Talent Is Bounded, But Success Is Not

I’m usually wary of books that follow the Malcolm Gladwell formula of clever case studies followed by equally clever life lessons.

Gladwell, in my opinion, has the patent on that sort of thing and he does it better than any of his myriad imitators.

Which explains why my expectations were low when I began to read The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by Albert-László Barabási, which started off in that same Gladwellian style.

What I discovered in that book was so powerful that I had to share it with you.

The thinking in this book has been about as eye-opening and thought-transforming as anything I’ve read in a very long time.

And I read a whole lot.

He asks the same question that many others have asked: why does it happen that people who are equally talented do not enjoy equal levels of success?

He starts with a story of two New York City graffiti artists in the 1970s, one of whom rose to prominence — perhaps you have heard of Jean-Michel Basquiat

– and a partner of his, who did not become famous.

Basquiat decided to make friends with Andy Warhol, the ultimate artistic tastemaker of the day, and today his works sell for huge amounts of money.

The other guy? You’ve never heard of him.

Barabási cites a study that artists who exhibit in a certain small number of galleries are radically more likely to become more successful, like Basquiat, than artists who exhibit anywhere else.

These two dozen or so galleries around the world provide entrees to wealthy art collectors, other galleries, and museums, all of whom have a serious financial and reputational interest in ensuring that the artists they back grow increasingly successful.

The same thing is true in music, he points out. Music and even figure skating Barabási points out. It’s not so much how well you perform at competition in these fields. It’s when you perform. Those who play or skate later in the competition have a statistically much higher chance of winning than those who go first or second.

He said studies even indicate that it’s easier to pick out which classical pianists will be highly successful by watching them play with the sound off. Their gesticulations and facial expression indicate which ones act like famous pianists and which don’t.

Is any of this fair? No. Its just reality.

One more example Barabási cites, Tiger Woods.

He says that Woods is statistically only marginally better than his peers. But because his reputation is so powerful, they often play worse — often far worse — than in matches where he doesn’t play.

Barabási’s point: There really isn’t that much difference in talent in people that are superstars and people who just miss the cut. Instead, circumstances, hype, and a conscious decision to focus on building an audience is, all too often, what separates the wildly successful individual from those who are as good or almost as good but never achieve a similar level of a claim.

There’s plenty more in the book, of course, but this was the point that was most salient for me.

My focus has always been on getting better as a writer, producing more and more work, and studying the lives of successful people in all fields, so as to glean clues for myself.

The one thing I’ve never really focused on is what Barabási indicates is a critical aspect of success — the audience and how it receives your work.

I’m not going to compromise on my lifelong commitment to get better and better as a writer. That’s not going to change. But by the same token, I am going to focus on this question of network and audience.

It’s so obvious that it’s embarrassing.

I think if any of us had a choice, we would rather be Jean-Michel Basquiat (admittedly with a longer lifespan) than his partner who was forgotten.

So here’s to not working in obscurity!

I’ll let you know how it goes.