Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

by Geoff Colvin

It’s designed specifically to improve performance. The key word in this attribute is designed.

While the best methods of development are constantly changing, they’re always built around a central principle: They’re meant to stretch the individual beyond his or her current abilities.

Only by choosing activities in the learning zone can one make progress. That’s the location of skills and abilities that are just out of reach. We can never make progress in the comfort zone because those are the activities we can already do easily, while panic-zone activities are so hard that we don’t even know how to approach them. Identifying the learning zone, which is not simple, and then forcing oneself to stay continually in it as it changes, which is even harder— these are the first and most important characteristics of deliberate practice.

the most effective deliberate practice activities are those that can be repeated at high volume.

Feedback on results is continuously available.

It’s highly demanding mentally. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration.

Deliberate practice “is not inherently enjoyable.”

The best performers judge themselves against a standard that’s relevant for what they’re trying to achieve. Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best; sometimes they compare with the performance of competitors they’re facing or expect to face; sometimes they compare with the best known performance by anyone in the field. Any of those can make sense; the key, as in all deliberate practice, is to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits.

Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors.