Talent Is Overrated also gives great advice on HOW you can develop these "talents" and keep them developed, such as going back to the basics of your particular skill periodically. Tiger focuses in on specific skills that he needs to develop (hitting a buried bunker shot or cutting a ball underneath a series of trees yet flying it over a lake 50 yards out), even though he may only need to make that shot once a year. This means your ability to give yourself helpful feedback is extremely important, and if you can get feedback from others, that's even better. • Letters v. Words analogy: It isn't just that novices see letters while experts see words; experts also know the meaning of the words. This sort of practice results in literal physical changes to your brain. What deliberate practice skills have you applied to your life? Obviously the amount of practice time we're talking about is extremely long, and when it comes to the very highest levels of performance it requires that field to basically be your sole interest in life. Many researchers have observed that as people start learning skills in virtually any field, they're typically compared not against the world's greatest performers in that field but against others their own age. Even the Beatles put in thousands of hours of practice in German clubs, fueled by amphetamines, beer, and cigarettes, catcalled by the crowd, and occasionally hit with physical estimations of their abilities -- like beer bottles thrown by angry audience members. Practice, and lots of it. Like most people, you likely spend most of your time at work. No matter how many steps on the road to great performance you choose to take, you will be better off than if you hadn't taken them. Deliberate Practice has been specially designed to increase performance.
Here are some of the best parts: • Leopold (Mozart's father) was well qualified for his role as little Wolfgang's teacher by more than just his own eminence. I found it long winded, repetitive, and often not very convincing. Along with them are your reflex functions, this doesn't just refer to how quickly you react to something, it refers to motor behaviors that are more or less impossible to forget once they are learned, how to walk, for instance. Nothing more, nothing less. Productivity Book Group [] discussed Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, Chapters 1 through 6 [] by Geoff Colvin. The book talks about what it says on the tin. The title of this book should be 'Talent is Irrelevant, ' as that's essentially the author's argument. He's got a great style, and the book has a great flow. Beyond that, Colvin mixes apples and oranges in terms of what "talent" means. Much of this work is solitary, and physically and mentally taxing. IQ is not the prerequisite to achievement. Find meaning, start early, and of course, practice. Chapter 2: Intelligence Is Rarely A Contributor To Performance Level.
Quick, interesting, and memorable examples of how talent is overrated. Eventually the effects go beyond even that. In Talent Is Overrated Geoff Colvin challenges that traditional assumption and asserts that modern research proves that superior performance is virtually entirely due to what he calls "deliberate practice", i. e. well-defined activities performed with repetition and diligence. • Set goals like the best performers; goal not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome. Throughout his narrative, Colvin inserts clusters of insights and recommendations that literally anyone can consider and then act upon to improve her or his individual performance as well as helping to improve the performance of a team of which she or he is a member. There was an experiment, in which researchers looked at handicappers' abilities and their IQs. It is hard; that is the best part! Truthfully, world-class performance comes over a long period of time through deliberate practice, i. e., zeroing in on the critical aspects of a skill with laser-sharp focus and practicing them repeatedly. Choose the skills and abilities from previous research, practice directly. His point is that great performance is available to *anyone* who is willing to put in the work; I found that very encouraging, and his examples inspiring. In one of Amabile's own projects, for example, college women were asked to make paper collages. Though it sounds straightforward, there are some caveats to this form of practice.
"Talent is Overrated Summary". Or does it require a combination of work and natural in-born talent? It is, rather, a choice about how much effort we want to invest in our performance. I was expecting a lot of details about deliberate practice, which of course there were, but Talent Is Overrated seems to emphasize the external factors a lot too and spends quite some time clearing up false assumptions. Not just any practice, though; the key is what he terms 'deliberate practice'--the kind where you ruthlessly identify your weaknesses, then mindfully and persistently improve them with well-designed practice, then repeat that process for (ideally) many hours every day over a long period of time. So to me this is an so so book, not bad, not great. Which specific skills or other assets must be acquired? There should be no doubt that great performance requires hard work.
เค้ามีพรสวรรค์แต่เกิดเหรอ... บางคนก็ไม่นะ. 2) A greater majority belief that some people possess special talent, skills, and abilities that were given unto them by gods, God, Spirits, or muses before they came into the world. Earl started teaching his son golf before he clocked two and they practiced regularly for years. Due to the fact that they've practiced deliberately this skill by receiving tens of thousands of serves, they're able to perceive subtle cues based on the opponent's physical position that might be invisible to anyone else. This practice is not just for musicians; it is for every type of career, in business, sales, marketing, engineering--you name it, practice is what it takes. The assertion being that someone better at those things is more intelligent. The famous letter where Mozart claims to come up with entire pieces purely in his head, and then merely jot them down later, was apparently a total forgery. • Great Performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected, talent is much less important than we tend to believe. The bits of this I liked the most were the little anecdotes he says along the way. Flow directly contradicts this, providing evidence that people often enjoy the rigors of practice. The author's argument about the true nature of genius is very engaging, but, in the end, he makes it clear that the requirements of extraordinary achievement remain so stringent that society, after all, turns out to have very few geniuses. This author, Colvin, talks about "deliberate practice" which is a specific kind of professionally designed, not fun, practice that creates world-class professionals/artists/performers. Another great example is some research that was done on top tennis players that showed that when they received a serve, they didn't focus on the ball, but rather they would look at the player's body to see where the serve would go prior to the serve even being hit.
He furthers his case against the concept of "talent, " saying: Colvin examines many "talent" related topics here. Note: This page contains affiliate links. This was surprising in some ways. How some organizations "blow it" (Pages 194-198).
I liked this book but I think I could have gotten as much out of the short version. If you believe that doing the right kind of work can overcome the problems, then you have at least a chance of moving on to ever better performance. Originally stemming from economics, for human performance it means that having a slight edge can lead to bigger motivation to practice, better coaching, more support, and a whole bunch of other external factors, that will come together to multiply that advantage. It takes deliberate practice to improve performance. An important management book that tells you that deliberate practice is what makes successful people instead of talent. If you know you need to improve but have no idea how or what might help you are going to tend to give up. Deliberate practice, to be exact. He ties a knot in the book with this quote, which I found to be well done: ***************************. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Some of the key insights: 1. This can then produce even greater advantages. We see videos of little children on social media with powerful skills and abilities that we didn't have when we were younger. Deliberate practice isn't much fun.
Deliberate practice can be mentally and physically exhausting, but those who engage in it don't seem to mind because they're driven by their own personal motivations. In a famous study of chess players, Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon and William Chase (Ericsson's coauthor on the memory study) proposed "the ten-year rule, " based on their observation that no one seemed to reach the top ranks of chess players without a decade or so of intensive study, and some required much more time. The difference between hard work and getting nowhere versus hard work leading to great performance is the difference between mindlessly practicing (driving range, anyone? ) After all, no matter where you live or what you believe in, do not let your limitations guide your life. How to make organizations innovative (Pages 162-166). In other words, there would be no great performances in any field (e. g. business, theatre, dance, symphonic music, athletics, science, mathematics, entertainment, exploration) without those who have, through deliberate practice developed the requisite abilities. He was deeply interested in how music was taught to children. "You can do a great deal as an individual to apply the principles of great performance in your own life and work. It renewed my drive to make the most out of the limited practice time I have by focusing relentlessly on my squeaky wheels (I have a lot of them) and setting specific, attainable goals for myself, not just a general aim of "getting better, " which is too vague and open-ended to get my butt in the practice chair with any kind of determination. So the reason high level table tennis players seem to be so unbelievably fast at the game isn't because they have naturally quick reaction times, in fact research performed on legendary table tennis player Desmond Douglas found that he actually had slower than average reaction time in everything except table tennis. Is an intelligent person someone who's able to solve complex math problems?
It should be no surprise that top performers, whether scientists or entrepreneurs or athletes, usually come from households where their parents encouraged them and aided them in their pursuits. Deliberate practice isn't just doing the same thing over and over again, which as we saw previously doesn't help. Those who become highly accomplished report that eventually they developed their own self-motivation, but there are exponentially more who simply came to hate that instrument and quit entirely. A study in England during the 90's showed this through seeking out talented individuals. Without another word of instruction, the group immediately sings happy birthday to Mary. Let's start with why: Why exactly do you need to be a great performer? As a piece of writing and reporting, I'd put it at 2 stars--Colvin is at his best when he is explaining Anders Ericsson's research, but a bit out of his depth when he tries to draw independent conclusions. Long and careful cultivation is needed. We've seen extensive evidence that calls into question whether such abilities exist, and even if certain types of them might, they clearly do not determine excellence. In order to improve at something, it's important to practice, and practice often – whether we're working on our putt or trying to achieve more at work.