Talent is Overrated Summary By Geoff Colvin

Talent is Overrated Review

Here’s Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated Detailed Summary for those who want to know the gist of the book.

Geoff Calvin Unraveling The Mystery Of Talent

The book demystifies the myth of talent and experience as the decisive factors and instead makes a case for practice, innate motivation, and starting early. He points out that the most prized prodigies are the product of practice, a deliberate and targeted practice aimed at specific skills to achieve great performance.

People have different natures of geniuses like Mozart and Tiger Woods. The Father of Tiger Woods was an accomplished golfer. He finished his golf career to train his son into a top performer early in life. Similarly, Mozart, the great musician, had the luck and luxury of a full-time teacher who trained and lived with him as his father. The book pops the genius bubble and makes the case that performance is in our hands.

Talent Vs. Deliberate Practice

The buzzword talent and the mystification around it is always an oversimplification. The great achievers worldwide from different fields such as sports,  entrepreneurs, arts, and science are casually called talented. It’s an injustice to their greatness because it attributes their success to chance or luck. It implies that great achievers are the people whom the gods have chosen. They are predestined for greatness with their inborn talent. A closer look at their lives will reveal a different story, a story that they didn’t start out that way.

The great success of high achievers results from focused practice repeated for years from an early age. Deliberate practice is a necessity to improve performance. “Practice” is too vague a term, so Colvin uses “deliberate practice” instead. He defines it as “Something that can be repeated a lot. It has continuously available feedback, is highly demanding, and isn’t much fun”. Everybody could do it if the path to greatness were easy and fun.

What is deliberate practice, and what Isn’t?

“Identifying the learning zone and forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.”

Before explaining the concept of deliberate practice, Colvin differentiates it from the vague concept of practice, which is fundamentally different, and explains how it brings about exceptional performance. It is actively designed to improve performance and aims at shortcomings and learning new skills targeting specific performance elements.

The author Geoff Colvin compares his practice of golf with that of a golf legend. Tiger Woods targets at honing specific skills of hitting a buried bunker short or cutting a ball underneath a series of trees yet flying it over a lake 50 yards out. In comparison, the author’s practice is only a conventional run-of-the-mill kind.

The author suggests practising under the watchful eyes of a coach or a teacher who can give you feedback. A coach makes your work target-oriented with stress on specific activities you need to improve.

How Deliberate Practice Works?

Deliberate practice requires hard work and sacrifice. Most people prefer not to sacrifice and blame it on bad luck and attribute the success of great performers to talent. The difference between being average and being at the top of their field is practice than serendipity. Serendipity is an unplanned fortunate discovery.

Sudden Stroke of Genius

If you have believed in a sudden stroke of genius and that moment feels like hitting us out of the blue, you’re not alone. The claim that serendipity is common throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery is entirely wrong. Eurika (The greek word for “I found it”) became famous from a story of Archimedes. He believed he discovered the method to measure irregular objects by entering a bathtub and observing the rise in water level.

What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else?

The book discusses the famous story of Newton discovering gravity by watching an apple fall is entirely wrong. Research has shown that in the study of the 80 composers, the average period before their notable work was created was ten years. Likewise, Thomas Edison said that he tried and failed 2000 times before inventing the bulb. A conscious effort can make us go beyond our limitations. The real gift of genius is composed of dedication, character, and all-around inner strength. There is a great amount of practice behind every world-class performance.

Apply The Principles Of Deliberate Practice For Exceptional Performance In Our Lives

Deliberate practice can be applied in many different fields. Colvin provides a practical approach to applying the principles of great performance in your field of expertise. This approach improves skills and abilities and outlines three different music, chess, and sports models. The music analytical approach focuses on specific parts of your presentation by analyzing the purpose of each part and practicing it multiple times to enhance the elements of the performance.

In chess, you study and analyze the past game work of masters to compare their specific moves from different contexts with your moves. The chess model can be applied in business for different case studies and articles. To make notes of different solutions to solving contemporary problems. The sports model involves going back to basics and analyzing the shortcomings in specific areas with a targeted approach to practice.

Impacts Of Deliberate Practice

The first impact of the practice is heightened perception. It enables people to look beyond the surface with a deep understanding of subtle but significant details that others easily miss.

Secondly, it increases knowledge. It enables people to gain deep knowledge about specific fields, and an individual can develop critical connections that organize all the knowledge and make it useful.

Thirdly, it enhances memory and helps you develop higher cognitive abilities in old age. It makes people retain more information and assimilate new area-specific information meaningfully, enhances our IQ, and even alters our brains and body.

Applying The Principles Of Practice To Organizations

It creates a challenge-oriented environment. Creating an organization’s competitive and challenging environment allows employees to learn and grow. Developing employees from the start helps to identify future leaders so an organization’s pool of future leaders gets bigger and bigger.

It increases the overall efficiency of an organization. Organizations should develop mentors who can serve as coaches and leaders to train their subordinates and give them feedback on their performance. By doing so, employees know what works well and what does not.