Book SummaryTalent Is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Talent Is Overrated

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 excellent performance to talent: a high level of ability in a specific area that’s inherent (rather than developed) and usually appears at an early age. This belief is attractive because an unusual, inborn trait seems to explain why excellence is rarely achieved and why it sometimes seems inheritable—why an excellent athlete’s child is more likely to excel in athletics than other children, for example.

However, Colvin rejects talent as the cause of excellence. He argues that this belief in talent isn’t supported by evidence (which we’ll discuss in the next section). In addition, he says believing in talent can stop people from becoming excellent: If you believe excellence is dictated by intrinsic talent, rather than something you can control, you won’t make any effort and thus won’t become an excellent performer. In contrast, If you believe you can become excellent, you’re more likely to put in the work necessary to succeed.

(Shortform note: Colvin’s ideas mirror the concept of fixed vs. growth mindsets. People with fixed mindsets believe their abilities can’t improve. They often refuse to challenge themselves out of a fear of failure, and they often have low self-esteem because they attribute failure to who they are as a person. In contrast, people with a growth mindset believe they can improve. They readily face challenges because they attribute failure to their performance, not their identity, so they’re motivated to improve and succeed. To nurture a growth mindset, remember that our brains develop throughout...

Talent Is Overrated Summary Talent Doesn’t Adequately Explain Excellent Performance

While excellent performance is popularly attributed to talent, Colvin says there’s little empirical evidence that talent even exists, let alone that it’s the determining factor in excellent performance. In fact, the lives of excellent performers tend to contradict the notions that talent is inherent and appears early in life. Even in artistic fields (in which many people believe talent is a major factor), research shows that most excellent performers don’t start being excellent until after they begin formal training. If they displayed excellent performance at an unusually young age, it was because their parents encouraged their abilities—or even began their formal training—from an early age.

Thus, Colvin says, the quality of a person’s performance actually depends on how many hours they’ve spent practicing—specifically deliberately practicing, which we’ll define in the next section. The more hours spent practicing, the better a person’s performance. Colvin argues that excellence is rare because few people are willing or able to spend enough time practicing.

How Much of Performance Quality Is Determined by Hours Spent Practicing?

How much of your...

Talent Is Overrated Summary What Is Deliberate Practice?

Colvin says deliberate practice involves continually identifying the weak points of your performance and working to improve them. As you strengthen each weak point, your overall performance improves.

Everyone deliberately practices when first learning a new activity, Colvin adds. However, most people stop doing so once they can comfortably perform the activity. It’s easier to let instinct and muscle memory take over, so they stop actively correcting their weak points and their performance stops improving. In contrast, excellent performers continue deliberately practicing until their performance improves far above average.

Take swimming, for example. When you first learned how to swim, you consciously practiced it: You had to actively think about how the different strokes worked and whether you were moving your limbs correctly. Now that you’re comfortable swimming, though, you don’t think about it as much. You already know how to do the strokes, and you can largely rely...

Talent Is Overrated Summary How Deliberate Practice Improves Performance

If talent can’t explain excellent performance, how can deliberate practice do so? Colvin says that deliberate practice improves your performance in a specific field by helping you understand how that field works as a whole. Instead of believing that your understanding and skill are dictated by an inherent talent, you build your understanding and skill by analyzing and tracking your performance. As you analyze your mistakes and experiment with methods of fixing them, you begin to recognize commonalities between your mistakes or successes. These commonalities reveal the overarching rules that govern your field. You can then follow these rules to avoid future mistakes and improve your performance, growing closer to excellence.

Continuing our example, let’s say you want to swim faster. You analyze your current method and realize that your feet are dragging through the water, slowing you down. After trying different positions, you learn that pointing your toes reduces drag and makes you faster. You repeat the same process with your hands, learning that flattening them is the best way to reduce drag. Comparing these successful methods reveals an overarching rule of swimming: The...

Talent Is Overrated Summary 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...

Shortform Exercise: Deliberately Practice

According to Colvin, deliberate practice involves continually identifying the weak points of your performance and working to improve them. In this exercise, you’ll follow the indirect approach to select a weak point you want to address, create a practice exercise, and identify the best way to improve your performance.

First, identify your most important task. What skills help you complete it? Which of these skills are you worst at? For example, if your task is to give feedback to your subordinates, you may choose to work on clear communication.