Peter introduced me to Geoff Colvin‘s book, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everyone Else, on our first date. He humbly dismissed a common story his mom told about his exceptional talent for mimicking sounds, even as a toddler. Even if the story were accurate, he argued that experts such as Colvin dismissed such anecdotal evidence as proof of divine talent. This challenged what I thought I knew about myself and all of the talented people I knew:
- At the Youth Performing Arts School (YPAS) attached to my high school and middle school
- On the minor league sports teams where I worked
- In the classrooms, corporate offices, courtrooms, and other places I visited regularly
The book was confronting. If I was not a top performer in softball after all of my years of practicing and playing on multiple teams simultaneously, could it really be that I didn’t practice deliberately, or the right skills?
Yes. Unlike many of the top performers in Colvin’s book, I played for a variety of reasons: popularity, validation, college application-building, and fun. Being world-class was only on my radar to the extent that it might prove to others that I had value. I didn’t deliberately practice my base running or hitting in the ways Dot Richardson did. I never considered that I could do squats, uphill sprints, cross-training, and hitting drills with the focus on results that I now use in my business and post-injury workouts.
My Top Three Takeaways from Talent is Overrated
- We aren’t necessarily born with the talent we think we have. I was good at softball and in school because I started learning with my older sisters at a young age. The top performers Colvin discusses also spent a substantial amount of time developing skills that others labeled talent.
- Most of us can master skills we spend more than 10,000 hours developing. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a similar book detailing this concept–and that I will eventually read and review here.
- Where I am not succeeding, I probably need to be more intentional and focused during the hours I put in. Yes, as Woody Allen said, 80% of success is showing up. But without deliberate action once you’re there, you’ve only mastered showing up.