Einstein was particularly average as a student - barely passing university classes, not getting a research job (or any job) due to his academic performance and having to get his friend's father refer him to the patent office.
He is a prime example of how traditional schooling methods are typically stacked against extremely intelligent students who don't conform to those learning methods.
This. Not to deny that some people are just smarter, a lot of "innate talent" has somethings going for it - early exposure, initial success and some sort of mentoring. This tends to make people passionate towards the thing - they're chasing the domaine from the success. Do it enough, they'll get better than most peers.
Seems like I'm late to the party, but I feel the idea of willpower is really underrated and misunderstood and I see it all over this thread.
First, willpower is absolutely a trainable skill. In the late 90s there was scientific support for the idea that willpower was a limited resource. The let people choose weather they wanted to eat a healthy snack (radish or cucumber, I think) or a cookie, then after that had them solve an impossible puzzle. People who ate the cookie kept trying almost twice as long as the healthy-snack group. They took it to mean that willpower was limited and the healthy-snack group had used it up in resisting the cookie. More recently this was disproved and an even stronger conclusion was reached - The reason why the stop exerting willpower is that they _believe_ it is a limited resource. People who don't have that idea, tend to stay in it longe.
Second, it's not exclusively willpower that keeps people healthy - things CAN get easier or harder. People who are already obese, for instance, will have a hard time loosing weight and an even harder time staying lean - because the body is indeed pushing towards that same body-fat content.
It gets easier when you avoid a situation where you need to exert the willpower in the first place. I recall a study where they seated kids in a room with a marshmallow and if they didn't eat it for X minutes, they'd get another one and then they could eat two - The kids who were allowed to leave the room for the X minutes (and did leave) had much higher success rates than the ones who chose (or were forced) to stay in the room.
I also recall some neurochemistry that makes it easier to do hard things (like working out) in the morning that later in the day.
People also tend to operate in absolutes - stay on a strict regiment of calorie counting until that one weak moment when they have a cookie. And now they're completely off because, well, they're streak was broken or because they tell themselves "I failed so I can't do it."
None of that should discount the effects of willpower. But the degree to which people need to apply it varies a lot. Just like it's easier for a non-smoker to not pick a cigarette than it is for a chain-smoker going a-pack-a-day. If someone is in the hard-to-lose weight category, I empathise - you have your work cutout for you. But training your willpower is the only long-term sustainable way to do it.
He is a prime example of how traditional schooling methods are typically stacked against extremely intelligent students who don't conform to those learning methods.