PDF Summary:Talent Is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin

In Talent Is Overrated, business journalist and speaker Geoff Colvin explores the origins of excellent performance—how some people can perform at a globally impressive level while the average person falls far short. Most people attribute this excellence to talent (an inherent high level of ability in a specific area), but Colvin says there’s little evidence supporting this theory. Instead, he says the quality of a person’s performance depends on how much they practice: Excellent performers achieve amazing results by practicing drastically more than average.

In this guide, we’ll first cover how shifting your mindset from talent to training can help you excel. Then, we’ll explore Colvin’s definition of practice, how it works, and how you can implement it in your life. In our commentary, we’ll look at the psychology behind Colvin’s ideas. We’ll also compare his ideas with those of other experts, like Malcolm Gladwell, and with the experience of excellent performers, like former Olympian Matthew Syed.

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(Shortform note: Ericsson observed people’s limited ability to focus in his studies on deliberate practice—though he defined the limit as two to four hours. Specifically, he says that deliberate practice becomes less effective after two hours, and there’s almost no benefit to practicing more than four hours. While you may not be able to exceed this limit, strive to meet it, so you’re taking full advantage of your focus instead of being limited to an hour. One way to extend your focus is to follow a set schedule, Cal Newport says in Deep Work. Once the schedule becomes habitual, you’ll focus automatically and won’t need to use as much willpower to overcome distraction.)

Even individuals who appear to have meteoric success follow this pattern. Colvin cites Mozart as an example: He composed his first excellent piece of music at a very young age compared to his peers. This makes people assume that he had an inherent talent that let him skip the practice his peers needed. However, Mozart started practicing composition when he was a toddler. It was almost 20 years of practice later that his performance was noticed.

The 10,000-Hour Debate

While most people agree that achieving excellence requires a large time commitment, its specific length is debated. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell coined the phrase “10,000-Hour Rule,” referring to Ericsson’s research.

However, in Peak, Ericsson says that Gladwell misrepresented his research. Ten thousand hours is an extrapolation from the average amount practiced by violinists, specifically, and it can’t be applied to other fields equally. Also, Gladwell doesn’t mention deliberate practice, leading many people to believe that 10,000 hours of any kind of practice leads to excellence.

But while Gladwell may have arrived at this 10,000-hour average inaccurately, he may not be entirely wrong. Ten thousand hours averages out to 20 hours a week for 10 years. This closely mirrors Colvin’s average of 10 years, which was based on numerous excellent performers in a range of fields and did take the nature of deliberate practice into account. The average of 20 hours a week also fits with the strenuous nature of deliberate practice—if you practice five days a week, four hours of practice a day averages to 20 hours a week.

Ultimately, research can’t definitively state how many hours of deliberate practice it takes to achieve excellence. Ericsson says that many of the violinists had achieved excellence while practicing significantly fewer than 10,000 hours. On the other hand, Mozart practiced for almost 20 years—twice the average—before he was recognized as an excellent performer.

How to Deliberately Practice

Now that we’ve covered what deliberate practice is and how it improves your performance, we’ll discuss how you can deliberately practice. Colvin says there are two main approaches: direct practice and indirect practice (or practicing in the work, as he calls it). Both approaches follow the same general process: Identify a weak point, create a plan to improve that weak point, analyze your performance to see whether your improvement plan worked, and adjust your improvement plan before repeating. However, the situations in which you use the approaches differ, as do the specific methods used in each step of the process. (We’ll discuss this process in more detail in the section on indirect practice.)

(Shortform note: In Black Box Thinking, Syed outlines this same general process as a way for organizations to improve from failure. He says this process works well because it’s not just a human invention: It’s also the natural mechanism that drives evolution. Organisms and ecosystems evolve by undergoing continuous stress tests (such as drought and predation) that select for the fittest creatures. In the same way, your organization (or your individual skills) undergoes testing when you analyze its performance and adjust your plans, and you select the best methods that create the most improvement. Thus, by choosing a direct or indirect approach based on your situation, you may be tailoring a natural process to best serve you.)

In this section, we’ll first look at direct practice and the situations you’d use it in. Then, we’ll explore how the indirect approach differs, as well as the specific methods Colvin recommends for indirectly practicing. (Shortform note: We’re covering the indirect approach in more detail because it’s best-suited for working adults: This approach lets you improve your skills while completing your existing responsibilities, instead of spending significant time and energy on the additional responsibility of direct practice.)

Direct Practice

Direct practice involves practicing a skill in an engineered situation. Colvin suggests that this approach is especially helpful when the situation you want to use the skill in doesn’t occur often enough for you to adequately practice. Thus, it’s useful for improving skills you don’t use in your daily life. Our swimming example is a form of direct practice: If you want to swim faster to win competitions (the desired situation), you must practice outside of competitions, too, as they don’t happen often enough for you to improve your skills solely while competing.

(Shortform note: Direct practice could also be useful for learning skills that you will use in daily life once you’ve mastered them. In this case, you’re regularly in the desired situation, but you’re so busy that you can’t practice enough to improve or learn skills. In The Clean Coder, Robert Martin discusses this scenario, saying that coders usually spend their whole work day using skills they already have. Thus, to learn new skills and improve their existing skills further, they need to use their personal time. Martin says to spend 20 hours per week of personal time on developing professional skills. Coders can do so by contributing to an open-source coding project or doing online exercises—both of which fit Colvin’s definition of engineered practice.)

To engineer a situation that lets you practice a skill, says Colvin, decide what weak point you want to improve and then design a practice exercise around it. The design of this exercise will vary depending on the weak point you choose and personal preference.

For example, say you’re the CEO of a small company, and part of your job is negotiating deals with suppliers. This isn’t part of your daily tasks—once you’ve established a deal, it remains in effect for a year—but it’s an important one that you need to successfully complete when it does occur. To practice your negotiation skills, you hold mock negotiations with a colleague. You practice a specific scenario (such as encouraging an uncertain supplier to agree to a deal) until both you and your colleague are satisfied with your performance, and then move on to another scenario (for instance, dealing with an aggressive negotiator). These exercises teach you what to expect from different kinds of negotiators and how to respond to successfully make a deal.

(Shortform note: The design you choose for your practice exercise may also depend on how much your surroundings affect you—how much environmental influence there is, as sports psychologists call it. Skills that aren’t affected by your environment—for instance, hand position in swimming—can be practiced repeatedly in the same way. This is called fixed practice. Skills that are influenced by your surroundings—such as passing in soccer—require a more dynamic design called variable practice. In our example, negotiating skills are environmentally influenced because your strategy must evolve to match another person’s actions. In turn, mock negotiation is arguably a variable practice, as the exercise evolves to prepare you for varied situations.)

Indirect Practice

Indirect practice involves practicing a skill within the situation where you want to use it. Colvin describes this approach as being mostly used for tasks you perform frequently. Thus, this approach is useful for improving skills you use in daily life, like those related to your career.

Since you’re already in a situation that lets you practice the skill, you don’t need to design an exercise. Instead, you choose a weak point related to the task you’re completing and practice it while completing the task. For instance, say you’re a manager and one of your tasks is giving feedback to your team members. You’re in the desired situation (feedback meetings) once a week, so you can practice while completing that task instead of practicing outside work.

Another Context for Indirect Practice

In some cases, indirect practice could be a next step after direct practice, rather than an alternative to it. Only one-in-five employees’ performances improves after dedicated training sessions alone, some business experts say. True change occurs when employees attend the training sessions and then continually practice their new skills while working.

While Colvin focuses on how individuals can practice while working, the business experts offer some advice for company leadership: Identify the most important skills for employees to know, and then create an environment that encourages them to practice those skills at work. Returning to our example, if your employer identifies giving feedback as an important skill for managers to have, they may hold a seminar on the topic and then implement a coaching program to help you practice your skills afterward.

We’ve arranged Colvin’s advice for indirectly practicing into four steps:

Step #1: Identify the Weak Point You Want to Improve

First, identify a specific weak point to focus on, Colvin says. You can’t work on more than one weak point at a time because it would be difficult to track your technique and progress properly. If you’re moving erratically between weak points and techniques, you can’t be certain which of them actually improved your performance—thus, you can’t replicate that improvement or move on to solving the next issue. In contrast, devoting your energy and time to excelling at one aspect of your field lets you accurately identify which techniques improve your performance and correct weak points in a steady, consistent way.

To choose a weak point, first choose a task you need to complete. Then, determine which skills help you complete that task. Finally, identify which of those skills needs the most improvement—which skill you’re worst at. Returning to our manager example, the skills that help you give feedback to your team members are active listening and clear communication. If you’re already an active listener but you struggle to articulate your thoughts, you most need to develop clarity. Thus, you decide to focus on improving that weak point.

(Shortform note: When choosing which task to work on, it may be helpful to use the assessment and prioritization method outlined by Jeff Sutherland in Scrum. Make a list of your tasks and then identify which of them will generate the most value in the least amount of time. That’s the most important task, so you should complete it first. Arguably, you could then apply this method to identify the skill you should focus on. First, make a list of skills relevant to the task. Then, identify which skill you’re worst at that will best help you complete the task.)

Deliberate Practice and the Scientific Method

Colvin's approach to tackling weak points one at a time mirrors the scientific method, which scientists use to develop and test hypotheses. In addition to isolating one element of an experiment so you can accurately understand cause and effect, the scientific method requires that you control for bias—that you don’t let your own opinions or desires influence your interpretation of the results. You may need to control for bias in deliberate practice, too. For instance, you may be biased toward seeing progress where there isn’t any. If you believe that you’ve sufficiently improved your weak point, you may move on to another one prematurely.

Scientists control for bias by having other scientists replicate their experiments and seeing if the results match. Since deliberate practice is personalized to your specific tasks and weak points, though, this method may not work here. Instead, you could potentially control for bias by asking your peers for feedback: If they agree that you’re improving in your chosen skill, you know that you’re actually making progress, instead of simply seeing improvement because you want to see it.

Step #2: Create an Improvement Plan

Once you’ve chosen a weak point, you must create a plan for how you’ll improve that weak point while completing your task. This helps you commit: You know exactly what you need to do, so you can focus on performing the skill to the best of your ability. (Shortform note: As well as helping you commit, some management experts say making plans can increase adaptability and ensure you use resources effectively. However, they caution against becoming too fixated on a plan: Monitor how well the plan is working and be ready to adjust it if necessary.)

To create this plan, says Colvin, consider the process you usually use when completing your task. Then, set a specific goal for what you’ll do differently to practice your chosen skill. For example, your normal process for giving feedback might be to briefly outline all your feedback and then ask your subordinate if they have any questions. You only go into more detail about the points they ask questions about. Instead, you might decide to practice clarity by discussing each point in more detail from the beginning. Specifically, you decide to devote at least five minutes to discussing each feedback point and to include an example of each in your discussion (if you praise their leadership, you’ll share an example of a time they were a strong leader).

How to Set Specific Goals

You should set specific goals because they’re more motivating, some productivity experts say. To set a specific goal, answer five questions:

• What’s my goal?

• Why does my goal matter?

• Who’s involved in my efforts to complete my goal?

• Where do I have to go to complete my goal?

• Which resources or limits do I have in completing my goal?

When setting a goal for how you’ll complete your task differently, you may want to analyze your strengths as well as your weak spot. Finding a way to use your strengths to improve your weak spot can help you overcome the discomfort of confronting your weaknesses, some psychology experts say. To do this, make a list of your strengths and then highlight the ones that could help you overcome your chosen weak spot. Continuing our example, your strength might be keeping meticulously organized records. You can use those records to find relevant examples that boost your clarity. You could also keep a record of how your team members react to your new feedback methods, so you can track your progress.

Step #3: Analyze Your Performance

Next, analyze your performance. Analyzing how well you completed your task gives you the feedback needed to adjust your process and become more successful in the future. One way to do this is to compare your performance to someone who’s slightly better at your chosen skill. This pushes you to improve without setting the standard so high that it’s impossible to reach and becomes discouraging. Then, walk back through your plan and identify ways your performance falls short of that standard and how you can avoid that in the future.

For instance, if your manager is a clear communicator, you may compare how they provide feedback to your own method. You realize that your manager spends 10 minutes discussing each feedback point, instead of five, and you adjust your plans accordingly.

Another Way to Analyze Your Performance

Brian Moran offers another analysis method in The 12 Week Year. He says to give yourself 12 weeks to meet a goal, measuring your progress every week. To do this, you’ll track lag indicators and lead indicators. Lag indicators measure results, while lead indicators measure the steps taken to achieve those results. In our example, the lag indicator is your level of clarity, and the lead indicator is how much of your improvement plan you completed.

You want to have a high success rate in both indicators to complete your improvement plan and be much clearer as a result. However, Moran says that having a high weekly success rate in just one indicator means you’re making progress, and that you can have a success rate as low as 65% and still succeed in your overall goals if you work progressively harder. This leeway may make your goals more motivating, as you’re not reaching for the impossible standard of perfection and thus are less likely to become discouraged.

If you don’t have a high success rate in one or both measures, Moran suggests walking back through your plan to determine why your performance fell short—an approach much like Colvin’s. However, Moran adds that the problem may not be with your plan, but with your execution of it. If you didn’t execute your plan to the best of your ability, you may not need to adjust it. In those cases, change your behavior by trying harder to execute the plan properly.

Step #4: Adjust Your Improvement Plan and Repeat

Finally, adjust your improvement plan with the feedback you gained in Step #3 and then repeat it. This step turns your deliberate practice into a virtuous cycle, allowing you to continue gathering more information and gradually improving your performance.

For example, in Step #3, you realized that you still weren’t spending enough time on each feedback point, so you adjusted your plan to spend 10 minutes on each. However, at your next feedback session, you run out of time before you can discuss each of your feedback points. You once again compare your performance to your manager’s and realize that your manager may discuss each point for longer, but they also discuss fewer points overall. Thus, for your next attempt, you decide to identify the four most important feedback points, so you can discuss them in detail without running out of time.

(Shortform note: To achieve this virtuous cycle, you must be willing to continually change your improvement plan as you gather more information and refine your methods. Thus, some career experts’ advice on being adaptable may be helpful. First, stay positive. Instead of being upset that your plan wasn’t perfect, focus on the chance you have to improve. Second, focus on your ultimate goal. The desire to achieve it—in this case, to perform excellently—can help you accept change. Finally, remember that change is inevitable—and, in your case, good because it helps you continually improve. This can reduce frustration and prepare you to adapt in the future.)

How to Sustain a Virtuous Cycle of Deliberate Practice

Whether you’re practicing directly or indirectly, Colvin says you need intrinsic motivation—an internal urge to keep practicing and improving—to sustain the virtuous cycle of deliberate practice long enough to achieve excellence. Deliberate practice is demanding enough that extrinsic motivators (like money) can’t drive someone to make such a commitment alone.

(Shortform note: Some psychology experts define intrinsic motivation as the desire to engage in an activity for its own sake. This contrasts with extrinsic motivation, the desire to engage in an activity to earn a reward or avoid a punishment. To be intrinsically motivated, you must find an activity enjoyable, interesting, meaningful, or helpful to your progress. Deliberate practice requires such effort and time that it may not be enjoyable. However, it may inspire interest because it’s focused on deeply understanding a field, a sense of progress as you improve weak spots, and a sense of meaning as you grow closer to reaching excellence.)

Colvin says that science can’t definitively explain where this kind of intrinsic motivation comes from. However, he thinks it comes from your desires and your mindset: To invest the time and effort needed to become truly excellent, you must deeply desire that excellence, often to the exclusion of relationships and other interests. You must also have a training mindset instead of a talent mindset—you must believe that you can achieve excellence if you put in the necessary work. Together, he says this desire and self-belief can drive you to achieve extraordinary things.

Intrinsic Motivation and Mental Toughness

Colvin’s theorized sources of intrinsic motivation mirror what some performance and creativity coaches call the roots of “mental toughness.” These coaches agree that you must deeply desire excellence, adding that this is the first step to acquiring mental toughness: You develop the belief that “good enough” is intolerable, and this drives you to keep improving. While Colvin frames the exclusion of relationships and other interests as a potential downside to this kind of desire, the coaches frame it more positively. They say you identify things in your life that are hindering your progress—including disrespectful or toxic people—and cut them out.

When it comes to believing that you can achieve excellence, the coaches say to replace any negative thoughts about yourself or your abilities with positive ones. This improves your self-confidence and helps you perform better. They add that you need to take responsibility for your performance: You control how well you perform. There is no “right” time or opportunity to act. So, take action immediately and be willing to take risks in the pursuit of excellence.