Attitude matters most

Thought of sharing with you guys.....its from todays economic times article...
Attitude may matter more than talent
MUSIC composer Elliot Carter celebrated his 100th birthday last week with a concert at Carnegie Hall. It featured a 17-minute piece for piano and orchestra that Carter wrote when he was 98. Talk about thumbing your nose at mortality! Carter has already lived three times as long as Schubert and 65 years more than Mozart. Yet his first opera premiered in 1999 and he produced seven works in 2007 and six more this year.
Since he turned 90, the composer who many critics rank among the greatest ever, has churned out more than 40 pieces and he shows no signs of slowing down. Aficionados say he’s still writing at the top of his form and every piece has new ideas that he’s trying out along with subtle refinements of those presented earlier.
However, not everybody in the audience takes easily to his works which are sometimes described as ‘complicated’. Carter, who has a penchant for contemporary compositions rather than old music, remains unruffled. While he attributes his success to "just a matter of luck", he also adds impishly: "Once society gets more complicated, people will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. Then they will like my music."
Carter is, of course, alluding to the so-called Flynn Effect (named after psychologist James R Flynn) and the social multiplier phenomenon, which has documented a spectacular rise in IQ measurement over the generations (which simply means environmental factors can influence the average IQ of a population).
At an individual level, Carter’s life offers a heroic example of unwavering faith married to unstinting effort. This can be particularly inspiring to younger contenders who fear loss of heart and burn-out. If he can be that productive at 100, just imagine how much you could do even if you make a fresh start at half or quarter of his age. Their effort, however needs to be backed by what creativity wonks like Colin Martindale called ‘cognitive disinhibition’, which refers to the ability to focus or defocus attention as per task demands. So one "first learns the rules and then breaks ‘em!"
It also shows that for genius to thrive, at any age, attitude may be even more important than talent. This entails what the investment guru Warren Buffet called "the art of not getting in your own way". "It’s not about your potential horse power," Mr Buffet told a PBS programme. "Whatever you have, learn to utilise it fully"; till the very end.