September 20th, 2025 marks exactly one year since I bought Roland’s
FPX-30, 88-keys full sized digital piano. Being in my 4th decade of
life I never taught myself any instrument, even though I own and dabble with many.
In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head,
it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that
allows me to ad-hoc compose music.
Feel free to listen (and judge) today’s morning jam session – a daily
recording that I often make for my family on a durable recorder, as
part of my “legacy”.
When I share recordings with family and friends I often hear that I’m
talented and people are surprised that I only play for a year. I have
much worse opinion about myself, but take the compliments with
gratitude.
Here I’ll share the secret with all of you. The open secret that I
tell to everyone who asks: I play piano 1-3 hours per day. As of today
that’s probably ~1000-1500 hours.
That explains everything right?
Diving deeper
Sure, explanation is time, but on the other side I feel like I’m
seriously crippled in the music department: I cannot name the notes
that I hear. I cannot humm the music that I composed and can play with
eyes closed when at the piano. I have plenty of trackers, synthesizers
etc., but struggle to create 2 minutes worth of music, whereas it’s
not a problem to me to have 5 minutes ad-hoc composition on piano.
I’m touched heavily by evaluation so I often mistake notes when I
press record button and, finally, I tend to stick to minimalism
repeating same chord progression over and over.
In other words: I don’t feel I’m good not even to have “talent”, yet
my audience thinks otherwise and praises my talent.
What is a talent anyway?
This made me think – what is a talent anyway?
I often been called talented in many areas. Sure, maybe I am. I don’t
feel so, but I’m not going to refute based on that. Yes, I know many
weird software languages, yes, I spent a lot of time doing sysadmin,
software development, troubleshooting, security hardening or even
modelling. It gave me somewhat comfortable life. But then I’ve met
countless people who are significantly better than me. Sure, maybe
their expertise isn’t that wide, but they can beat me with eyes closed
on every single one. I’d half-jokingly argue that it’s hard to be
worse than me at a single domain.
In a very short summary – talent is time spent on learning or doing
something. Which means that anyone can be talented in any area. That’s
it. That’s the secret. Go, and be the next Mozart, Copernicus or
Tesla (don’t be Edison, that guy was a dick).
“…but Przemysław…” – I hear you saying – “…that’s bullshit!
Obviously some people are more talented than the others”.
Yes, I agree. Some people spent more time than others. Maybe some
grasped concepts quicker due to lifestyle, surroundings or better brain
wiring, but it’s still not it. You need to water the talent and talent
is watered with and only with the time.
As an example – you might be a Carpenting SuperStar but if you don’t
spend years of finding best materials, structures or “tricks” that
nobody else knows it’s that other person who spent decades on their
craft are going to beat you to the pulp
Alignment
…and the only question is, whether you align with “that” thing. Back
to piano – it’s not like someone forces me to sit in front of
piano. In fact those daily hours or trainings more often are short session. I’m
making myself a coffee, I play for 3 minutes. I take a break from
computer, I play for 10 minutes. After finishing daily work I sit for
30 minutes, in the morning when I wait for my kid to get ready for
school I play 20-30 minutes.
I do this, because I want to do this. The only thing that sets me
apart from other people in similar position is that I naturally align
with piano. I like the touch of it, I like the sound of it. There was
never any other instrument that gave me this feeling, but piano does.
So I spend my time with it.
Engineering
That’s often the case with Software Engineers, too. Those who are “the
most talented” often aren’t. They “only “align with the the
software. They fiddle with it, they work on their IDEs (vim/emacs),
they do side projects, break their operating systems with bleeding
edge modifications. When that “average” engineer goes home, the
“talented” one is still poking at it with a screwdriver.
When hiring for myself I always looked for the passion. Passion beats
everything. If someone has a passion and is good communicator than
it’s almost often a win. And it’s hard to fake passion.
Ask about that time when they saved production or optimized
something. Or the most exciting thing ever in the career. Notice how
posture of passionate people change. They smile, they reminisce with
smile, their eyes wander like in a dream and they straighten right
away.
I still remember by biggest introvert hire. I asked how much
experience he has and he told me that not much, but he has 4 linux
servers at home. I asked what he did so far with them and he started
explaining. Not a lot of words. I asked why he likes doing sysadmin
and he bluntly told me that he likes being alone, looking at charts
and chatting on IRC (but always charts go first). Had 0 experience but
I believed he didn’t joke about the charts. He was a dependable
sysadmin for many years, I hadn’t had a single complain about
him.
Talent being Alignment is great news
The good thing is, that you can actually become talented in
everything. Not by working hard (that’s silly, you won’t be more
aligned if you push yourself harder), but by aligning more (get
aligned by getting aligned, how stupid that is, right?).
And how you do that?
A wisdom came long time ago from gym-bros:
The first rule to become a gym beast is to believe you are a gym beast.
That is: you need convince yourself that what you do is the best thing you ever
do. You hype about it. Afteer doing something related you smile into
the mirror. You endlessly praise topic to your family and friends.
You won’t notice the change – it will happen slice by slice. But one
day you won’t have to do that anymore, you’ll want to do it.
That will be the moment you became a (talented) beast.
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