Book Review : Talent is Overrated

                It's been a few weeks now, since the last time I wrote a post here. There are good reasons for it. One, I was very busy with my 9-6 job, work spilling over to weekends, and two, I was reading a book in my limited free time. The book I read is titled 'Talent is Overrated" and the subtitle is "What really separates world-class performers from everybody else". It is written by Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at large, Fortune magazine. I will present here the main ideas of the book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be good at what they do.

Being good at whatever we want to do is the deepest source of fulfillment we will ever know. was it talent ? was it brains? is it a god(if exists) given gift? was it mountains of hard work? The author explains why it is none of the above contradicting reasons. He wonders, why even after all those hours & all those years, most people are just okay at what they do. Just enough to not get fired from a job or Just enough to have fun from a hobby without any traces of great performance.

He reasons great performance is due to 'deliberate practice' by citing numerous researches and examples of hundreds of real-life great performers proving his point. For e.g, Tiger woods, Jack Welch, Mozart, etc. These great performers in their respective fields had one thing in common and it is 'deliberate practice' of thousands of hours. Beyond physical constraints( e.g., height for a basketball player), inborn abilities do not matter. IQ or memory matters for few beginning years in a job and later it plays no big role in a great performance. If anything else matters, it is sheer luck. For e.g., Tigerwood or Mozart had a father who was a teacher.

Noble prize winner Herbert Simon & William Chase proposed a "Ten-year rule" which states that the difference between expert performers & normal adults reflects a life-long period of a deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain. In one study of the top 3 groups of violin players in a famous school, it was noted that the difference among them is an average number of total practice hours. It was 7410 hrs, 5301 hrs, and 3420 hrs respectively. This is very similar to the concept of 10,000 hrs which Malcolm Gladwell mentions in this book 'Outliers'.

The authors clarify what are the characteristics of deliberate practice. It is as follows:

• It is specifically designed to improve a particular performance. It follows a particular program.
• It is about doing just beyond what we currently do. In other words, it is about being in the 'learning' zone instead of in the 'comfort' or 'panic' zone. It is not inherently enjoyable. It involves high repetition and it is mentally demanding. It involves conscious and controlled effort, unlike normal everyday driving which is very automatic in nature.
• It is guided by a teacher or mentor who knows the body of knowledge. The teacher provides a better perspective and feedback if it is not available to the learner him/herself.

Deliberate practice helps us to perceive more, know more, and remember more. The authors offer some good suggestions on applying the principles to individuals, such as: working over & over on specific aspects that need improvement, setting up a practice program and its order of steps, getting feedback from video/mentor, studying case studies, conditioning the fundamentals, etc. Some suggestions to organizations are, to make sure each person is not just doing his/her job but stretched, investing time, money & effort in developing people, identifying promising performers, etc.

The author argues that deliberate practice is also applicable to creative innovations. Innovation does not just spring out of nothing but it is in fact grown out of long past preparations. Any story to the contrary is a myth. Starting at an early age certainly helps since at this moment of history, every field is so advanced. As a parent, it is also important to provide a supportive environment to children.

The best chapter in this book is the last chapter titled "Where does the passion comes from ? ". Author questions, why anyone would go through such pain for an uncertain reward that is many years away.  He gives an example of 2006 winter Olympics figure skating gold medal winner Shizuka Asakawa who must have literally fallen around twenty thousand times on her butt practicing. Is it intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivation? Irrespective of either, most of the deliberate practice activities are not inherently enjoyable since it involves doing what you have not done before. The author thinks the theory of the multiplier effect comes close to explaining the root cause of this passion. A small early advantage leads to series of greater advantages. The small advantage motivates them to perform better which in turn improves the skills. This improved skills again in turn improves motivation. The theory fits the evidence reported by others. In virtually every field, beginners can't manage more than an hour of practice per day, and sometimes much less. But by the time they become top performers, they've built themselves up to handling four to five hours a day. The process is circular in nature and it does not matter how the advantage originates in the first place. It can be due to sheer luck of genes(e.g, better eye-hand coordination), supporting environment or parent praising/pushing the child even if initial performance is not so great.  My biggest takeaway from this book is, this cycle of motivation and skill needs to be kept in constant motion.

Again, I highly recommend this book to everyone. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.