day to day, there are still days where it sucks and you have to will yourself to do the thing. The one thing they’re better at is just embracing the suck and being willing to do it anyway even when you really don’t want to. Some people might have 10x more or 10x less days than others but it’s still about mastering the core skill of embracing the suck.