Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Product Information

This is a fun book that starts out in a vein similar to Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers". Later the emphasis of the book changes, and becomes a self-help book. For best performance, the name of the game is "practice", and not any old practice--it must be focused, deliberate, planned practice. This practice is not just for musicians; it is for every type of career, in business, sales, marketing, engineering--you name it, practice is what it takes. This type of practice can be mentally taxing, and very time-consuming--it normally takes years before a truly excellent performance is honed. That means even when you practice the right way by meticulously analyzing your mistakes and improving in the exact areas you need to be, it’ll take you longer to achieve greatness than previous generations. We all know someone who’s worked at the same company, doing the same job for decades, which means they never improved to the point where they wanted to take on new things or received a promotion.

The much more intriguing possibility is that events or situations having nothing to do with innate traits could also set off multiplier effects. An example that seems to occur quite often is what happens when someone begins training at an earlier age than others in the field. Many researchers have observed that as people start learning skills in virtually any field, they’re typically compared not against the world’s greatest performers in that field but against others their own age. Nobody considered whether the ten-year-old Tiger Woods was a threat to the top professionals; what mattered was that he was much better than other ten-year-olds. One way to get a very good shot at performing better than others of the same age is to start training earlier than they do (as Woods did), thus accumulating more deliberate practice. Standing out at any given age is an excellent way to attract attention and praise, fueling the multiplier, and it can be done without relying on any innate ability. It’s worth noting that studies of swimmers, gymnasts, chess players, violinists, and pianists show that the more accomplished performers started training at earlier ages." (Ch. 11, 7:19:00) The book then moves on to discuss what motivates the world's best performers to be able to do the intense amount of deliberate practice it takes to achieve greatness. It isn't specific inborn abilities. We've seen extensive evidence that calls into question whether such abilities exist, and even if certain types of them might, they clearly do not determine excellence. Mozart did produce compositions at an early age, but his father was a composer who started training him at age 3, and it was the father who transcribed—and likely improved—all those early compositions. Colvin examines many "talent" related topics here. The book's got a great bit of writing, for example, about neuroplasticity and age.Tennis professionals can return 150 mph serves not because their reflexes are that much faster than normal people, but because they can guess where the serve is going based on the opponents body movement, long before the ball is hit. The typical response to this is, "but what about Mozart?" It turns out that much of what we know about Mozart was a myth or misrepresented. There is task-specific practice (e.g., playing football) and general-purpose "conditioning" (e.g., weight lifting and running). People often think conditioning only applies to sports, but it's important in all disciplines. For example, if you are an entrepreneur, doing deliberate practice with arithmetic, physics, and economics can provide general-purpose conditioning for your mind that helps you succeed at building a business. There is certainly a path that leads us from the state of our abilities to the path of the greats. This path is extremely long, demanding (ask Ronaldo and Messi) and no matter how much I write or how much you read, only a few will follow this path all the way to the end. Top performers repeat their practise activities to a stultifying extent. Ted Williams baseball’s greatest hitter would practise hitting until his hands bled. Pete Maravich whose college basketball record still stands after more than 30 years would go to the gym when it opened in the morning and shoot basketballs until it closed at night. An extreme and instructive example is golfer Moe Norman who played from the 1950s to the 1970s and never amounted to much on the pro tour because for reasons of his own he was never interested in winning competitions. He was just interested in hitting golf balls consistently well and at this he may have been the greatest ever. His practise routine from age 16-32 involved hitting 800 balls a day, 5 days a week.

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson The baseline is the world is moving faster and people are doing a lot more with the little they have. Sustaining that standard is a whole another level, particularly when the bar has been raised so high.Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the

Lastly, being so good at what we do is the deepest source of fulfillment we can ever know as a human being. What is Talent? The book presents many studies that show that in-born talent seems to play very little role in elite performance. After meandering for several chapters through what does NOT lead to high performance, Colvin finally gets around to arguing that the secret is "deliberate practice." This turns out basically to be Flow, so I would recommend just reading that book, which is by the scientist who originally described the concept, and is I think a much more interesting and useful work.Some of the strongest responses have come from parents, many of whom have said, “I want my kids to read this book.” It has become a popular graduation gift. The world is smaller and millions of workers in developed countries are competing for jobs with workers all over the world. Find the aspect of your life you want to improve on and identify the next steps. Some have laid down curriculums already but in most cases, you have to do the research on your own. The principle of deliberate practice can be applied in different aspects of our lives and the author tried to give practical examples of how to achieve this. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the