Month: July 2012

The difference between mediocre and great talent performance is due to the number of practice hours. That observation is not surprising. What is surprising is the reason for the difference between great performance and knock-down world-class performance, according to Geoff Colvin in his book “Talent is Overrated”. The difference is due entirely  to participating in more systematic and planned-out type of practice hours. Doubling from 2 to 4 hours of daily practice will make you great, but doubling from 4 to 8 hours will not make you a world-class performer.

1. Deliberate Practice: practice like you mean it! Push yourself to do it better than the last time around

2. Intelligent Practice: study how each individual part of your talent can be improved and make an actionable plan to improve each part

3. Distibuted Practice: borrow and copy pieces of excellence from fields of talent other than yours and recombine into your own performance

4. Over-the-Top Practice: practice 4 hours each workday of every week for 10 years and you will cross over the 10,000 hours