Well the counter-argument to that is: why do you need to achieve mastery? You can be happy with the slow progress you make along the way. You don't need to be Picasso to enjoy painting.
A lot of hobbies, crafts, and activities really only start to become fun (rather than "rewarding but tiring") when you start to get good at them, because you have to think/work less hard to achieve basic satisfying outcomes.
Learning how to play the guitar was frustrating for me, but my stubbornness to be able to play the music I listened to is what kept me going. I'm constantly listening to music and I knew I would enjoy it in the long run so I'm glad I stuck with it, but man, the first hundred hours or so of learning honestly wasn't enjoyable to me. I love it now but it felt like a chore at the time.
I think this "making it look easy" is probably most relevant for ballet, where high level dancers still train very "basic" movements or use a lot of muscular effort to create the illusion of lightness etc.
I tried taking salsa classes once. Was going to 4 classes a week. The instructor told me it would be a year before I'd be able to lead. Of course that was one instructor's opinion. I stopped after 4 weeks and feeling like I was making zero progress. It was not fun to feel like I was in everyone else's way not being able to keep up or not being able to transition from one move to the next. Also not really a fan of salsa.
I've taken maybe 10 swing dance classes as well but zero progress. Bad teachers maybe.
Also, find a place where the partners swap / dance around, ideally during the lessons as well, you'll learn more and won't feel like you're boring everyone. You'll also recognize more people and possibly be more willing to ask people to dance.
I did much better when sticking to one style, getting it down, then starting the next. I found that mixing them just got them muddled.
I also found I greatly preferred swing, both the music (former sax/clarinet player) and the crowds. Swing dancers seemed more focused on having fun and generally less snobby.
As for leading, I improved greatly when I: 1: found a few partners who could back lead to show me what I was doing wrong. Its generally poor technique, but it greatly helps with getting the strong connection needed to telegraph the moves. 2: Understood the connections and flow enough to vary the patterns on my own.
It's a great way to make up for all the time stuck sitting a computer.
That doesn't mean I won't try again though
It’s nowhere near enough time to become say a short order cook, but plenty of time to learn to make bacon and eggs for breakfast in whatever specific way you want it.
I think even 100 honest hours learning something will get you further than you probably need to go, e.g. basic home maintenance stuff that is just 1. find the right youtube video, 2. have the tools, 3. don't be a moron.
god knows that my far beyond satisfactory level of dotfile / config tweaking has probably paid fewer dividends than I'd like to think...
I know a lot of seemingly "talented" people. How do they pick up a new instrument in 2-3 months? Or be able to balance on a skateboard after just a little while? Or get kills better than me with only 200 CS GO hours clocked?
The answer is always that they spent a lot of focused time earlier in life, or that they spend a lot of time that I wasn't aware of -- like I find out that they have 2500 hours in CS:S on another account... yeah that makes a lot more sense.
I don't believe innate talent exists. Other than that some people are mentally quicker, or have faster reflexes, or are physically more capable -- "general" things. But talent exists only from both hard work and time, which for many things can start at age 2 or 3.
I don't understand how this distinction is supposed to work. If someone has exactly the 'general natural inclinations' that fit to a certain activity, it seems asinine to not call them talented in it. Sure, they won't be skilled in it unless they actually put in the work, but they'll comparatively have an easier time with it.
Like when one person says "A natural born musician" they are usually not just suggesting the person has general traits good for music. They often just believe the person was born with musical talent pre-programmed somehow.
There is a time, early in life, during which traits are more plastic, for a variety of reasons (for height, nutritional interventions are more likely to be successful early in life than during the teenage years), but you won't make a genetically slow phenotype into a top 1% 100-m specialist.
How are you assessing that?
In the Picasso example it seems you are confusing "practiced extensively since early childhood with extraordinary external support and training and unusual personal motivation" with "innately talented" (whatever the latter is even supposed to mean). I would imagine that some of the people you know have some similar (probably less extreme) background.
Watching my 2 small kids learn and grow, they can over the course of a few months go from not wanting to try something at all because it seems impossible or scary to performing competently, with the only thing in the middle being occasional short attempts (like 10 minutes at a time), spaced weeks apart. Then once they feel basic competence, they can continue to improve very rapidly, while having a better and better time.
Just before the pandemic we had gathered 4 3-year-olds together. Kid A was embarrassed at being a beginner riding a balance bike and refused to even try because kid B was already skilled at it (kid A is now also a pro 1 year later), neither of kids A and B wanted to try going across the monkey bars while kid C had no problem (because his dad had been encouraging him with candy placed further and further away along the monkey bars for a few months), kid C who didn't do much daily running compared to the others felt bad that he was much slower at running.
And the same can be seen for drawing, throwing a ball, reading, playing a musical instrument, speaking a second language, solving simple logic puzzles, building with construction toys ....
At this level, none of these differences are primarily due to "innate talent". There are multiple orders of magnitude difference in skill to gain in a very short time, with fast returns to small amount of spaced practice.