Likelihood of Success

Directions to Carnegie Hall

Mar 24, 2009 Edumacallit, Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens, O Mores!

Bruce MacEwen comments on my wasted youth by way of recommending Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated:  What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else:

This book, based soundly in empirical research, delivers the hard message that true excellence depends upon hours and hours (10,000 hours, to be precise) of “deliberate practice”—be it the young Mozart composing, the young Tiger Woods practicing, or any aspiring concert violinist.  The same, by extension, is true of surgeons, mathematicians, CFO’s—and lawyers and writers.  As Colvin puts it, this is good news and bad news:

“What would cause you to do the enormous work necessary to be a top-performing CEO, Wall Street trader, jazz, pianist, courtroom lawyer, or anything else?  Would anything?  The answer depends on your answers to two basic questions:  What do you really want?  And what do you really believe?  [Knowing w]hat you want — really want — is fundamental because deliberate practice is a heavy investment.”

Talent is not just overrated.  It can actually be the single biggest factor militating against achieving excellence there is.

From what I hear.

UPDATE:  Yep, it’s even more true regarding kids (via Insty):

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

We all know these types, don’t we?  Bright, bitter bums.

Now, ultimately people are not merely clay in the hands of their environments and genes — they do make choices.  But for much of their early lives, they don’t.  Making good choices later in life can be a challenge when the wrong ones are made for you early on.