This is one of those books that hooked me with its very direct premise of a title. On the flip side, the title had me worried that the pages would be filled with vaguely inspirational, anecdotal fluff, wrapped together with weak logical connections. The first chapter didn't help alleviate my fears, but the rest of the book did.

The author does a great job presenting a litany of real research, and avoids stretching them past their natural conclusions. He first presents a case supporting the overall premise of the title. Colvin does an especially convincing job deconstructing the very symbol of "divine spark" talent, Mozart. He objectively separates the myth from reality, and is alone worth price of admission.

Colvin then digs into the contours of "deliberate practice", the secret sauce of exceptional performance, relying heavily on Howard Gardner's comparative genius studies. Colvin takes care to relate concepts to business situations and occupations.

Lastly, Colvin tackles a meta counter to his own overarching premise: is hard work and unerring commitment itself an inborn talent? Colvin objectively presenting studies and anecdotes that poke holes in his theory. While he doesn't dismiss the "inborn talent" premise, he simply states that evidence has not born it out yet. But he doesn't stop there, really delving into how real or perceived inborn talents might spark the type of lifetime commitment that leads to exceptional performance.

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"The effect is not the obvious one in which a person's muscles get bigger as a result of weight training, for example, but rather involves charecteristics that most people might think couldn't be changes. Endurance runners, for instance, have larger than average hearts, and attribute that most of us see as one of the natural advantages with which they are blessed. But no, research has shown that their hearts grow after years of intensive training; when they stop training, their hearts revert toward normal size. Athletes can change not just the size of their muscles but even the composition of them (the proportion of fast-twitch fibers to slow twitch) through years of practice." - pg. 103

(On beginning your journey toward exceptional performance: "Step one, obvious yet deserving a moment's consideration, is knowing what you want to do. They key word is not what, but knowing. Because the demands of achieving exceptional performance are so great over so many years, no one has a prayer of meeting them without utter commitment." -- pg. 109

"An important part of prework self-regulation centers on attitudes and beliefs. You may be thinking that figuring out specific goals and plans for what you'll be doing every day sounds hard. It is, and doing it consistently requires high motivation. Where does it come from? The best performers go into their work with the powerful belief in what researchers call their self-efficacy -- their ability to perform. They also believe strongly that all their work will pay off for them." -- pg. 117

"Douglas K. van Duyne, an internet entrepreneur who cofounded the Naviscent consulting firm, expressed the same view to the Times:' The idea of epiphany is a dreamer's paradise where people want to believe that things are easier than they are.'" -- pg. 159

"In some fields, such as science and math, fascination with the available problems seems to drive excellent performers. Benjamin Bloom, in his study of top-ranked young performers in several fields, found this motivation in some of them from their early years: "For most of the mathematicians, the joy of discovering a new way to solve a problem was more important than a high test score, receiving a good grade, or getting the teacher's approval for their work.' Many studies of scientists have reported a similar feeling; they get excited by new problems and find rewards not just in the solution but also in the process of seeking solutions". -- pg. 190