Talent is Overrrated does a good job of demolishing the idea that specific innate "talents" are the fountain for success - all with a great story telling approach. The stories of the famous to the not so famous help solidify the point that maybe, just maybe talent doesn't really exist at all.
Colvin goes through the process of questioning such things that some people who appear to have amazing innate abilities at an early age ... the prodigies ... don't end up being very successful later in life, while those people who don't appear to have these prodigious innate abilities end up being very successful. Colvin demonstrates the same with working memory as well as IQ. And all of this happens in the first two chapters! (For a wonderful primer please read this excellent article by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, authors of Peak – Ericsson significantly influenced Colvin’s thinking for Talent is Overrated.)
In fact, in those first two chapters Colvin discusses the stories of Mozart, Tiger Woods, and Jack Welch and how practice and not innate talent matter, but the real good stuff for me is the research by Anders Ericsson (see review of Peak). This research, which is also discussed in Chapter 3, includes the research on memory with the famous SF, who was able to memorize a random string of 82 numbers even though SF didn't have a higher than average IQ or memory.
(For the nerd in you, highly recommend this American Scientist article- "Exceptional Memory" by Anders Ericsson and William Chase on the topic of short-term memory).
Other stories that struck me as compelling were that of Jerry Rice and his amazing training habits (see James Clear’s very good article on the topic) to the Berlin violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin and what made some of them great and others not so great - and the finding is that deliberate practice is what matters.
And this leads us to the USP of this book: the what and how of deliberate practice. In fact, the rest of the book is about how to incorporate deliberate practice is in your personal and professional life. Deliberate practice is for Colvin THE ANSWER for why people become successful – see Nat Eliason’s very good article on the topic. Deliberate practice is, according to Colvin designed specifically to improve performance, it is repeated allot, feedback is continuously available, its highly demanding intellectually and it isn't that much fun – see Freakonomics podcast: “How to become great at just about anything (Ep. 244)” for a wonderful discussion of the topic of deliberate practice.
I give this book 4.8 out of 5 stars.