Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Critical Response: Talent is Overrated Chapters 1-2



The book we are reading and annotating is Talent Is Overrated:  What Really Separates World-Class Preformers From Everyone Else and the author is Geoff Colvin.  In chapters one and two Geoff starts out by knocking down all the talent myths that we think of such as some people have natural talents or repetitive practice is key to getting better.  Geoff mentions that there are lots of influences that make a person exceptionally great at something.  One influence is your parents.  An example the book gave us was Tiger Woods.  His father was very athletic and when Tiger came along he introduced the game to little Tiger so that he could train him to be very god at it.  Geoff says that deliberate practice is how someone gets good at something.
I don’t believe in being born with a specific talent.  To get good at something you have to practice and create those synapses or brain connections.  Geoff breaks the myth of how talent is not something you are born with.  To be able to master a skill you have to practice in a way that makes you progress in that skill.  And that way is deliberate practice.               

1 comment:

  1. A good summary, Domenica! In your second paragraph, you bring up some ideas that Colvin (use author's last name instead of first when writing) seems to agree with -- but why do you agree? I'd be curious to see your own personal experiences with "practice and mastery of skill." Could you include some more specific support and elaborate on those examples?

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