Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated opens with presenting new research findings showing that top performers do not have “innate gifts”. Instead, their achievements are the result of lots of deliberate practice. The author backs this claim with different research findings and exemplary biographies, then explains the nature of great performance and the kind of practice necessary to achieve it, concluding with a chapter on motivation and passion.
I liked this book so much that I took extensive notes, which you find below. Here’s the summary: I think it is an important work that might change the way you think about personal and professional development. From practice design to motivation and passion and the nature of great performance, Colvin covers the subject from all angles and backs his findings with lots of references.
This is hard to believe when thinking of such prodigies as Einstein, Mozart, or Michael Jordan. Colvin knows this and goes to great lengths to present these studies and explain how, in his view, these top performers really got to be so good. He walks the reader through the childhoods of Mozart and Tiger Woods, and it’s indeed surprising what we find here: an extreme practice regime starting at two years of age, designed by an expert in the field, and tens of thousands of hours of practice before both appeared in the public as masters of their field. Whether they have/had innate talent or not, their success certainly didn’t come easily. The author also presents a study showing that while chess masters are incredibly good at remembering chess boards, this only holds for boards with real, valid positions. Presented with boards breaking the rules of chess, they do no better than amateurs. Their memory must therefore be the result of the years of chess training.
Colvin further points out the incredible progress that has occurred across the board in the last hundred years even though our genes didn’t change in such a short time. A 1908 Olympics record is today’s top high school level.
Concluding his introduction, Colvin points out what an influence on our lives the belief in innate talent has. Parents and teachers direct kids to follow a course where they think they might have talent. People themselves limit themselves and skip opportunities in the belief to lack the necessary talent to go beyond the average.
So what is this deliberate practice that leads to outstanding results, while most people work for years without seeing much improvement? It is designed, it can be (and is!) repeated a lot, it allows continuous feedback, it is mentally highly demanding, and finally, it is not fun--otherwise, quips Colvin, everyone would do it. If they knew how to design such practice, that is.
The abovementioned attributes of deliberate practice show that it is nothing like the actual work one is practicing for. This explains why working in a job even for decades does not necessarily produce masters.
It is not quite clear whether a top performer can design her own practice, or if she needs a coach who is an expert in training design and can judge objectively. Tiger Woods, for instance, is still taking lessons, while the Comedian Chris Rock designs and practices his routines by himself.
A pretty incredible story concludes this part of the book. Among the first thinking about the design of a training regime to produce world-class results was the Hungarian psychologist Laszlo Polgar. He went all the way and found, via a newspaper add, a woman willing to have children with him to raise in a way carefully designed to make them word-class chess players. Surprisingly enough, he found one and they had three girls--all of whom became grand masters after a childhood of rigorous training.
Can we pin down a general effect of deliberate practice? What does it do that other kinds of practice don’t do? For Colvin, it’s avoiding automaticity. The brain tends to automate repeated activities to save mental energy. This automation stops improvement. It also makes one vulnerable to distractions because they break the pattern triggering the automated routine. Instead, top performers remain conscious of their activity throughout their training.
For Colvin, “perceiving more” is the key: more indicators, further ahead, with less information. His chess example of the Big Blue vs. Kasparov is a little doubtful, I felt he didn’t make clear the difference in reasoning between the human player thinking in patterns and the computer evaluating a large number of positions in advance.
Colving also points out here that knowledge plays an important role. Experts have more and it’s better consolidated. Jeff Immelt, then head of GE, launched a study showing that among his managers, domain knowledge beat general management knowledge. This is old news for developers suffering under non-technical IT management, so it’s good that a business author like Colvin, who writes for Fortune in his day job, points that out. The consolidation of knowledge affects memory, too. No one can hold more than nine items in their mind simultaneously (for most people it’s seven items), but the items can be bigger. A chess amateur might remember a single position, while a master remembers a whole board.
The author distinguishes three models of practice depending on the kind of task to be practiced.
The music model: You know what you want to convey, like classical music is written down, and one needs to convey it effectively. One can break the task down into pieces and practice them independently, with immediate feedback either by a coach or on video. A good addition is to watch top performers and analyze what they are doing well, then compare one’s own performance to theirs, repeating the process over and over.
The chess model, known as the “case method” in the business world: like chess players study individual moves from recorded games, one studies lots of example problems. Ideally there is a known, but yet hidden, solution, so that after deciding on an action, one can compare one’s own choice with the known one, like a chess student would study a master’s game. Of course, for practical problems it’s often not clear what the solution is, if it even exists--it helps to discuss with coaches and peers in that case.
The sports model: Sports is different from classical music in that no two situations are ever exactly alike. One practices by working on basic conditioning and skill development. Basic conditioning in sports is strength and endurance training, and working on cognitive skills, math and basic science in intellectual fields of work. Skill development means practicing certain situations repeatedly, such as sales calls.
Having this basic framework for thinking about practice, we need to look at the practice itself. Colvin highlights three points that many do not follow in their practice. First, there needs to be a clear goal of what one wants to achieve, and what steps exactly will be necessary to get there. Second, metacognition during training is crucial: observing oneself to get a correct assessment of one’s mental processes. Third, get as much specific feedback as possible and analyze it.
The combined impact of the internet and globalization leads to a massive commoditization. To thrive in this environment, creativity and innovation are key. Can we apply the principles of great performance here?
Colvin doesn’t believe that creative works are the result of a flash of insight. The evidence is conflicting. Colvin presents some fascinating work of Dean Keith Simonton, John Hayes (CMU), and Howard Gardner (“Creative Minds”). The summary is that “great innovators are nourished by knowledge”; innovation grows from the past.
In this chapter, Colvin first examines what kinds of homes are conducive for kids to achieving top performance, then looks into maintaining top performance in old age.
This chapter didn’t work as well for me as the others. His opening teaser of the average age of Nobel prize winners now being six years older than 100 years ago seems obvious: as science advances, things get more and more complex, requiring more study to understand what’s been done before.
Colvin’s findings on the right kind of environment for children are mainly based on Benjamin Bloom’s research, and seem plausible, but remain too general. The environment must be child-oriented and supportive. A strong work ethic based on the goals of excelling and spending one’s time constructively is necessary.
The final chapter addresses the deepest question the book asks: why do all that hard practice? Who does it and why, and why don’t the others do the same?
Colvin first reviews the research on motivation, which agrees that intrinsic beats extrinsic motivation by far. But how is intrinsic motivation linked to deliberate practice? Possibly through flow. To experience flow, the difficulty level needs to be just right. Repeating the same task or practice too often makes it too easy, so top performers could be driven to setting the bar higher and higher to keep the flow experience. This I found very insightful and exciting, since Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow is next on my reading list.
However, it doesn’t explain why people put themselves through the grueling practice required for the very top, including lots of failure. The author leaves this point open, saying that we simply don’t understand fully what’s behind motivation and passion. He adds an interesting observation, though: examining the childhood experiences of many top athletes, he found that their passion for their sport wasn’t there from the start. It only developed after a few years of practice, once they started to become really good.