Failure Modes in the Talent Development Process

The permastudent, the wannabe, and the dilettante.

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As discovered by Benjamin Bloom, the journey to fully developing a talent can be divided into three phases: 1) playtime, 2) foundational skill refinement, 3) creatively pushing the boundary of the field.

There are 3 failure modes that come to mind:

❌ Failure Mode 1: The Permastudent

The permastudent perpetually avoids the leap into creative production, opting instead to “expand sideways” and acquire skills that are not foundational for their talent domain.

❌ Failure Mode 2: The Wannabe

The wannabe jumps the gun on creative production before their foundational skills are in place.

They build a portfolio of work that lacks substance and is made trivial by foundational knowledge.

Not only is it cringe, but it also has high opportunity cost because all this time could be put to better use actually acquiring said foundational knowledge.

❌ Failure Mode 3: The Dilettante

The dilettante cuts their journey even shorter than the permastudent – they never even make it past playtime, they never commit to serious foundational skill development in anything.

The dilettante spends all their time in the land of diminishing returns, engaging in perpetual playtime across a large number of talent domains.

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