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Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates…
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Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (original 2008; edição 2008)

por Geoff Colvin (Autor)

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1,1832016,536 (3.76)20
An expansion on the author's popular Fortune article, "What It Takes to Be Great," builds on his premise about success being linked to the practice and perseverance of specific efforts, in a full-length report that draws on scientific principles and real-world examples to demonstrate his systematic process at work.… (mais)
Membro:Zaq42
Título:Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Autores:Geoff Colvin (Autor)
Informação:Portfolio (2008), Edition: 1, 240 pages
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Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else por Geoff Colvin (2008)

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I've often been fascinated by what makes great performers, well...great. Is it talent? Genes? Hard work? A superhuman drive to succeed? Colvin argues it's none of these things, but rather the careful and disciplined application of something he calls "deliberate practice." This isn't what you or I do when we smack a tennis ball across the court. Instead, it's an activity "designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it's highly demanding mentally...and it isn't much fun." Does this sound like something you do for 4-5 hours a day? Yeah. Me neither.

Colvin maintains that a minimum of 10 years of deliberate practice is what differentiates regular folk from great performers. He has some good (if rather vague) ideas for applying the concepts of deliberate practice to our everyday lives and our business organizations, but what I found most interesting were the many examples and case studies. Mozart, Tiger Woods, Jerry Rice...if they weren't prodigies struck by the hand of God, then maybe there is a glimmer of hope for the rest of us mere mortals to achieve just a little more than we think we can. ( )
  Elizabeth_Cooper | Oct 27, 2023 |
I have a two hour commute each day and usually listen to free podcasts about books or running, but I recently discovered that I can download audio books for free from the library via My Media Mall. I have a hard time with audio books because the reader's voice and performance can quickly kill a book for me. Its all I can do right now to restrain myself from boring you with stories of bad audio books past. I'm still traumatized by an especially horrific Moby Dick experience. Suffice it to say now that David Drummond, the reader of Talent is Overrated, is a decent reader.

Geoff Colvin takes on the age-old assumption that people who are the 'great leaders' of their field arrive on earth with an inborn talent. Greatness isn't destiny or DNA, rather it boils down to decades of intentional practice and sacrifice at the level that most of us are not willing to make. Colvin writes for Fortune magazine and points out that many people typically think about greatness in sports and music, but not business. Although we know athletes and musicians are trained and coached, we also make the assumption that they have an inborn talent for their sport or instrument when really, they don't.

Colvin identifies four factors that contribute to great performance:

1. Years of intentional practice
2. Analysis of your results
3. Learning from your mistakes
4. Coaching by progressively more advanced teachers

Two examples that Colvin discusses are Mozart and Tiger Woods. Both men are thought to have an inborn natural talent, but by looking at their histories Colvin identifies many similarities: both men were introduced to music/golf at extremely young ages, both had fathers who were teachers in their respective fields, and both spent years focused on very intentional practice before most of their peers even started to learn music/golf. By the time Mozart and Tiger Woods were teens, they already had over ten years of intense training and intentional practice and so looked like wizards compared to the other boys and girls their age.

I've read bits of Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers, which also came out in 2008, and his idea of 10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness seems to be in line with Colvin's findings. I know this topic of greatness and how to achieve it is as old as the hills, but the big take away from Colvin's book for me is the idea of intentional practice, of really breaking things down into small bits and practicing that. For example, when hobbyist golfers practice, they'll go to the driving range and hit their standard 100-300 balls. Tiger Woods, on the other hand, goes to a sand pit, places a ball on the sand, steps on it, and then practices getting out of that situation. He may rarely find himself in that predicament during a tournament, but its those little details that can bring huge rewards.

Colvin wonders about using the Mozart/Woods model to mentor and train future business leaders, which is completely possible. He points out, however, that it might be hard to handle a leader of a large-scale business who is a teen. In that context socialization plays a huge role. We are social creatures and although leadership is found at all ages, it does take significant years of life experience to refine one's leadership ability in order to lead adults for a sustained period of time. This subject made me think about the myths surround Mozart's maturity (or lack, thereof) as well as Tiger Wood's recent interpersonal problems. It is this psycho-social aspect of greatness that I find fascinating, but it is not Colvin's focus.

Long story short: if you're not yet great, go out and find a teacher to challenge your current level of proficiency and then practice, practice, practice--intentionally--for at least ten years. Oh, and a supportive family would be nice, too. Good luck, and may The Force be with you! ( )
  Chris.Wolak | Oct 13, 2022 |
This book is not sure what shelf it wants to be on. It's a grab bag of behavioral psychology, business self-help, Gladwell-esque counterintuitive anecdotes. If you want a gloss of "mindset", deliberate practice, the 10,000 hour rule, and some other current pop trends, have at it. (See, I just finished this the day before yesterday and I can't even remember all the ideas jammed into it.) ( )
  tmdblya | Dec 29, 2020 |
A thought provoking look at what it really takes to achieve excellence in any field. The answer, suprisingly, is both obvious and hard to grasp at the same time. I recommend this one! ( )
  Colleen5096 | Oct 29, 2020 |
Talent Is Overrated – What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin is a discerning book that aims to home in on the salient differences between the very top tiers of individuals in a variety of fields and the rest. With a rather unorthodox approach, the author poses a new theory about why so many individuals are great, and what got them there.

Colvin delves into why Ben Franklin, Tiger Woods, The Polgar Sisters, Jerry Rice, and many others rose to become the crème of the crop. Gleaning from them, the author also shows how individuals can finetune their personal repertoire to gain insights and learn to practice in similar fashion.

In his quest for answers within abstruse subject, the author samples various disciplines in society in his effort to get to the bottom of what ‘talent’ really means given all the talk about it.

Colvin does an reasonable job of arguing the case for deliberate practice and other ideas. Be that as it may, the book could have used some more scientific evidence or studies referenced just to bolster the argument and bring more fuel to the fire.

Irrespective of that, though, the matter talent might boil down to the individual and their inherent mental faculties and the beliefs they themselves hold.

As the author ponders in his own words:

“What do you believe? Do you believe that you have a choice in the matter? Do you believe that if you do the work, properly designed, with intense focus for hours a day and years on end, your performance will grow dramatically better and eventually reach the highest levels? If you believe that, then there’s at least a chance you will do the work and achieve great performance.

“But if you believe that your performance is forever limited by your lack of a specific innate gift, or by a lack of general abilities at the level that you think must be necessary, then there’s no chance at all that you will do the work.

“That’s why this belief is tragically constraining. Everyone who achieved exceptional performance has encountered terrible difficulties along the way. There are no exceptions. If you believe that doing the right kind of work can overcome the problems, then you have at least chance of moving on to ever better performance. “[1]

That’s what most people want, a chance, an opportunity. And why wouldn’t that opportunity be there for the taking? It’s merely a choice.

For those that might wonder if people are really born with talent, Colvin elucidates:

“…a hundred years later, abundant evidence showed clearly that people can keep getting better long after they should have reached their “rigidly determinate” natural limits. The examples were not just great writers, artists, business people, inventors, and other eminences producing their best work three or four decades into their careers. By the late nineteenth century, scientific research was showing repeatedly that ordinary people in various lines of work could keep getting better even after their performance had apparently plateau. Typists, telegraph operators, typesetters – highly experienced workers in all these jobs, whose performance hadn’t improved in years, suddenly got markedly better when they were offered incentives or given new kinds of training. This evidence was obviously a big problem for the you’ve-got-it-or-you-don’t point of view.”[2]

Such data is actually quite refreshing, because it shows that this is not merely an issue of being born with talent. On the flip side, it is also not as simple as merely working hard, because most people work hard. The main takeaway is that as long as proper practice is designed and undertaken, progress and growth can be developed in countless professions.

Given all the data collated that shows how certain individuals became extraordinary, the information presented by the author is worth ruminating upon at length. And seeing as Colvin also gave individuals a jump-off point, the book does hold a lot of significance one way or another.

If you wish to read a book that offers value, ideas to ruminate upon which might just change your life, and also want to know what separates the top tier from all the rest, get this book.

___________________________________________________________
Sources:

[1] Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated – What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else, p. 205.
[2] Ibid., p. 63. ( )
  ZyPhReX | Apr 25, 2017 |
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An expansion on the author's popular Fortune article, "What It Takes to Be Great," builds on his premise about success being linked to the practice and perseverance of specific efforts, in a full-length report that draws on scientific principles and real-world examples to demonstrate his systematic process at work.

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