Book Byte #290 "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin
What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
📣 Curious Quotes from the Author
“The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.”
“deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.”
“Great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected.”
“What great performers have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If you set a goal of becoming an expert in your business, you would immediately start doing all kinds of things you don't do now.”
“Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from.”
“even if high-IQ people do better than low-IQ people when first trying a task that’s new to them, the relationship tends to get weaker and may eventually disappear completely as they work at the task and get better at it.”
“Top performers understand their field at a higher level than average performers do, and thus have a superior structure for remembering information about it.”
📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea
Although the majority of people think that people become world-class performers because of their innate talents, talent is essentially unrelated to performance. Deliberate practice, which involves focusing intently on the most important components of a skill, practicing them frequently, and receiving constructive criticism, is how true world-class performance is developed over an extended period of time. You too can utilize intentional practice to get better at anything if you have the right motivation.
Until Tomorrow,
Jason (Founder Club255)