Book review: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

Talent Is Overrated is a very readable study, backed up by scientific research, into why some people achieve great success. The answer? Not talent, but great effort: a type of effort called 'deliberate practice'. This book suggests that around 10 years of deliberate practice are required for someone to master their chosen skill or knowledge area. This is consistent with the 10,000 hours suggested in Katherine Tyrrell's blog, Making a Mark, here.

The author goes into depth on what deliberate practice consists of, giving examples from the world of writing, sport and business. Geoff Colvin is Senior Editor at Large at Fortune magazine so his main focus is on how a business person or company can take the deliberate practice principles and apply them. He also devotes a chapter to how deliberate practice can enhance creativity, postulating that this is, and increasingly will be, an essential skill in business. These principles could be applied to any skill area and I believe that includes painting, perhaps because it is a subject I have been thinking about for some time (see my earlier post on music practice and art).

In fact, reading this book has helped me understand some areas of Josh Waitzkin's book, The Art of Learning, specifically the chapter on 'Numbers to leave Numbers' - how experts spend so much time studying the basic units of their skill (chess pieces in Waitzkin's case) that they stop seeing individual pieces and start seeing groupings: a little like a beginner reader learns letter sounds, then letter combinations, building up to words. I recommend reading these books together to get a good grasp of how we can each take control of our learning in all areas of our lives.

I confess to being fascinated by the concept of deliberate practice (remembering the satisfaction from a good music practice session as a child) and excited at all the possibilities this could open up. Finally, I think I see a way to structure my own studio time without needing an external course to provide that structure. Perhaps, after 37 years, I am ready to leave school?

Practicing art, and how that relates to music

I grew up studying music: three different instruments in fact. That's a lot of practicing each day! So I have a lot of music study experience with a framework for practice. I loved to draw as a child but art was just another subject at school, not a major part of my extra-curricular life. I have never studied or practiced art in an even vaguely organized manner.

Does this matter? I believe it does.

In The Art of Learning Josh Waitzkin suggests that to be good at a skill, really good, you must learn the basics in depth. Twyla Tharp agrees with this opinion in The Creative Habit, giving the example of the exercises a ballerina does each and every day. Not that I think there isn't a place for free-wheeling work, or for exercises that help one to become more creative. I truly think that it's easier to free your creativity when you are also working on improving those basic skills.

But what are those basic skills? I thought about all the music exercises I did as a child and tried to think of the visual art equivalent and I came up with the following:

Music	Art
Scales & Arpeggios	Drawing & Mark-making
Studies	Studies of Values, Color, Composition
Improvising	Preliminary work for paintings, Sketchbook use
Music theory	Art history
Instrument care	Knowledge of materials - paint, mediums, papers, canvas etc.

Having grown up with a framework for music practice I'm interested to find an equivalent structure for improving my visual art skills. I'm always interested in learning: if you see any skills I have missed in the list please let me know!