Geoff Colvin makes a compelling argument that what makes people really good at things is deliberate practice. He systematically tears apart ideas of "talent" or "gifts", and points out how everyone who is good at something got that way by working really hard at it. The people we think of as prodigies (including Mozart and Tiger Woods), got that way by starting practicing younger, and with better teachers, than other people did.Colvin goes beyond this to explain how we can apply deliberate practice ideas to all sorts of areas (sales, management, whatever we do). It's freeing, in a way, because we can choose to become good at whatever we want. It just takes careful thought and dedicated effort. I had to take a break from reading this in the middle, because I was overwhelmed with the thought that I could be excellent at whatever I wanted. And what did I want to be excellent at?
When I go back to doing counseling, I'm going to put these techniques into practice as a therapist. Getting regular feedback (like every session) from clients, working on particular areas of practice, examining what I do with an eye to getting better.
Talent is overrated: What really separates world-class performers from everyone else
Geoff Colvin
2008
Available from Amazon
1 comment:
Hi Sylvan, enjoyed your review as always. If you haven't already, you might consider Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers: The Story of Success. I am sure that he does not go into the subject in as much depth as this book, but he talks about how the folks who made it big during the tech boom were those who had gotten their 10K hours of "practice" in at just the right time.
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