Geoff Colvin Quotes & Sayings

even if high-IQ people do better than low-IQ people when first trying a task that's new to them, the relationship tends to get weaker and may eventually disappear completely as they work at the task and get better at it. — Geoff Colvin

Tiger is born into the home of an expert golfer and confessed "golf addict" who loves to teach and is eager to begin teaching his new son as soon as possible. — Geoff Colvin

We will achieve freatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. — Geoff Colvin

The best computer programmers are much better than novices at remembering the overall structure of programs because they understand better what they're intended to do and how. — Geoff Colvin

In our own lives, we will try something new and, finding that it isn't easy for us, we conclude we don't have a talent for it. — Geoff Colvin

The cash held by US companies are hitting all time records. Companies are using some of this money to buy back their own stock at record rates. When a company is doing this it is saying to it's investors: We don't have any good ideas what to do with this, so here--maybe you do. — Geoff Colvin

If you set a goal of becoming an expert in your business, you would immediately start doing all kinds of things you don't do now. — Geoff Colvin

you learn ten times more in a crisis than during normal times. — Geoff Colvin

deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them. — Geoff Colvin

The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome. — Geoff Colvin

Great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected. — Geoff Colvin

Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from. — Geoff Colvin

What you really believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve — Geoff Colvin

What great performers have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically. — Geoff Colvin

Avoiding automaticity through continual practice is another way of saying that great performers are always getting better. This is why the most devoted can stay at the top of their field for far longer than most people would think possible. — Geoff Colvin

A study of figure skaters found that sub-elite skaters spent lots of time working on the jumps they could already do, while skaters at the highest levels spent more time on the jumps they couldn't do, the kind that ultimately win Olympic medals and that involve lots of falling down before they're mastered. — Geoff Colvin

When top-level chess players look at a board, they see words, not letters. Instead of seeing twenty-five pieces, they may see just five or six groups of pieces. That's why it's easy for them to remember where all the pieces are. — Geoff Colvin

As the shift in valuable skills continues, organizations are finding not only that they have no jobs for the disengaged and socially inept, but that such people are toxic to the enterprise and must be removed. — Geoff Colvin

Top performers understand their field at a higher level than average performers do, and thus have a superior structure for remembering information about it. — Geoff Colvin

Mozart's first work regarded today as a masterpiece, with its status confirmed by the number of recordings available, is his Piano Concerto No. 9, composed when he was twenty-one. That's certainly an early age, but we must remember that by then Wolfgang had been through eighteen years of extremely hard, expert training. — Geoff Colvin