Maybe you’ll recognize some of these areas in your own skill set! Why practice makes perfectĭeliberate practice can help you raise your success rates to levels you never before thought possible. You can have brains to burn and still not have the drive to succeed.Ĭheck out our 5 reasons why it’s hard to find talent to learn more about the areas that need to be improved within the workforce as a whole. Longer answer: studies have proven that IQ scores don’t account for great performance or general success as well as we might think.

Maybe your score on the IQ test contributes at least something towards your success in life? It is the holy grail of intelligence benchmarking.īut are your results really all that important? Our society values one test above all others when it comes to intelligence: the IQ test.

Surely intelligence counts towards something? This means that the further away you are from your area of study or expertise, the longer you’ve spent out in the field, the more you need to come back into the fold and brush up on your skills. In fact, studies have shown that experienced doctors score lower on tests of medical knowledge than their less experienced colleagues. If that were the case then people spending most of their waking hours at work, as most of us do, would be experts in their field. Such consistently amazing performance doesn’t come from experience, either. The good news is that nobody – not even Mozart! – is born already with musical ability inborn in them. Yes, they may have talents in those directions, but talent doesn’t equal performance. Nobody is born being a chess grandmaster, or a star athlete. Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, explores these questions in depth – scrutinizing the careers of top performers to get to the bottom of what it is that makes them the best at what they do. What if, instead, you tried to put pedal to the metal and work your way to the top, shoving yourself through that glass ceiling with the power of brute force? Is that enough to take you all the way? Or, more importantly: what can make you great? How can you be the best you possible?ĭo you need to be born with the seed of success already in you? If you feel like you’ll never have what it takes to be a good data analyst/blogger/zoo keeper and that it’s just not in you, well, this blog post is for you.

Never mind these, even more earthly mortals such as successful software developers, or stockbrokers: how can they do the things they do and make it look so easy? Talent is overrated, so start smart Written by Astrid Roest on 3 July 2017 for Tech GraduatesĮver wonder why some people seem destined for greatness?Ĭhess grandmasters, for example professional athletes concert pianists rock stars.

The talent is overrated