Links Worthy of Your Time
In my web browsing over the past week, I have found three critically important posts:
Keith Drury has written “The Coming Waves of Changes in Publication.” This is an important overview of the publishing business from the perspective of the author. Interested in a writing career. Check it out.
JR Woodward has compiled a massive linked resource to missional church sites on the web. Check out “A Primer on Today’s Missional Church.”
Geoff Colvin has published a new book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
. The essay “Secrets of Success: Practice and Hard Work Bring Success” that served as the seedbed for the book is available here. Here is an excerpt:
What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway (Charts) Chairman Warren Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was “wired at birth to allocate capital.” It’s a one-in-a-million thing. You’ve got it - or you don’t.
Well, folks, it’s not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful.
Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.