Book Review of Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

 Surprise! Hard work leads to great performance. Who would have guessed?
In line with the the preceeding tongue-in-cheek tag line Geoff Colvin goes very deep and identifies the exact form of hard work needed to achieve expert performance. The first five chapters take you through much research debunking the idea that talent is the cause of expert performance. Colvin defines talent as "innate ability that cannot be achieved through human endeavor." These chapters reference research done in sports and music and the finding that, "the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance..." Colvin delves into the specific meaning of this statement and presents detailed primary research that leads to a clear prescription of what one can do to achieve expert performance. In a future blog, I'll describe at a high level his findings.