July 2017 – The Science Talent Project

Talent, desire, training, or tricks – what makes a top performer?

At the end of one of my recent posts I mentioned that aspiration to do better may be the characteristic distinguishing top performers and medium performers in many fields. However, while most people would likely agree that such differences in motivation may make a difference in regular jobs, there are also fields like professional sports, soloists in music, and academia, where competition is fierce and one has to be better than one’s peers to retain one’s job. Wouldn’t all those professionals be equally fiercely motivated? If that is the case, motivation would be a bad explanation for performance differences. Should we again try explain things by ‘talent’ or, if we look further, are there other factors we should take into account?

Most people, by definition, are not top performers in their jobs or careers. However, they generally do not have to be; as long as they are perceived by their employer or customer to deliver more value than they are paid, or customers or employers cannot very well judge the quality and quantity of their work, they can generally remain in their jobs and earn money for themselves and perhaps their family. So most people have no great need to improve in their job.

However, life is quite different if one is a professional sporter, artist, or untenured scientist. If you don’t perform very well compared to your competition (which tends to be considerable) you are soon out of clients, sponsors, funds, or a job. You really cannot slouch that much, every professional in these fields would have at least some motivation to perform well and pay attention to their performance. So it would be natural to think that if all performers are motivated if not very motivated, differences in performance in those fields cannot come from motivation, but must come from other factors, like talent.

Of course, talent may exist. In some fields, like the 100 m sprint, the dominance of black sprinters suggests some genetic talent that can give a small but crucial advantage over people who did not originate from the west of Africa. Sometimes genes play a role. The genetic advantage in this case may be small (0.15 s, or less than 2%), but in sports, very small differences count, as differences between best and worst professional sprinters may only be like 10%, which is noticeable, but is obviously much less than the reported factors of 2 to 10 differences observed for scientists, programmers and teachers.

So while talent may give explain some performance differences, one should also look at other factors. Quality and quantity of training, for example, and -indeed- differences in motivation.

The easiest factor to assess are differences in training. In general, top performance started training earlier in their field than less prominent performers. Mozart who started music lessons at age 2, and Tiger Woods, who even before that age was placed by his father in a children’s chair to watch dad Woods hit golf balls again and again. Michael Jackson and Andre Agassi similarly started (or rather were started) their training early, driven by dominant dads. It is hard to separate the effects here: brain plasticity is likely highest at young age, social support/pressure is enormous as the trainer is someone incredibly important to the trainee, the amount of time available for training is very large, and social recognition for the ‘prodigy’ will likely also enhance motivation. How early training starts, how much training one has received, and how much attention one pays to the training that is received simply because the trainer happens to be someone very important to you will all influence how much is learned. Definitely, differences in performance will at least for a part reflect differences in the amount of effective training, one can definitely explain differences even among professionals for a large part due to differences in training instead of immediately claiming differences in ‘talent’.

Another reason to believe in the importance of training, also in fields like science which seem to have much less fanatical dads drilling their offspring, is the phenomenon reported by the sociologist Harriet Zuckerman in her book “Scientific Elite“: over half of US Nobel prize winners had been either PhD student or postdoc in the laboratory of another Nobel prize winner. Most of those who hadn’t, had worked as PhD student or postdoc of a scientist who was nominated for a Nobel prize (but did not get it), or had a supervisor who worked closely together with another (future) Nobel prize winner. In short, most extremely successful scientists worked closely in their ‘formative years’ with scientists who also were extremely good. And they indeed reported that their experience with those top scientists had been very important to them, not so much as for learning subject matter knowledge (like physics formulas) but ways of thinking and doing research.

Now, one could argue that learning might not have played a role at all here; the ‘mentors’ could have gotten their Nobel prize together with their mentee (like happened to physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft who shared his Nobel prize with his mentor Martinus Veldman), or the mentors used their social clout (Nobel prize winners can nominate candidates) to bring their favorite pupils to Stockholm too. Or only the most promising young scientists were selected by the mentors to join their labs; the young scientists would very likely received a Nobel prize on their own, their talents were simply recognized early.

The above factors may indeed have an influence, however, a closer look at the data suggests that education plays an important part too. The persons who supervised most future Nobel Laureates, Arnold Sommerfeld and Enrico Fermi, were neither the most famous scientists of their age (so they could not necessarily expect the best and brightest to flock to them), nor did they have the strongest networks they could use to ‘Nobelize’ their mentees; Sommerfeld never won a Nobel prize so could not nominate people himself, Fermi died relatively young. However, the striking similarity between the two mentors is that they cared a lot about mentoring their students. In Cropper’s book “Great Physicists“, Fermi was the only one described as wanting to become a professor because he loved teaching, and while he carefully selected his students, he was willing to spend infinite amounts of time and care on mentoring them. Sommerfeld was a supervisor who would have 1-to-1-discussions about their projects and developments in science in general for about 1 hour every other day with each of his PhD students, which is an enormous amount compared to the more typical half an hour a month that normal supervisors are willing to spare. Of course, Fermi and Sommerfeld were themselves also very good researchers. However, among the many great researchers in the 20th century they stood out not for being the best researchers but as those professors most dedicated to give promising young scientists a great education. And the record numbers of Nobel prizes for their pupils (7 for Sommerfeld, 6 for Fermi) seems to indicate that they were quite effective in that.

So even in science, training is important, and it is likely that top educators are in shorter supply than top potential talent is.

And the original premise of this blogpost, that in highly competitive fields all performers should be equally motivated? That would also seem to be untrue, in two aspects even: not only is the amount of motivation different between people (and likely in individuals over time), but people actually have multiple possible motivations, influencing their effectiveness in reaching goals.

For example, Daniel Pink (in his book ‘Drive’) cites research claiming that motivation to master one’s field is more correlated to the number of patents obtained than the desire for money is, even when controlled for effort. The article “Making It in Academic Psychology: Demographic and Personality Correlates of Attainment” indicates that both the quantity of motivation differs among professional academic psychologists (so motivation is unequal even among practitioners in a competitive field), and the types of motivation. Quantity of motivation is important: more motivated psychologists publish more. And kind of motivation is too: if psychologists were mainly motivated by the desire to outdo others, they published below-average work, if psychologists desired to master their field or simply liked to work hard, their work was above-average.

Talent may exist, but based on the above, training and motivation can move one up and down in any competitive hierarchy, which can at least make the difference between keeping one’s job and needing to find another career.

The above may sound nice and even somewhat convincing, but what can a practical scientist/artist/sportsperson do with that knowledge? Three conclusions stand out.

It pays to find a good mentor/coach. Definitely, some weeks of effort, of networking, of asking more experienced people who they think are (beside themselves) make good mentors or coaches can pay off enormously. At least much more than those same four or such weeks simply spent ‘working hard’
Try to keep your motivation high, for example by using the general strategies described in my previous posts on ‘passion growing‘ and motivation.
You may also want to stress your personal growth and mastery instead of ‘beating others’. How to do that, I’m not sure yet, perhaps by praising and rewarding yourself when you have learned or improved something, instead of only congratulating yourself when you have ‘beaten’ another person. That being said, not all fields may be like academic psychology, and quite some top sporters became quite successful despite attaching great value to winning (like John McEnroe’s temper tantrums seemed to indicate).

In conclusion: while professionals in competitive fields may differ in talent, they also definitely differ in training and motivation; and while you may not reach the absolute top by only carefully handling your motivation and finding the best mentors you can possibly get, you can definitely achieve more (if not much more) that way.

So what is next for this blog? I’ve discussed the basics of training and of motivation, and while subjects like creativity, networking and marketing are also important for scientists, I’ll probably first check my archive to see which subjects may be most relevant to update and repost. And I’ll also add some book reviews, so you can know where to look or study further.

Till next time!

On the care and feeding of passion

Many people are looking for their passion – or have given up for lack of results. However, even for top performers their passion was seldom ‘love at first sight’, but grew throughout the years. So it may be better to learn how to nurture and grow an interest into a passion, than to hope that a perfect passion will just appear before your eyes one day. This post describes how one could get started on growing one’s passion.

Barring the few people who excitedly jump out of bed every morning, most of us probably wish that we had a bit more passion in our lives. Which is understandable, as having fun is, well… fun, and even from a scientific talent perspective, loving an activity or subject is useful, as it will increase the speed of learning about it, as well as the probability that you will get creative ideas about it.

The question for most people, however, is how to discover that passion. For a part, it may help to simply spend more time exploring new activities. For example, the psychologist Richard Wiseman states in his book “The Luck Factor” that lucky/’lucky’ people maximize their chance opportunities by trying out different hobbies, going to different places, and so on. However, more intense exploration cannot be the entire answer. After all, developing a passion for anything is like falling in love: while it can occasionally happen fast (‘on first sight’), that is no guarantee that it will last on the second or third sight. True passion for a subject or activity, like true love, probably needs to be developed over time to be more than a fun fling.

But how to do so?

A while ago, I gave a workshop in Rotterdam, “Developing your inner Einstein”, in which I proposed a five-step process that many top scientists seemed to have followed, whether consciously or unconsciously. It involved following their own interests, learning more about their preferred subject, doing something with their knowledge, befriending fellow enthusiasts, and, at least to some extent, letting go of the outcome. Seems simple? Well, I listed some ‘gotcha’s’ below, as well as a sixth step, that may be useful for most people.

Step 1:
Select an activity that you like most (or dislike least) of your current activities. Note that there are two additional requirements:
-it must be something you yourself want to do, independent of what other people may want, like or push you to do.
-it must be something that you feel at least a bit proud of when you have done it; for example, if you are like most people, an activity like “watching television” may not fill you with pride – so don’t make it a “passion candidate”
Tip: if you find it hard to decide what interests you, take a tip from Isaac Newton and keep a ‘philosophical notebook’ in which, for say 5 minutes a day, you write down what interests/interested you today and what you would be interested in knowing more about in the future.

Step 2:
Learn more about the subject, whether by reading, talking with others, watching Youtube videos, listening to podcasts, going to lectures, or whatever method you like. Again, there are two important rules:
-don’t overdo it. Don’t be in a hurry; stop the learning/listening when you still want to learn more. As time goes by, you can ‘up’ the daily or weekly study time.
-Especially at first, choose learning methods that you enjoy and/or those created by people you admire, even if they are not the ‘best’ or ‘most efficient’ learning methods. Learning should always be fun, and it should especially be so in the beginning!
An example of a scientist following this rule was the physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who as a first-year student decided to follow 3rd year physics courses, which he found more fun and challenging.

Step 3:
Do something with your interest. For example, if woodworking is your chosen ‘budding’ passion, you can try to execute a few designs yourself. If such a direct production is not possible, you can for example write about it (in a journal or blog), or make drawings, or give speeches or do something else, as long as it is somewhat related to the subject. Whether you communicate about the subject and/or experiment with it may not matter too much, especially not in the beginning. Again, the golden rule: keep it fun (don’t do ‘too much’, and first select activities on ‘fun’, not on ‘efficiency’/’usefulness’).
An example of this rule would have been the young Charles Darwin going out into the woods to catch beetles for his collection. Darwin loved bug-collecting so much, that once when he had a beetle in each hand and saw another beautiful beetle, he popped one of his hand-held beetles into his mouth for ‘safe keeping’ to grab the third. (He also learned from the experience that some beetles can bite).

Step 4:
Make friends! Seek out friends and clubs and websites and blogs and forums and whatever of people with similar interests! If those really do not exist, try to find something somewhat related with a larger community. For example, since the psychology of science is yet a very small community, I also try to keep track of people studying education, or arts and sports performance. Again, don’t overdo it, and keep it fun. The enthusiasm of others will keep you going even when the going is tough.
This was, by the way, also one of the ways in which the chemist Svante Arrhenius survived the disdain he received from his professors about his ‘silly’ theory that salts in solution split into so-called “ions”. The old professors did not believe him, but his young colleagues Wilhelm Ostwald and Jacobus van ‘t Hoff believed him and encouraged him. It was a pretty good ‘club’: Arrhenius’ ‘silly theory’ is now taught in every introductory chemistry book, and each of the three won his own Nobel prize.

Step 5:
Practice serenity: one of the most problematic aspects of passion is that many people want to earn their bread with it (or at the very least become famous with it). This is occasionally possible, but it is usually very hard, and requires mixing the activity you are passionate about with things you like less, whether that is administration or contacting potential customers. Even Einstein said:

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it. (…) Only when we do not have to be accountable to anybody can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

(Reply to a 24 Mar 1951 letter from a student uncertain whether to pursue astronomy, while not outstanding in mathematics).

Of course, if another profession offers more opportunities to follow your passion than your current profession does, feel free to pursue it! But regard ‘marrying’ a passion to a profession like a wise person regards marriage: while overall you may like the relationship, there will be stormy seas and disappointments.

Step 6: (or, perhaps, ‘component 6’)
Keep track of problems and opportunities. Reflect on what you do and what you experience. There are many things that can go wrong. For example, you can become too goal-driven (overstrain), which takes the fun out of the activity itself and can cause stress due to forcing you to give up too many other things you care about. ‘Dutyizing’ or staleness, where things become routine or automatic, and you lose the connection to the joy. You can become lonely or discouraged (if you don’t find people who encourage or support you), you can get too dispersed (undertaking too many activities and spending too little time on a single one to make yourself grow in skill and motivation, abandoning things prematurely). Also, sometimes a road leads naturally in a direction that does not really interest you, and you need to change course. It can help to regularly ask yourself questions like “How much fun is this?” “Which problems do I encounter?” “What opportunities do I see?” “How can I get in touch with others with the same interests?”

Finally, you may find that while practicing a passion, that you automatically drift to an adjacent field. Let it happen: the most important thing is that you enjoy what you are doing, and even the greatest of scientists switched fields occasionally.

In a picture (with apologies to the authors of the sub-pictures, whose credits I had not written down)

But… does it work?

This 6-step plan may look a bit naive at first sight, and it is, at least in the sense that, like a plant, passion needs to be provided with sufficient “water”. And the ‘water’ for passion is attention. If you are so poor that you have to work 17 hours a day just to survive, you won’t have time (or energy) to develop a passion. Whatever your passion is (like photography), if you can only spend 2 seconds a day on it, it can probably never flourish to a ‘proper’ passion, just like dating a person for on average 2 minutes a week will usually not be enough to develop a solid relationship. There probably are people who are so poor that they cannot and (unless they have a huge stroke of luck) will never be able to develop a passion.

On the other hand, one should also beware of being ‘too greedy’ or ‘a martyr’. Most people in western countries do not need to work 17 hours a day to be able to pay for enough food and possibly a place to sleep. Much of the money we earn goes to things that are nice to have (or with which to make the neighbours envious), but which don’t give us true joy or pride; much of our time is spent on either maintaining our set of possessions in an ‘acceptable’ state, or in maintaining our social relationships. Again: in most cases at least some of our relationships can survive with a little bit less attention, and our floor can stand to be vacuumed a little bit less frequently. In my opinion, having something that you like and care about is more important than having as many friends as possible; at the very least there should be a kind of balance between ‘passion time’, ‘social time’ and ‘maintenance time’. If you really can’t spend 15 minutes or even 30 minutes a day (or say 2 hours total per week) on something you deeply care about, you should probably try to change things in your life, like reducing contacts with your friends a bit, wearing the same clothes for more days, spending less money or (when work times are excessive) even quitting your job when you have enough to survive say 1 year of job-searching.
But even that may be more radical than needed: if you find that even in your limited amount of time you can develop an interest in/enthusiasm for something, you are very likely to find that you will automatically care less about feverishly following Facebook or cleaning your house or earning as much money as possible, as doing something you are genuinely proud of will go a long way towards reducing your need for social validation and the rather time-consuming pursuit thereof.

My personal experiences
You may wonder whether I am ‘taking my own medicine’. The answer (on July 2017) is ‘partially’. Like I guess most people, things go well for my interests if I obey one or more rules: when I was in highschool, chemistry was one subject of the many I encountered but which ‘stuck out’ a bit (principle 1), made me read a lot about it for fun in well-written books that I found (principle 2), prompting me to do things like making my own lists of elements and their properties and building molecular models (principle 3), and receiving social support, mainly from my father (who also liked science), though my chemistry teacher gave me at least a second role model (principle 4). I achieved ‘serenity’ basically by trusting that things would work out (point 5). However, the lack of reflection (point 6) made me neglect to try change things when at university, I found much of chemistry boring (experiments or mathematical derivations), did not encounter role models or clear encouragement. Had I more aggressively sought out my own reading lists or projects in my spare time, I would likely still not have pursued an academic career, but I would definitely have had more fun while studying and not have had my ‘end-of-PhD-gap’ in which I did not know what to do. I’ve now taken on a small ‘passion project’ (developing a tool in JavaFX to help me manage my scientific talent notes), and, while 10 years may be a tad too long for a report, I’ll link an update to it in 3 months.

Conclusion
Provocatively, I would say that unless you are extemely poor, if your life seems void of passion, you don’t lack luck, you lack skill – passion-growing skill, that is.
Longer version: it’s great if you can discover your passion, but it is definitely also useful if you can develop a passion if none seems to pop up spontaneously. If you follow the steps of listening to your heart, learning, doing, befriending, ‘letting go’, and reflecting, even if you do it only a little bit or rather clumsily at first, you will be able to grow even the tiniest seed of passion into a flourishing flower that nurtures your spirit and the rest of your life.
May you bloom happily!

Aspiration and motivation: why would one wish to become better?

In my previous post, I discussed that the main problem that prevents people from achieving top performance (or even close to top performance) with experience is that most people improve until they are ‘good enough’. In fact, even top performers have that to some extent in most of their activities: Einstein may have been a great theoretical physicist, but he was definitely not a top performer as a public speaker, father, husband, marathon runner, or singer. Becoming great in something is not easy; it requires time spent reading, listening and experimenting, time that you cannot spend on TV or friends, it requires money otherwise spent on one’s home or hobbies, and it requires socially scary things like contacting top performers for advice or mentoring. And these costs and efforts need to be borne continously for a decade or more! Motivation therefore seems to be a major problem/challenge for talent development. So let’s study it some more…

As the ten year rule states, people need to invest lots of time before they can become really good in something. And this does not mean merely ‘being active’ in a field, it means they have to concentrate on improving (also called ‘deliberate practice‘), and pour lots of mental effort, time and possibly even some money into it. Most people don’t, because they don’t find it worth the effort, or have other goals that they find more important.

Still, “motivation” is a very slippery concept. Despite centuries of being studied eagerly by politicians, marketers, salespersons and other interested persons, and even scientists joining the fray a few decades ago, we are still not even close to being able to predict with reasonable accuracy, for example, who of a class of 50 chemistry students will drop out in the first year, who will finish and then will go to become teachers, or who will become PhD-students or will even make the effort to become professors. We have learned some things, though, which can explain at least a few phenomena, and can offer ways to enhance at least your own motivation.

“Aspiration” may be more important than motivation. For example, while expert musicians were about equally ‘motivated’ as amateurs, their aspirations are a lot higher. Remember that I said that people improved until they felt they were ‘good enough’. Therefore one’s definition of ‘good enough’ is very important. Of course, one’s aspirations are influenced by one’s environment (parents etc.), but it is perfectly possible to set one’s own aspirations in a favorite field to something like “I want to be a master of …”. Even if you are not terribly motivated, your brain will still seek ways to improve then.
A related factor is ‘identity’. People actually have two decision mechanisms in their head, one like a banker, the other like a priest. For example, when people are put in a brain scanner, and are asked to sign statements that are the opposite of their normal opinion in exchange for money, different areas in the brain are activated for trivial values, like ‘I am a tea drinker’, than for sacred values, like ‘I am in favor of gay marriage’. In fact, for trivial values, cost-benefit-related brain areas were activated, for sacred values, the brain areas were activated that distinguish (moral) right from wrong. Sacred values may have their limits (I don’t think they arouse the attention and energy expenditures that cost-benefit brain areas bring), but they definitely may have value for getting up on time, sticking to one’s training when the going is (temporarily) tough, saying ‘no’ to distracting social invitations, or doing something that is unpleasant or scary but is in line with who you want to be.
Goals can also be more motivating/inspiring if they are challenging. There is a kind of sweet spot between ‘too easy’ and ‘I’ll never make that’. Personally, I occasionally set goals which have a chance of like 80% of success (like doing something so fast or so good), instead of 100% or 10%. Your own ‘inspiring percentage’ may be higher or lower, though.
As Daniel Pink puts in his book ‘Drive‘, and Martin Seligman in his book ‘Flourish‘, we get motivated (or less demotivated) if we have autonomy in a task (when we do it, where we do it, how we do it, with whom we do it, and possibly also what we do), feel mastery (getting better at an activity we value), and feel purpose/meaning. Seligman also lists good relationships with others, and achievement, though these may not always be very handy immediate goals, as you cannot really control how others think of you, or control achievement (as that is usually based on competition with others, whom you also cannot control, in contrast to purpose and mastery). Motivation for food/shelter/sex etc. is of course also interesting, but may not have too much to do with scientific achievement.
Interest in a field can occur when a person him/herself has experienced a problem. For example, surprisingly many people seeking a different career and consulting a coach get the ambition to become a coach themselves (instead of, for example, a farmer, computer programmer, or waiter). Also known as the ‘wounded healer’ effect. [what you would conclude about my motivation to write this blog is up to you, of course 😉 ]
Interest can increase the more you know about a field, as the Dutch saying goes “unknown makes unloved”. As long as you (mostly) voluntarily learn about the field, the more you will generally like it. This may also be one reason why many professors are so hyper-specialized. In many cases, as explained by Ruth Colvin Clark in her book “Developing Expertise”, the development of this knowledge goes from situational interest (an inspiring teacher or book) to ‘personal interest’, where the person knows so much that motivation is more or less self-sustaining.
Motivation is enhanced by what other people like or praise. This works not only when you yourself are being praised or admired for something, but also indirectly, if you see someone else- someone who you see as somewhat similar like yourself, just a bit older/experienced getting praised. With the huge media attention in the Netherland for soccer, it is no wonder that many Dutch boys want to become professional soccer players, and after the success of the South Korean golfer Se-Ri Pak many other South Korean women (but not men – identifying with someone is important!) took up golf, and quite successfully too.
Motivation also depends on ‘rational’ factors like the availability of competing activities and goals, expected value of success, expected chance of success, time necessary for the goal to be reached (an interesting book in this regard is that of Dr. Piers Steel, “The Procrastination equation“), but also emotional factors, like how vivid in pictures or words you paint the story of the benefits. Story! Simplicity! Concreteness! Emotional! Books about making a message stick with other people, like the Heath Brother’s book “Made to Stick” are equally valid when motivating or demotivating yourself.
Also note that in the ideal case, the activity needs to be kept fun. People have multiple needs and interests, and like it is natural to occasionally eat and then do other things than eating, and sleep and then do other things than sleeping, so it is natural (and healthy) to do something as long as you enjoy it, and not force yourself to exhaustion or bitterness by working long and hard to achieve something else (fame, riches, promotions, praise). Working too hard/being too ambitious or hard for yourself, or depending on validation by or admiration of others, may give you some successes, but will often hurt you in the long-term, which not only happened to Se-Ri Pak who was hospitalized with exhaustion, or Michael Jackson who, despite vast fame and fortune, could not find happiness or peace of mind without ‘chemical help’.
Most people naturally dislike effort (which is reasonable), but when we make an effort, we usually feel better afterwards – most people would feel better after learning Spanish for an hour than watching TV for an hour. And this effect may even be stronger if effort is rewarded, so-called “learned industriousness“

So we know a lot about motivation – at least from a scientific point of view. We can even increase it with the right interventions (some tips below). However, it may also be clear from the above why motivation to become a top performer is so rare: bosses and teachers might ideally want to inspire us, but practical necessities, from standardized tests to demanding customers, may make them unwilling to give us much autonomy in which tasks we do and when we do them, making us work much longer on things than our natural interest can sustain, thereby weakening our interest and motivation. Hobbies, while offering the autonomy we lack elsewhere, often go without social reinforcement or without a believable vision that extra effort is worthwhile – after all, even if you like playing soccer, chances that you’ll ever become a professional are slim. In practice, we may lack role models, coaches and fans. We may also have multiple interests, which compete for our time and attention, further diluting our effort. Also, the length of time required to reach top expertise is also a risk factor; Benjamin Bloom, in his book on developing talent in young people, reported that even the talents he investigated had often encountered obstacles, and if some of their transitions (to different teachers or environments) had been sooner or later, they would have dropped out. While one should not underestimate the influence of individual passion, talents and persistence, Bloom summarized that when he had started the study, he expected to find extraordinary children in normal environments, but found that most top performers actually turned out to have been pretty normal children in pretty extraordinary environments. This definitely is also valid outside Bloom’s studies: consider for example the cases of Mozart, Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, Michael Jackson, or the Polgar sisters, all of which had extremely driven parents (usually the father), though of course in may cases the home environment is slightly less extreme.

Based on the above, you may understand that in normal circumstances, it is hard to excel in something; it is almost as if society at large conspires to keep people mediocre! That being said, since ‘every little bit helps’, some tips if you want to try enhance your motivation/passion for something.

Keep the activity fun as much as possible, especially in the beginning. Even if a book, video or teacher is “recommended” or “certified” or (created by) an expert, if you don’t have fun learning from her/him/it, find another book, video or teacher. The ‘professional’ materials and teachers are for later, when your motivation can stand them.
Try to increase your knowledge about the subject, via books, videos, blogs, magazines, teachers, or whatever. Possibly also make notes about/pay attention to what you have learned/which progress you made. Having a kind of journal where you can see your level 1, 2 or 3 months ago can help you realize that you actually made some progress.
Don’t overwork yourself – don’t push yourself to spend more time on the activity than you like; if things work out, your capacity and eagerness for hard work will naturally increase over time.
Set high standards for yourself (‘I want to be a master’) or such, and try tasks that are challenging to you, that have a chance of failure.
For the ‘logistical decisions’ (like going to sit down and practice) your identity or values may be helpful, like ‘since I want to contribute to the world, I start every day by studying 30 minutes’, or ‘I am someone who values practice’
If you make an effort, reward yourself for it. This does not necessarily have to with splurging, just reminding yourself why you have made the effort and that you are proud of yourself can help (as described in Kelly McGonigal’s book ‘The Willpower Instinct‘. You can teach yourself industriousness!
Find fans and fellow-enthusiasts, possibly even role models. People whom you (for whatever reason) like or can identify with can be especially helpful. Anyway, social validation and encouragement can be of great help, so take some time to find fellow-enthusiasts. It’s worth it!

Now, some people could say: ‘lack of motivation may be understandable for school teachers and computer programmers and such, who simply need a job in order to eat, but surely, if you look at sports, academia, or other highly competitive fields, people need to be extraordinarily motivated to even be a professional, can you really say that the less successful people are simply less motivated instead of less talented? The answer seems to be rather subtle. But before I’ll go into that, it may be worthwhile to answer the question that seems more relevant for the 99.5% of people comprising the rest of humanity: how to find something worth to be motivated for? How to find my passion?