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The cover of Talent Is Overrated

Talent Is Overrated

Geoff Colvin, 2008

Why did two future Fortune 500 CEOs share a cubicle with no special promise? Colvin traces achievement to deliberate practice, not talent, and shows exactly how to build it.

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10 parts, about 21 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Defines talent narrowly as an innate, early visible gift, then tests it against studies of music students, chess masters and salespeople
  • Describes deliberate practice: work designed to improve, repeated often, with continuous feedback, mentally exhausting and not much fun
  • Shows how to practice inside a job through goals, self observation and honest review, and how companies can build it into development

Who it is for

  • Professionals stuck at a plateau despite years of experience
  • Managers responsible for developing people
  • Parents and teachers who wonder whether talent is fixed

What the summary covers

  1. The Mystery2 min
  2. Talent, Defined Precisely2 min
  3. Not Brains, and Not Memory2 min
  4. A Better Idea2 min
  5. What Deliberate Practice Is, and Why Work Is Not It3 min
  6. How It Works2 min
  7. Designing Your Own Practice2 min
  8. What Practice Does Not Explain3 min
  9. Where the Passion Comes From2 min
  10. Two Questions1 min

Recommended by

  • Daniel PinkAuthor of A Whole New Mind
    A profoundly important book.
  • Herb KelleherFounder, Southwest Airlines
    I rejoice! What Geoff says comports totally with my own experiences in sports, law, and business.

About the author

  • Geoff ColvinSenior editor at large at Fortune magazine and author
    • Born and raised in Vermillion, South Dakota
    • Studied economics at Harvard
    • Degree from New York University's Stern School of Business
    • Anchored Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS alongside Karen Gibbs until 2005

Read it alongside

  • Goes deeperThinking, Fast and Slow

    Colvin finds that experienced auditors detected fraud no better than rookies and blames work that is not deliberate practice. Kahneman argues that skilled intuition develops where the environment has stable regularities and long practice gives rapid, clear feedback

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