Excellent, will check that book out. Something I've noticed in my own life is practicing mastery in one area creates learnings and attitudes that aid in mastery in another area. The actual skills are not there, but the ability to navigate the learning terrain is. Many facts I thought about myself (eg. I'm unathletic) were simply assumptions I made somewhere early on in my life, perhaps because I lacked prior experience that my peers had. Which makes me think, is talent simply unconscious prior experience?
Unless we want to go into an all night drinking philosophical discussion - I'd say its a combination of nature and nurture (though how "unconscious" is nature would be the drinking topic). There's a great article the argues that practice isn't enough [1]. It will be incredibly difficult for me to become a professional basketball player, even with practice. I'm too old, bad knees, and 5'9" (again, Mugsy Bugs was 5'3"... possible but difficult nonetheless).
I think as we become more experienced in something, we draw from that to make metaphors to another domain (no paper link, but I'm sure there a psych one out there I've yet to read). My current research is inspired by my years in martial arts. I draw analogies from it because I see the parallels to CS - poor retention rates, difficult subject matter, etc.
A long time ago I determined I was not a genius, rock star, pro athlete, whatever person. I'm just a guy that works really hard to be better than myself.
