Talent Is Overrated

I just finished reading Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated. The book seeks to debunk the idea of innate ability, and god given talent. Instead, Colvin puts the emphasis on great amounts of practice. Specifically, what is known as deliberate practice. The book seeks to show that success and great achievement is more a product of extremely hard work and less about what we so often call talent.

The book touches on the idea of 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice to mastery of a skill. Colvin uses analogies to sports, business, the arts, and just about any field where we percieve someone's achievement as a gift. If nothing else the book gives hope to all who believe that they are cannot get better. Colvin lays out the idea of deliberate practice in order to help others get better in any particular field.

Deliberate practice is probably not a foreign idea. The idea of practice is the first thing that comes to our heads when we want to get better at something. That being said a lot of us, myself included, phone in our practice and just go through the motions. While we may make some gains the end product will not be great achievement. Think about how many people go play golf. Every round is practice, but if you are not actively focusing on how you are hitting each shot, and why the way you hit this shot will effect you in the future then your practice is not really deliberate.

Deliberate practice is Tiger Wood's burying a ball in the sand and hitting that shot over and over again, maybe a thousand times. Knowing that he may only see that shot in actual competition two times a year, but if he can get that shot right he can make other shots in similar situations. Deliberate practice is hard, focused, and exhausting. Good violinists, chess players, and business moguls practice their craft actively for hours on end- sacrificing a lot of things in order to achieve their goals.

Colvin shows that starting early is a definite benefit. Examples of Mozart, Woods, and other child phenoms show that success at an early age, with continued practice and drive, allows great performance at an early age. Still, others, particularly in business fields, may have started later, but they were still able to achieve a great deal.

Colvin has two main points. One is that success and great achievement is a matter of many factors. Hard work, a strong continued drive to succeed, and the nurturing circumstances needed to support the first two. Second, is the fact that we can all get better if we incorporate the ideas of great success into our everyday lives. The main point being that if we practice deliberately, and focus on improvement we can get better at our jobs, sports, and art.