talent+is+overrated

Talent is Overrated

Joseph Freeman

Mrs. Moeller

AP. Macro Economics

12/08/08

"Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin" Review

Earlier this month when I went to go sign up for a book on Mrs. Moeller's wiki page (which turned out to be surprisingly difficult) to review, I was determined to find a book that wasn't some horribly obnoxious self-help finance book. I knew the quest would be long and hard, but I knew I had to try. I set out on my journey and vigorously scrolled past such titles as "Personal Finance For Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Personal Finance in Your 20s and 30s" and eventually came across an novel which seemed to me a diamond in the rough. "Talent is Overrated", however, turned out to be a clever trap Mrs. Moeller planted to ensure that I read a book I really didn’t want to read.

This questionable economics books focuses on the idea of what makes the most human capital, and it claims to know "What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everyone Else". I was very interested initially because I, personally, am very involved and dedicated to the performing arts, so I was understandably curious to find out what I need to do to make myself a world-class. It turned out of that this self-help book didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. I'm going to go ahead and summarize the 200 some-odd pages of the book, and answer the question on the front cover.

What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else?: Really really hard work. I wish this Geoff Colvin guy had gotten a chance to talk to me before he wrote the book, because I could have saved him a lot of research.

Now maybe at this point in the review I am seeming a little bit aggressive. It is just that I am disappointed that I picked such an ineffective book. I've never read text that consists of just proving something that is common sense, and its frustrating. "People excel because they practice" is not a profound idea, and that is essentially the entire book. It no secret that the backbone of success is hard work, but Colvin has somehow manages to stretch this concept into 200 pages. Not only does he go on about how outrageously effective and constant work is all you really need to be successful, he goes from point to point reviewing all of the misconceptions people have about what makes a person successful.

The first thing that Colvin does in the book is strip away all the magic and wonder about super-humans Tiger Woods, and Mozart, in order to prove that all it takes is hard work. In the first chapter, the author vomits facts, quotes, and anecdotes proving that they were slaves from birth to golf and music, respectably. Both were forced into practice before they were one year old by their obsessive parents, and it makes a difference when babies start learning how to read music before they learn how to read. And just for the sake of putting the cherry on top, he proves that Mozart plagiarized and cheated more people think, and that Tiger Woods lost more tournaments than people realize. By the end of the chapter I was waiting for him to make sure that I didn’t know that Santa Claus and the Ester Bunny wasn't real, but I guess he decided to leave me with some dieing sense of wonder.

Now that Colvin is convinced that the reader is biting at the idea that hard work is the key, he moves on to "debunk the talent myth". The "talent myth", and the author calls it, is the misconception that people have about born abilities and talents. Mother Culture teaches us that some people are just born better than others, and that if you don’t have a dancing talent, then you should never try to dance. What's irritating about this is not that it is wrong, it is just that I seriously think that if anyone were to sit down and think about the idea of "talent" for ten minutes, they could come to this exact conclusion themselves. Its elementary and fruitless to meditate on the subject, because when one talks about talent in everyday conversation it's something to the effect of "Man, they have some real talent in the outfield". All that means that the outfields are good outfielders, it doesn’t mean that they are super humans, its just that they are good at what they do. Anyone could be a good outfielder if they start playing baseball at five years old, and such things are intuitive.

Honestly, the first half of the book continues as such. Colvin explores all sorts of factors that might make a difference in skill, but always comes around full circle to reiterate that hard, effective work is all it takes. He examines things like memory, intelligence, and experience but concludes that no matter what one's IQ is or how good one's memory is, hard work supersedes it all. As more of a side note, I absolutely disagree with his theories on experience's role in ability, because I know that I would rather have a surgeon with 40 years of experience operate on me than an intern. Colvin argues this by saying that interns almost always make higher scores on post-medical school exams than hospital veterans. I am almost positive that is absolutely true, but I could care less what the intern's score is if he has never cut someone open before.

Anyway, the rest of the book examines exactly what kind of practice is needed. Success, as is turns out, requires a specific, especially hard form of practice which is essentially this: To get the most out of practice, one has to pinpoint exactly what one needs to perfect and design a workout (or intellectual equivalent) to satisfy those needs, and also, the workout is hard, mentally demanding, and no fun. When I hit this point in the book I knew that I had failed in my quest, as mentioned in the beginning of the essay. Now I might be totally wrong, but I would think that the overwhelming majority of the population knows that sometimes one has to work, and work is hard. I guess the target audience of this book the part of society that is constantly searching for that successful life that doesn’t require any work or sacrifice. As a reader I felt insulted because it was almost like the author was babying me. "Alright guys and here comes the bad news… in order to be a winner you can't just constantly buy self-help books like this one, you have to actually go outside and do stuff", was all I saw.

Clearly I am not the biggest fan of this book. It attempted to discuss the economic concept of human capital, but didn’t talk about anything that wasn’t common sense. To me, human capital is a relatively simple idea, and it plays a crucial and elementary role in economies. It is defined as "the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country". People can make long term investments in their human capital by doing things like paying to go to college. In the long run they will be more valuable in the work place, and it is generally a wise investment, even when it is incredibly expensive and has no immediate advantages.

That’s about all there is too it, it has nothing to do with "talent", but it doesn’t matter because no one cares anyway. I didn’t even have time or room to talk about how some races, genders, and ethnicities are factually faster runners, less susceptible to diseases, or taller than others. In conclusion, thanks for wasting my time, Geoff Colvin.