Written with Cassie Cuppek , senior consultant at Impact Americas. We thought it would be interesting to pitch ChatGPT against one of our consultants, Cassie Cuppek, asking them both the same question...

Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class

The amount of knowledge it takes to reach the edge of a discipline (e.g., a PhD) is greater than ever before. I read this as a primer to the study of expertise, which is something I'd like to learn more about academically. So my rating of 3 stars is more a reflection of my intrinsic interest in the topic than the quality of the book. As a piece of writing and reporting, I'd put it at 2 stars--Colvin is at his best when he is explaining Anders Ericsson's research, but a bit out of his depth when he tries to draw independent conclusions. Top performers understand their field at a higher level than average performers do, and thus have a superior structure for remembering information about it.”

Throughout his narrative, Colvin inserts clusters of insights and recommendations that literally anyone can consider and then act upon to improve her or his individual performance as well as helping to improve the performance of a team of which she or he is a member. For example: I’m more convinced than ever that talent is overrated. What is talent? Essentially it is directly connected with performance – talented people are people who can perform well. So if you are trying to improve performance looking at the ‘innate’ abilities of the performer is probably the least interesting and least worthwhile thing to do. Surely the best way to improve performance is to look at what high performers DO and work out how to help weaker performers do that. So your parents didn’t put a violin, golf club or paintbrush in your hand at age 3? According to Ericsson, Mozart’s first work regarded today as a masterpiece, with its status confirmed by the number of recordings available, is his Piano Concerto No. 9, composed when he was twenty-one. That’s certainly an early age, but we must remember that by then Wolfgang had been through eighteen years of extremely hard, expert training.” Here’s the thing: Being slightly better than your peers triggers something called the multiplier effect.

Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin: 9781591842941

A study of figure skaters found that sub-elite skaters spent lots of time working on the jumps they could already do, while skaters at the highest levels spent more time on the jumps they couldn’t do, the kind that ultimately win Olympic medals and that involve lots of falling down before they’re mastered.” Talent is Overrated was a super-interesting look into the topic. Previously taken as gospel truth, the author dismantles the conventional myth of "talent" here. Geoff has obtained a Harvard degree in economics, his education and expertise gave him the opportunity to discuss different matters on the CBS Radio Network on a day to day basis. “Talent is Overrated Summary” To do this, he turned to the practice of composing, because it had so many myths about "talent" and "genius". What he found was that no one – including the great Mozart – produced any piece of value until about 10 years after they first took to music.[ 2]

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. Like I mentioned, Wolfgang’s father was Leopold Mozart. He was a decent composer, but his true passion was teaching. He had been teaching Wolfgang’s older sister for years before he started with Wolfgang at the age of 4. Colvin examines many "talent" related topics here. The book's got a great bit of writing, for example, about neuroplasticity and age. It isn't experience. Not only are we surrounded by highly experienced people who are nowhere near great at what they do, but we have also seen evidence that some people in a wide range of fields actually get worse after years of doing something.

Talent is Overrated) - Goodreads Geoff Colvin Quotes (Author of Talent is Overrated) - Goodreads

In fact, Wolfgang's first piece of music that is highly regarded didn't come until he was 14 - after 10 full years of practice. [ 2] WHAT ABOUT TIGER WOODS? The next name that people think about when it comes to natural talent is Tiger Woods – he was playing at an extremely high level of golf at the age of 12 after all! [ 3] Since its publication ten years ago, businesspeople, investors, doctors, parents, students, athletes, and musicians at every level have adopted the maxims of Talent Is Overrated to get better at what they’re passionate about. Now this classic has been updated and revised with new research and takeaways to help anyone achieve even greater performance.

Our insight into how it’s possible to maintain top-level performance into the later decades of life helps us understand those cases in which it doesn’t happen. Most people stop the deliberate practice necessary to sustain their performance. We can’t necessarily criticize them. It may be a completely rational decision, for example in the case of a pro athlete who has earned millions of dollars and has little to gain but much to lose, in the possibility of serious injury, by continuing to play. Businesspeople who get rich early may see no further reason to keep challenging themselves. Colvin's take on the intrinsic motivation and deliberate practice needed for progress and achievement offers some insights and additional nuance to the public discourse around such topics. His work supplements similar pop psychology books like Flow, Epstein's Range, and Pink's Drive. While he never goes deep enough into what deliberate practice should look like, he also never makes big missteps or overstays his welcome. An easy if sometimes overly generic read. It’s a good match for Geoff’s other book, Humans Are Underrated, as this one tells us how we can become great, while the follow-up shows us what specific skills we should strive to be good at. I highly recommend Talent Is Overrated. Who would I recommend the Talent Is Overrated summary to? Do you think that just by participating in a team practice you’ll find yourself among the world’s greatest basketball players?