Talent is Overrated

 The following are excerpts from the book, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Fortune Senior Editor at Large, Geoff Colvin.

"Most of us would be embarrassed to add up the total hours we've spent on our jobs, and then compare that number with the hours we've given to other priorities that we claim are more important, like our families; the figures would show that work is our real priority. Yet after all those hours and all those years, most people are just okay at what they do ... 'the experience trap' ... people with lots of experience were no better at their jobs than those with very little experience." (pg. 3)

"The natural-gift explanation also explains why extraordinary performers are so rare; god-given talents are presumably not handed out willy-nilly ... it takes the matter of great performance out of our hands." (pg. 5) 

" ... some people have become international chess masters, though they possess below-average IQs. So whatever it is that makes these people special, it doesn't depend on superhuman general abilities." (pg. 7)

"Contemporary athletes are superior, not because they're somehow different, but because they train themselves more effectively. That's an important concept for us to remember." (pg. 9)

"The scarce resource is no longer money. It's human ability." (pg. 12)

" ... no one knows what the limits of development are." (pg. 13)

" ... because the costs of computing power and telecommunications are in free fall ... a fast growing number of workers everywhere have to be just as good ... as the very best workers in their fields anywhere on earth." (pp. 14-15)

"If you think your job isn't exportable, you may be right - but think about it hard before you relax." (pg. 15)

"In 1992, a small group of researchers in England went looking for talent. They couldn't find it." (pg. 17)

"One factor, and only one factor, predicted how musically accomplished the students were, and that was how much they practiced." (pg. 18)

" ... as most of us understand 'talent,' meaning an ability to achieve more easily ... " (pg. 19)

" ... such findings do not prove that talent doesn't exist. But they suggest an intriguing possibility: that if it does, it may be irrelevant." (pg. 23)

" ... talent is looking like an odd concept if it hasn't made itself known after six years of hard study." (pg. 24)

"For nearly two hundred years many people have believed that [Mozart] had a miraculous ability to compose entire major pieces in his head, after which writing them down was mere clerical work ... based on a famous letter in which he says as much ... The trouble is, this letter is a forgery ..." (pg. 27)

" ... Alex Ross, sums up much of the recent scholarship on the Miracle of Salzburg: 'Ambitious parents who are currently playing the Baby Mozart video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.'" (pg. 29)

"Steve Ross ... was known for analyzing complex deals in his head ... He supposedly said, 'I hate calculators. They're the equalizer.'" (pg. 39)

" ... critical thinking is obviously important in the real world, and I.Q. doesn't measure it." (pg. 40)

" ... in many cases there's no correlation at all ... between I.Q. and achievement ... " (pg. 42)

"The researchers' conclusion ... suggest[s] 'that whatever it is that an I.Q. test measures, it is not the ability to engage in cognitively complex forms of multivariate reasoning.'" (pg. 44)

" ... a large mass of more recent evidence shows that memory ability is acquired, and it can be acquired by pretty much anyone." (pg. 45)

"What's surprising is that when it comes to innate, unalterable limits on what healthy adults can achieve, anything beyond ... physical constraints is in dispute." (pg. 50)

" ... one of the greatest-ever football players [Jerry Rice] devoted less than 1 percent of his football-related work to playing games." (pg. 55)

"Many scientists and authors produce their greatest work only after twenty or more years of devoted effort, which means that in year nineteen they are still getting better ... evidence showed clearly that people can keep getting better long after they should have reached their 'rigidly determinate' natural limits." (pg. 62)

"Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements ... it is activity designed specifically to improve performance ... it can be repeated a lot ... feedback on results is continuously available; it's highly demanding mentally ... and it isn't much fun." (pg. 66)

" ... becoming significantly good at almost anything is extremely difficult without the help of a teacher or coach, at least in the early going." (pg. 67)

"The great performers isolate remarkably specific aspects of what they do and focus on just those things until they are improved; then it's on to the next aspect ... Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can one make progress. That's the location of skills and abilities that are just out of reach." (pg. 68)

" ... practice proponents do not dispute the possibility that genes could play a role in a person's willingness to put himself or herself through the extremely rigorous demands of becoming an exceptional performer." (pg. 81)

" Average players focused on the ball ... the best players weren't looking at the ball. They were looking at the opponent's hips, shoulders, and arms, which foretold where they would hit the ball ... They had found a way to react faster without improving their reaction time." (pg. 86)

"The difference wasn't literally what they saw. It was what they perceived." (pg. 88)

"It was said of Charles Revson ... that he could distinguish several different shades of black, a particularly difficult skill even among people who work with colors. That ability is a metaphor for making evaluations of every kind." (pg. 93)

"When Garry Kasparov, the world champion at the time, first played IBM's famous Deep Blue program in 1996, the computer was evaluating 100 million positions per second - and Kasparov still won ... why would the computer lose or draw even a single game against any player, ever? The answer is that the human possessed something the computer didn't, which was vast knowledge of chess ... conclusion: 'In the knowledge lies the power.'" (pg. 95)

"The researchers proposed what has become known as the chunk theory. Everyone in the experiment remembered more or less the same number of chunks of information ... But for the masters ... a chunk was much larger, consisting of a whole group of pieces in a specific arrangement." (pg. 99)

"Even brains can be changed." (pg. 103)

"The best performers ... are in effect able to step outside themselves, monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it's going. Researchers call this metacognition ... thinking about your own thinking." (pg. 118)

"Deliberate practice activities are so demanding that no one can sustain them for long without strong motivation." (pg. 134)

" ... too much familiarity with a problem blinds a person to innovative solutions." (pg. 160)

"Abraham Lincoln's pen did not trace out the immortal words of the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope while he was riding to the battlefield; a number of drafts of the speech, on White House writing paper, have been found." (pg. 161)

" ... becoming world-class great at anything seems to require thousands of hours of focused, deliberate practice." (pg. 171)

"Any adult thinking of starting a professional career in any field in which some participants begin their development as small children should first get out a calculator and face the music." (pg. 172)

" ... the temptation to continue doing what you do comfortably is too great." (pg. 173)

" ... the brilliance of what has been achieved blots out any sight of what has been given up." (pg. 178)

" ... excellent performers suffer the same age-related declines in speed and general cognitive abilities as everyone else - except in their field of expertise." (pg. 180)

"Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from." (pg. 188)

"Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School ... proposed a simple hypothesis: 'The intrinsically motivated state is conducive to creativity, whereas the extrinsically motivated state is detrimental.' " (pg. 191)